How Do You Prevent Cancer? | Nathan Crane

And I'm thrilled today to have Nathan Crane with me. Nathan's somebody who's been really monumental in helping people understand the whole notion of cancer and what are some of the things we can actually do to help ourselves if we have that diagnosis. So let me tell you a little bit about Nathan. He's an award winning author, inspirational speaker, and he definitely is that. You'll find that out by the end today. Plant based athlete, event producer, and 18 time award winning docu series filmmaker. He's the founder of Panacea community, director of Global Cancer symposium, and director and producer of the documentary film Cancer the Integrated Perspective. You can hear my accent in there a little bit. In 2005, at 18, Nathan began his health, healing and spiritual journey, which we'll talk a little bit more about today. Because I think it ties in for so many people the events that brought him to where he is today. Eventually overcoming a decade of brutal teenage addiction, house arrest, jail, and challenging times of hopelessness to become an international author, filmmaker and speaker dedicated to health, healing and conscious awakening. He has received numerous awards for his contributions, including the outstanding community service award from the Canafoli Senate for his work in education empowerment with natural methods. With 15 years in the health and wellness field, Nathan has reached millions of people around the world. Thank goodness for these inspiring messages. As a regular contributor to a number of national magazines, television and radio interviews, conferences, expos, summits, podcasts, and zoom things. So welcome, Nathan. Thank you so much for being here today.

Yes.

So how about if we start with this?

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Yeah, really.

So how about starting with kind of how this journey began for you? Because I think it really inspires other people to think that there's hope out there.

Yeah, there definitely is hope. I mean, I was a really lost teenager that didn't have much hope. Right. And that's what I tell people today, especially those dealing with cancer or any chronic disease or any chronic health challenges. There's always hope. There's no such thing as false hope. I think Dr. Francisco Contreras said it best in my documentary about helping people with cancer is that it is that there's no such thing as false hope. And when somebody says, oh, don't give them false hope, you know, they were only given a month to live or two months to live. You know, I'm the one that gets to meet and interview so many amazing people who said, I did not accept that prognosis. I did not accept that destiny. I decided to change my destiny. I was told I had two months left to live, three months left to live. And here I am 15 years later, helping others, right? And so, you know, that's. That's when you say there's no such thing as false hope. There isn't. There's always hope. But we also have to move beyond hope, right? We have to move into strategy and empowerment and action, right? There's no. Nothing actually happens unless we take action and the right actions, too. So we have to have the information, but it's just not. Information is in power alone, right? Action is the thing that gives us a power to actually change our lives for the better, whether it's cancer or not. I mean, not only do I help people with cancer, but I help people prevent cancer. We know cancer is one of the. You know, it's the second leading cause of death in people around the world. 10 million people die every year from cancer and its treatment. So one, the best cure for cancer is to prevent it in the first place, right? So how do we prevent it? Maybe we talk about that today. But two, if you do have cancer, then, you know, what can you do about it? And there are solutions. That's why I say there's always hope. In my own life as a teenager, you know, I ended up homeless. At 15, I ended up addicted to drugs and alcohol. You know, I ended up running from the police. I mean, I remember one time I was.

It's a long story, but I'll give the short version. You know, I was arrested one night at like 15 years old, I think 15 or 16 years old. And it was like the last straw. I ended up getting seven charges that night, and I was running from the police, and I threw a knife at him and I cut myself open and I escaped from the police car. You know, we were stealing stereos. I was a really lost, troubled teenager.

And I ended up jumping over this large fence, and then I got trapped and they cut it open and they sent the dog, and the dog attacked me, and they threw me to the ground and was bleeding all over the place, you know, and they felt for me, I think, because they had the chance to certainly charge me with a felony, which would have meant, you know, I would have been in jail for. At that point in my life, I would have gone to jail or potentially prison because I was already in a lot of trouble at that point. And so they said, hey, we're not going to charge you with the felony. But I got seven other charges, and I ended up being on house arrest and ended up going to jail for a couple of weeks. And, you know, trying to commit suicide and through just a lot of terror. I mean, a lot of terror, a lot of fear, lot of challenges as a teenager, addiction and really just chronic stress, as well as really bad food, you know, eating McDonald's and fast food. And so by the time I was 18, I was like, basically dead. I mean, I was really the walking dead. I was definitely on track for a cancer diagnosis. I was definitely on track to be dead before 21 years old, I was on track or to be in prison for the rest of my life. And I had just a huge awakening moment. I had a moment where I had a glimmer of hope is what it was, that I could actually live a better life. I didn't have to live this life of disease and sickness and stress and fear and anxiety and addiction and bad food and low energy and toxic buildup. Like, I didn't have to live that. I had a choice, which at that point in my life, at 18 years old, I didn't really even know I had a choice. And so my friend and I, Gabe Davis, we jumped in my 1988 Cadillac Coupe de Ville, we drove to California, from Montana to California, basically ran out of gas in Oceanside, California, and started my life over, right? And from the ground up. Took me a few years, but I ended up getting 100% sober, moving up the corporate ladder in an executive position, you know, earning six figures a year at that time, getting into real estate, totally changing my life and diving deep into.

The opposite extreme. How do I get as healthy and happy and spiritually connected as I possibly can? So I started meditating hours and hours a day. I started cleansing and detoxing, you know, my body. I started interviewing experts and learning from them and sharing their expertise with others. I started meditating with Buddhist monks and learning from Zen masters and chanting with Hare Krishna's and, you know, really diving deep into spiritual health, mental emotional health and healing, healing all my own past childhood traumas, going into, you know, hypnotherapy and all kinds of different emotional healing things to get to the root cause of, you know, all this anxiety and fear and trauma and self doubt that all of us experience. Whether people went through, you know, the really hard experiences I did as a child or not, we all can relate. We all have some form of trauma, some form of self doubt or fear, anxiety or stress, right? We all have some form of physical challenges going on, whatever that might be, you know, dietary things going on. So many people today are dealing with autoimmune disease, right? And I did a talk and an ebook on cancer and autoimmune disease recently because there's so much commonality between autoimmune disease, which we know there's like over 100 of them now, right? And millions and millions of people are diagnosed with autoimmune disease and cancer. Those two are so related. And then we look at diabetes and we look at heart disease. All of a sudden the more you research and study, you realize all of these diseases we're facing today, one, we don't have to have them. They're not like they shouldn't be. They don't have to be a normal part of our life, even though we think being sick is normal. Oh, he's just aging. He's 70 years old, he's got cancer and diabetes and heart disease. That's normal. No, it does not have to be normal at all. Actually. What normal could be is 90 years old, healthy, active, pain free, no disease. And we know that's a possibility, we know it's a fact. But because there are people around the world that live that way, especially those that have been living much more in harmony with what you teach and what we can talk about here and what I teach, which is living so much a better quality of life, it's not only adding years to our lives, but improving the quality of our lives as we age. So that's become just like a major passion of mine and obsession, you know, it's like, how do I be as healthy as possible, you know, as happy as possible, as vital as possible. And I never, and I didn't used to be this way. I used to be sick and stressed and fatigued and all the issues that so many people are dealing with today. And now it's like, you know, I have a beautiful family, a 10 year old daughter, 5 year old son, you know, helping people all over the world to be healthy. I'm living a purposeful life that brings meaning to me and to others. I have health and energy and vitality like I've never had before. And my goal is to be that way as long as I possibly can, you know, into my 90s and who knows, maybe past 100. We'll see, right? You know, and you never know what happens in life, right? Anything could happen, but that's it. I guess that's a place, you know, that that is worth emphasizing is no matter what you're going through, there's no such thing as false hope and there are solutions. Doesn't mean for sure there's always an answer or a cure. Guaranteed or whatever. But there are always solutions. And if you focus on.

The strategies and solutions that we know are most effective, then your chances of living that higher quality of life will absolutely improve.

So, Nathan, I want to pull the curtain back a little bit, and one of the things that you said that really struck me is you made a decision. So what was behind that decision? Because this is really, really important for people to know. When you're in the depths of despair, when you're in the depths of that, what was the guardian angel? What was the person that came to mind? What was the thing that you saw? How did you come to that awareness? Because in my opinion, this is exactly where all this information starts to change.

Yeah, I mean, it was really clear for me exactly the day it happened, what happened, how it happened. You know, I was sick and sad and depressed and tired of being sick and sad and depressed. I mean, I was tired of it. I was tired of the drugs. I was tired of the alcohol. I was tired of feeling like crap all the time. I was tired of, you know, having stomach problems, and I was tired of having no energy and just feeling horrible. I was just tired of it. Right. I didn't know there were solutions, but I was just tired of it. So I think that's the first step for anybody's healing journey, vitality journey, health journey, whatever you want to call it, is getting sick and tired of being sick and tired. Like, we have to be ready to just say, okay, I'm done with this way of living, first of all. Then the second step was, okay, what's possible. Be open to possibilities. And so for me, I was staying with my friend's family at the time, Dennis and Martina Davis. I was, like, 17 years old. I think they took me in to live with them for a while. Beautiful people, spiritual people, healthy people, eating healthy, meditating, just loving, compassionate people. And they took me in, and I loved being around them, and I loved Dennis and Martina. I mean, I would just sit and talk with them for hours sometimes about classical music, about spirituality, about Buddhism, about Christ, about, you name it, you know, tuning into. I remember a conversation with Dennis one time, and it was the first time I ever heard. I was like, 17 years old, right? And he says, like, 2004 maybe. And he said, hey, you know, your thoughts are like a radio, and they're like a frequency. And you can tune in your thoughts into the frequency that you want. If you want to tune into anger or hatred or resentment, you tune your thoughts into that. Just like turning the dial on a radio. You want to tune into love and compassion, joy, happiness. You tune your thoughts just like that dial on a radio, and you can tune into that energy, into that vibration. And as a 17 year old kid, I mean, anybody tuning in today that's ever seen the Secret or any of you know, the work about, you know, our mind, the power of our minds, and I mean, this really goes back thousands of years to ancient qigong, to ancient yoga, to ancient spiritual traditions, right? But that was the first time I heard it as a 17 year old kid going, wow, that makes sense. You know, I don't know how, but it makes sense. And so I remember sitting there on the couch one day, talking with him, and I had a vision at the time. I literally saw myself in the future in my mind.

Standing in front of a crowd on a stage, speaking to thousands of people. And it was like a healthy version of myself standing on that stage, and I was helping all these people. And that was it. It was just this vision I had in that moment. And it gave me the spark of hope, like maybe there's something else for me in the future. And literally within a short time after that, my friend who I told you about said, hey, I got to get out of here. I got to change my life. I'm going to California. I said, great, give me like a month. I got some things to wrap up. I'm going with you. And we went together. And it was like, I remember that moment so clearly because it was that glimmer of hope. It was, you know, whether you call it, you know, angels or God speaking to you or whatever it was, it was certainly something that came to be true. It wasn't too many years after I moved to California that I started speaking on stages and I started touring the country and I was writing books and I was speaking to hundreds and thousands of people. And I found a passion of mine which is teaching and sharing and contributing, right? And it's. And I love speaking on stages. I love, you know, inspiring people, I love helping people. And so that vision came to be true. But it was a glimmer of hope at the time that I listened to, right? And we all have those little moments in our life, whether it's a thought, right? And maybe you have something to share, Marcel. But we all have those that they're nagging at us or it's like a dream or an inspiration or a want or desire. It just takes us listening to that. We have to listen and follow through with it. And then life starts to change for the better.

Absolutely. Well, I don't think I've ever publicly said this, but in 2008, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And I remember the moment it happened just thinking. I was actually embarrassed because I was teaching people how to take care of themselves. I was eating really well, I was exercising, I was eating organically. But I was in medical practice. I was on call for several practices at the same time.

I don't remember how old my son was at the time, but there was a year apart between him and I had twins. I was pulling myself in every direction and the thing I wasn't doing wasn't taking care of myself. So I also decided I was going to do a lumpectomy. I didn't do any other treatment. I just changed everything about my life that I could and started doing a lot more self care. And in my opinion, some of the whole notion of breast cancer is feeding the world breast milk and forgetting yourself. So I started feeding myself a little bit more. And, you know, it changes you. I mean, there's moments in everybody's life in which they have these monumental, aha, I can't do it this way anymore. I need to make a shift. Hopefully it's not a terrible wake up call, but it's the same for you. There was something that just happened and you said, okay, I'm not doing it this way anymore. I can now speak to people about the notion of cancer because I've been there, I know what it's like. But I also chose not to have it be something that. I mean, I barely think about it now. I don't dwell on it. I don't think of myself as a survivor. I'm a Victorian, you know, at this point of what I changed my life to be. And we all have those moments. The question is, what do you do with them? Do you kind of go with, okay, I can shift this, or do you wallow in the sadness and the pain and the despair? There's a huge difference there. And I think that's what I love about the work that you do, is you're bringing in the possibility of hope and that yes, we can change this and no, it doesn't have to be this way and clout, you know, kind of if I go to see somebody, at the time I didn't, but I would have put a wetsuit on a visual web suit so that I could listen to myself and not be bombarded by the information that's oftentimes negative.

So powerful. Thank you for sharing that. I didn't know that about you.

Yeah, it's true. So let's talk a little bit about some of the work that you're doing now with the integrative perspective. Tell me a little bit about that cancer, the integrative perspective. I want to hear more about it because so many people need to hear this information.

Yeah. So the cancer, the integrative perspective, it's a documentary project. It was a five year project, labor of love that I started.

Six or seven years ago now maybe, and it took around five years to finish it. And I started with a notion which actually what you just shared is a perfect example of.

I started to notice this dichotomy, this war between natural medicine and conventional medicine, right? As I was, I was producing conferences, I was producing online summits helping people with cancer. You know, my grandfather passed away from cancer and the treatment of it. And that set me on this passion, this obsession of learning everything I could about cancer and helping others dealing with cancer. And so, you know, I was a couple of years into that journey and then recognize, like, yeah, there's so many solutions from every field of medicine, from holistic and natural to ancient and eastern to energy medicine to conventional medicine and everything in between. And yet you find often two people, for the most part, people who say, everything's conventional medicine, natural doesn't do anything, or I'm only doing natural. Conventional sucks, right? Like it's this dichotomy and they end up hating each other. And there's this war that's happening and yet there is beauty in all forms of medicine, right? There are some medicine that truly is not very effective and there's others that is much more effective. And so my intention, both with the film and with the conquering cancer summit that we're doing right now as well, is to bridge the gap and say, look, let's find what's working. Let's look at what's actually working for people and focus on solutions, no matter where it's from. And that's what we call integrative medicine. Let's use the best of all worlds, right? Ancient, Eastern, indigenous, you know, to, you know, what we would actually call traditional. That's traditional medicine. Ancient Eastern traditional medicine, or, you know, modern conventional medicine. You know, like you, you said you had a lumpectomy, right? You had surgery, which in some cases is needed. You get the surgery, it's fairly safe. And then you do everything else. You change your diet, your lifestyle, your mindset, all of that. That's integrative medicine, right? Or sometimes you get a little bit of low dose IPT chemotherapy. Low dose, not super toxic on your body, helps to shrink the tumor. But now you're doing green juice every day, and you're exercising and you're meditating. You're doing all the other things using turmeric and Boswelli and black pepper and all the things we know to reduce inflammation, help your body heal itself naturally. That's the power of integrative medicine. So let's use what works. Let's get rid of what doesn't. You know, there are things in conventional medicine that we know don't work. Chemotherapy has a 0% success rate on many cancers. People don't know that. It also has a 50% success rate on some other cancers. So it's like you need to educate yourself and learn what's actually working, what's not. What are all your options? Unfortunately, the conventional oncologists don't know what all your options are because they're not trained in holistic medicine. They're not trained in natural medicine. So they can't give you all your options. So you have to educate yourself and learn from other experts from all the fields, medical, conventional, natural, holistic. And so that's what the film does, is it helps to share. It gives inspiration and hope. Cancer conquerors sharing their stories, sharing solutions, sharing the causes of cancer. Because once we know the causes, we can eliminate them from our lives and reduce our risk of ever getting cancer. Certainly increase our odds of overcoming cancer. And so that's what the film does as well as the summit we're doing right now. Conquering cancer summit goes into depth around, you know, causes and solutions.

So if people wanted to get. I don't want to get too much off track here, but if people wanted to get the summit, how would they go about doing that? Nathan? Because that's very important.

Yeah, the summit right now is just conquering cancersummit.com conquering cancersummit.com I don't know if you have links for it around here as well. You might share those links.

Be glad to do that. Of course.

Yeah.

Something else I want to talk about.

Yeah, go ahead.

No, and that is the notion that you said, you know, we all have childhood stuff, and we do. And, you know, in my opinion, if you don't deal with your story, your story will deal with you physically. Can you expand on that a little bit more? Because I see it, you know, for every kind of dis. Ease, that there's a relationship between pain and trauma and, you know, inflammation in the body, be it from cortisol or other kind of Hormones that are off balance. Can you speak to that a little bit more? I mean, you did a lot of work with hypnosis and digging deeper into your own trauma. I mean, obviously that that's what happens, you know, as a precursor to addiction. So tell me a little bit more.

Absolutely. I'd say it's a precursor to every disease. Right. I mean, I used. Yeah, like. Like you were just saying. Right. So I think I used to think like 80% of things were physical, 20% was mental, emotional. Now I really believe it's the opposite. I really believe it's 80% mental, emotional, spiritual. It's 20% physical. And this is proven when people, they don't really change their diet or much of their lifestyle, but they heal emotionally, they get happier, they start practicing meditation every day. They do qigong and energy healing. And all they do is change. I say all they do. It's a lot is change what's going on in their mind and their emotions. And all of a sudden they heal not just from cancer, but all kinds of chronic illnesses. So it's not to say one is better than the other or don't do one, just do the other. Don't, you know, just do physical stuff. Exercise, nutrition, all that. Don't do mental, emotional, vice versa. We have to do it all. It's like we're mind, body, emotion, spirit. So we really need to take care of all of it. And I look at it like this. I look at mind like if you had a wheel of a holistic lifestyle or what I call wholesome living. Here's the areas of our lives that we should spend the most time on. Mind, emotions, which these two are interlinked, right? Mind, emotions, relationships, physical body, environment.

Spirituality. Right. If we address all of those in the wheel, those spokes of the will on an ongoing basis, and one always affects the others and vice versa. So even if you're just working on the mind, you're just like, okay, I just need to start meditating. I'm going to do 30 minutes in the morning, 30 minutes at night. I'll follow a program. I know I need to meditate, right? So you start meditating. Well, that is going to affect your physical body. We know now our ancient ancestors have known for thousands of years that if you heal mentally, emotionally, if you meditate, if you practice visualization, if you change your thinking to positive thoughts instead of negative thoughts, that your body follows suit and it heals and becomes vital and energetic. We've known this for thousands of years. Our modern scientists now know what Happens when you have trauma and you have emotional challenges. What qigong will teach as stuck energy, our modern scientists call neuropeptides, right? And those neuropeptides get stuck in the various organs in different parts of the body and almost always will be chronic inflammation or lead to something like cancer or other chronic health issues. So you clean out those neuropeptides and there's different ways it happens. Energy, healing, meditation, emotional clearing and cleansing, physical clearing and cleansing. You know, all those neuropeptides can be released and then the healing can happen. So what people often think of is just kind of airy, fairy, kind of woo, woo, whatever. It's like it's very real and science has just barely begun to understand it, right? Especially through epigenetics. My friend and colleague Bruce Lipton, who is really a pioneer in epigenetics, shows that it's not your genes. Your genes do not dictate your destiny. And actually your thoughts. Thoughts literally can create disease or help to reverse disease. So I always give this metaphor when I am talking to people about it and I say, what if you knew that every thought you had instantly manifested as a physical experience right in front of you, every single thought you had, you would be a little scary to think about first, right? But if that were the truth, you would be very, very, very mindful about every thought you had, every negative thought you had. Trust me. You know, it's like you had this negative thought, like, oh my God, there's a semi that might come and crash into, you know, my house and boom, one second later, semi crashes your husband. Oh, okay. I'm going to be really mindful not to have any kind of negative thoughts anymore. Well, that's kind of what it takes is, is that awareness of our mind of really to start recog our stressful thoughts, our anxious thoughts, our negative thoughts, right? And really start recognizing how they are perpetuating in our life. Now, they don't manifest instantaneously, but they do manifest long term. So when you're in a chronic stress or anxiety or negative state for years and years, we know it down regulates your parasympathetic nervous system, upregulates your sympathetic nervous system, upregulates your adrenal system, downregulates your immune system. Perfect environment for cancer and other chronic diseases to grow, right? So how do we manage that? Well, we practice mindfulness, practices breathing, practices yogic breathing, qigong practices anything that calms the nervous system, anything that activates the immune system, which is totally in tandem with the parasympathetic nervous system. When you think parasympathetic. Above, sympathetic, above sympathy. Right. Into a state of peace, equanimity, tranquility, happiness, joy, love, compassion. All these things are associated with healing. Just as our ancient ancestors have known forever. They've always taught in every spiritual tradition, love, compassion, forgiveness, kindness. Now we know why they've taught that. Because it literally translates to, to health and healing in the body and vice versa. Sympathetic Activated adrenal system. Activated cortisol dumping in the body. Right. Negative emotions. Fear, anxiety, stress. Turn on the TV. 8,000 more deaths today. Turn on again. 4,000 more deaths today. Oh my God, you're watching media. Every day you're in a chronic state of fear and stress. Your immune system is turned off, means your body can't heal. You're so much more susceptible to disease. So it goes beyond just what we thought we knew into a state of, okay, we know we cannot avoid it any longer, that practicing any of these practices on a day to day basis, becoming very mindful of our thoughts, not judging ourselves, just being mindful. Because when you recognize you have a negative thought, a fearful thought, an anxious thought, a stressful thought, you can just.

Take a deep breath, relax. What I do is if I have a negative thought at all, I actually go, oh, I don't want that thought. And I visualize it transforming into like a star, like exploding into the universe. And then I focus on what I want to think. So it's like it was a fear of like, oh, this business thing's not going to work out. Nope, explode it. This is going to work out and I'm going to find the way to make it work out. Oh, my health is, you know, my genes say that I'm just going to have cancer for the rest of my life and there's nothing I can do about it. Nope, don't want that thought. Actually, epigenetics says that genes aren't our destiny. I'm going to find the solution. Right? It's literally be aware of it, transform it, and then focus on what you want. And that's a practice. Meditation is a practice. Qigong is a practice. We can talk about it all day long, but until you actually start doing it, just like you said, you change your life even drastically for the better. Until you start taking action and do it, nothing's going to happen. So whatever you're thinking, you need to start doing for your health. Now, start doing it now. Don't wait till tomorrow.

Absolutely. And I just want to reiterate what you said because it's so important. They did a study many years ago, and you and I have talked about this study called the ACE Study. And they looked at if you have adverse events in your childhood, you didn't feel loved, you saw a lot of fighting going on, you had a parent that was alcoholic, there was abuse going on, whatever. If you had a score of 4 or more on a questionnaire of 10, your chances of heart attack and heart disease are 165% higher. Cancers increased over 100%. Short term disability, early death. So there is a relationship. We have a scientific evidence of that from 19,000 women and men. Please don't think it's just in your head, because it's not. It's physically in your body. And that's beautifully. What you put together for us, Nathan, is the understanding that we have to look at all the pieces to the puzzle spiritually, the food that we eat, the thoughts that we think, the relationships that we have, how much happiness we have on board. All of that creates our wellbeing for tomorrow and the fact that we can live to be 90 and 100. And I absolutely believe that. I know that to be true. But too many people have bought into. Well, you know, you're 75. What do you like? What, are you kidding me? And I'm a dancer, so I see all those people on the dance floor, they're in their 80s and they're doing pretty damn well. So it can happen for sure. So tell me a little bit more about ways that people can kind of understand this notion of gratitude. I know that's a huge part for you of kind of where you've come and now kind of moving forward to who you are today.

Gratitude is, you know, aside from the science we know today how effective it is on our parasympathetic nervous system, how effective it is for our bodies to heal. It's just a great way of living. It just makes you feel good. And anything that it. You know, I love one of the quotes. One of the Buddhist teachers that I used to train with, he said that the Buddha is known for saying is, do whatever you want in this life, do whatever you want as long as it doesn't hurt yourself and doesn't hurt others. And I'd add to that. And doesn't hurt the planet, right? Do whatever you want. Like you said, dancing and climbing and running and swimming and art and painting and whatever you want, as long as it doesn't hurt yourself and hurt others. Right. And if that's how you live your life, there's millions of things you can do. And if it's not hurting yourself and hurting others, then most likely it's going to bring you joy, right? If you're going to a job that you hate and it's stressed out and you're stressed out and you're anxious all the time and you don't look forward to it and you hate your work and what you're doing, you know, that's hurting yourself. Believe it or not, that is hurting every part of you because you don't look forward to what you're doing. You actually cringe when you think about it. It stresses you out. And that stress causes disease, right? And so it's looking forward to the things that bring us joy. Do the things that bring you joy in your life that don't hurt others and doesn't hurt yourself. And if you do that every day, you will live a much more wholesome, healthy, happy life. And I forgot your question. I forgot where I was going with that gratitude.

I'm on a big.

Gratitude. Yes, thank you. So gratitude, get off into these, you know, these. Oftentimes I don't even know what's flowing through me at the time. So the reason I was sharing that is because gratitude brings you so much joy in your life. Right. And so I was homeless again at like 20, 21 years old at some point. But this point I was already had gotten sober, like mostly sober, had stopped smoking cigarettes and changed my life, was doing much better in every arena except I was going through a really financial hardship. So I ended up homeless, ended up living on the living room floor of someone's house. Their cat was peeing on my bed all the time. And I'm laying there and I had nothing to be grateful for. If you look at it, no money, no job. You know, I was actually, I had a job, but I wasn't making any money at it. I couldn't even pay my. To fill up my gas. I didn't know where my next meal was coming from. I have a cat peeing on my bed. I'm living on the living room floor. And yet in that moment, I started to practice gratitude. I started to wake up every morning and just practice focusing on the things that I'm grateful for. You know, I have a roof over my head. I have a comfortable bed. Yeah, it smells like pee, but I have a comfortable bed to sleep on. You know, I have meals coming. I don't know where they're coming from, but they're coming, coming. You know, I have a. I can walk down the street. I have legs, I, you know, can walk to the beach and do meditations. Like, I started practicing gratitude and little by little, not only did I feel better, right? But things started happening, good things started happening. You know, new business opportunities, new partnerships, new jobs, new, you know, getting out of that house and getting my own place, meeting my wife, starting a family, you know, having a business that starts growing and impacting and helping change people's lives. Like the more you practice, and I say practice because it is a practice, you have to practice it every day. So I turn it into a morning practice during the day practice and an evening practice. Every morning I wake up, I just automatic do it every morning. Think about the things I'm grateful for and it's usually the small things. You know, I'm grateful for my health today. I'm grateful for my kids and their health and grateful I have a nice comfortable roof over my head. I have good healthy food in the fridge. I'm grateful for this opportunity to be able to serve and help other people. I practice that every morning, I practice it every night and I practice it throughout the day in little bursts. Just before this interview, just do a quick little qigong type meditation.

Simple one I learned from Master Ming Tong, where you connect with the earth and the heavens and the energy around you. And then I just ask for guidance, I give gratitude and then I ask for guidance to be able to, you know, serve people in the highest way possible to do the most good. And I really feel that that simple practice, if everybody starts doing that, focusing on the things they're grateful for instead of the things you don't have, instead of the negativity going on, instead of the fear, instead of the death, instead of all the stressful stuff out there. Just focus on the little things you do have every day and give gratitude for them. Your life starts to transform for the better. For sure. Scientifically we know your body heals faster and better because of it. But more importantly, you just feel better. When you feel better, you make better decisions for yourself, for your health, for the planet and for others.

So if people want to learn a little bit more about you, how can they find you? There's many different places, I'm sure. So help us understand where they are.

I'd say the best place is just my website, Nathan Crane dot com. There's a free ebook there, a free meditation.

A free practice there you can download. I've got a 10 minute meditation there and a free ebook you can download. And then from there you'll hear about the Conquering Cancer Summit, the Cancer the Integrative Perspective documentary, the Becoming Cancer Free masterclass that actually you're a part of. I think you may have some links to those resources below as well. But yeah, nathancrane.com is a great place.

Thank you once again. It's my pleasure to have you on. And what I love about the way that you present this is there's so much hope in it and people can change their lives wherever they are. So thank you so very much.

Absolutely. My pleasure. Thanks for having me on.