How Distraction Becomes the Destruction of Your Health with Justin Roethlingshoefer

What's the difference between someone who ages well and someone who doesn't? And is it mostly genetic or mostly choices?

Intentionality. Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger, and it's always an intention problem. I say there's the equation that I have in my previous book, The Power of Ownership, where we live in a world where there's inevitable outcomes. What differentiates the outcomes that we get, if they're ones aligned with what we desire or what we fear, is solely dependent upon whether we are consistently building our habits and intentionally developing the rhythms, or we're consistently building the habits with unintentional rhythms. Intentionality is that fine line that swings to the outcome you fear or the outcome you desire.

Justin, welcome to Rooted in Wellness.

It's so good to be here. Thank you for having me.

I just love talking to you. My cheeks are already hurting. We haven't even started recording.

I love it.

Felt Canadian.

That's right. That's right. Instant, instant trust and connection.

Instant. Yeah. I'm so happy you're here. Um, you know a little bit about what I do, and the intention of this podcast not only is to help as many people as possible, but to really help people become more rooted. That's rooted in themselves and their health and their happiness. And what I believe, and I know you echo this, um, our inner capacity to heal ourselves. Yeah. And to remember that.

Yeah.

So I'd love to know, what are 2 or 3 things that help you feel more rooted in who you are?

I mean, number one, when I think about rooted in who It's coming back to that my identity is not what culture tells me. My culture is what God tells me. And there's a couple habits that, again, I know when I start my day slow, it's an acronym: stillness, listen, obedience, wisdom.

Hmm.

So when I gain stillness in my day to start my day, I'm able to listen. First thing's always listening. I think so many times in culture, there's so much talking, there's so much voice, there's so much having to be said. And I think that's not what God wants us to do. when you actually get to listen, you can then be obedient. Obedience is the hardest thing that we have to do in life.

Yeah.

But that's where you gain your wisdom. And so that's one of the biggest things that I do. And then obviously scripture is the second one, that when I root myself in truth, I have a firm foundation. And that's what I can build everything else against throughout the day that allows me to, again, to use your words, start rooted. Because if you're not rooted to anything, you will fall for anything.

Did you grow up with religion?

So it's funny, right? I grew up in the church. My parents— I say my mom is like, just has one ear to God's mouth. And it's just so prophetic and just so— just one of the kindest women you'll ever meet. And it took on kind of like, I think a lot of people took on their version of what that was. You go to church on Sundays, you Serve coffee on every quarter. You have your rotation. Everyone's wearing khakis and polos, and it's just kind of very routine. And that didn't really kind of jive with me. It kind of got old, I think, as it does for a lot of people, and I didn't really understand it. I knew who God was, but I didn't know who he was to me.

Mm-hmm.

And it It actually caused me to step away from the church for probably 15 years. Kind of do, hey, I'm going to do my own thing. I've got it all figured out. Do it your way. And I think a lot of it came from even, you'd look at the people in the church, the pastors, the leaders, the people who would— you were supposed to look up to. I didn't see a lot admirable. They weren't mentally well. They weren't, they weren't mentally stable in a lot of ways, on sabbaticals, struggling with their own mental health in certain ways. They weren't physically fit. They weren't financially winning. And so like, why do I want that life? Like, why do I want to abide to that? And so if I doubted them there, did I even doubt their spiritual richness, their spiritual connection?

Hmm.

And so it wasn't until My relationship—I say relationship over religion—it wasn't until my relationship with Jesus really kind of changed my whole thought process and perspective on this to really say, "No, this is this is a relationship just like a relationship with my wife, where the more that I engage, the more that I have conversation, the more that I spend time, you're able to get to know that person at a deeper level." And that's really kind of what it became. over the course of probably in my late 20s, it came back and was just like, there is such a peace and freedom that exists on the other side. That's what I want everybody to experience. Not the rules, not the legalism, not what culture has made religion, but rather what does that relationship look like to you? And how does that then parlay into your overall health that allows you to really thrive?

It's so beautiful. And I loved listening to, you know, your connection to to source and religion. I love that you say relationships as well. Growing up for me, and I'm hovering on this for a second because I feel like the people who I've ever worked with, when they turn their health journey into a spiritual path, regardless of what their faith is, that's where health and happiness lives. Right? And I don't necessarily have a strong connection to Jesus. I grew up in a Catholic church, Catholic school, but then on the weekends would go to a Hindu temple and hang out with Hare Krishnas. So it was very confusing growing up. Totally.

Totally.

But growing up at the ashram, yeah, it was something devotional. And when you can pull back from your own struggles and just acknowledge that there's something greater at work, yeah, it just brings that ease to mind. So thanks for sharing that.

And I think what's really unique about what you talk about is health is we've siloed it, right? And so we've said, okay, like, what does your mental health look like? What does your emotional health look like? What does your physical health look like? What does your spiritual health look like? What does your relational health look like? And we've segmented them all. And we wonder why our health continues to disintegrate.

Exactly.

It is required to be integrated. It was always meant to be one. And, uh, the actual— when you think about the word anxiety, you go to the root word anxiety. The root word of anxiety is actually separateness, is to be separated. And so there's a oneness that needs to happen in how we live mentally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, and a oneness with who created you in order to find that true health and thriving and life and life abundantly. And the And the world will throw all of this stuff at us that I think continues to confuse us and keep us in this, this divided and numbed state that we just accept as normal. And it's not until we actually change the way that life goes from black and white and low volume to full color and wholeness. Yeah.

Oh, I love that so much. Most experts sitting in that chair have gone through some sort of a journey. We'll get to yours today. But do you notice when you feel uprooted? And I love this question Because it's really important for my listeners to know that whoever is on this show, it's not that we've arrived. Yeah. Right. There's no arriving. Yeah. But what do you notice about your life? When do you become uprooted?

Man, when I start to say yes to too many things. I think chaos is the antithesis to peace. And oftentimes we wear busyness, especially as entrepreneurs, high-capacity leaders, people who are really kind of on purpose or on mission. We think that busyness is It's a badge of honor. It's something that like, yeah, I'm doing the right thing. I'm, I'm in the right spaces. But that busyness always creeps in and starts to steal that peace, steal that freedom, steal that joy of what life can actually be. And I mean, that's, that, that is literally my story. A part of my story to a T is that you, you serve so heavily, you give so much, you live in this world of chaos and nonstop go, go, go that it steals your health. And, um, and so that's something that I've continually had to basically bring to the altar and, and give away every time because it's so easy to say yes. Like, I, I can only imagine the amount of people that are saying, hey, can you do this? Hey, can you speak at this? Hey, can you help me with this? Hey, can I get on a call to do this? Hey, can you mentor me with this? It's like, if you said yes to everything, you would actually end up doing nothing.

Yeah.

And the distraction in our world is so heavy. Um, and I can get into, like, I talk about the 7 Ds of destruction of our health, and it always starts with distraction. Um, and if we can have the ruthless elimination of distraction, we can actually start to see this rekindling in this wholeness, this oneness come back that our body recognizes and actually desires.

So many people probably just feel selfish too. It's like, oh, you know, if I don't say yes, or I know I just being in a path of wanting to serve others and help, I want to help everyone. I want to say yes to everything, but it's just not in alignment.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's misalignment is the cause of so much Trauma in people's lives and so much decay over the course of health, mental, physical, spiritual, emotional. Because when you're misaligned, you don't know what to say yes to. And when you overcommit, and people people know this, like everyone listening to this is going to be like, "Oh my gosh, I know exactly when I start to see the decay of things." And my wife and I and our family, we've set up certain boundaries, certain rules that we've been able to operate within that has not only kept the peace of the household but kept. the peace of the marriage, kept the peace of our overall health, and really just allowed us to thrive. And it's amazing what happens when you start to set these boundaries in and the capacity grows. I believe capacity is the currency to carry the calling that's on your life. And it was never about optimization. It was always about capacity. If we can have capacity, you can ultimately do more, serve more, and realize life at an elevated level.

Yeah, that unlimited energy, right? Totally. Yeah. All right, let's dive right in. We're going to start with some rapid-fire questions. Sure. We'll go deeper on everything. Let's go. Whatever comes. So I know, is rapid-fire—

what do you want me to do, like 5 seconds or less?

Yeah, you got it. Got it. It's really hard, but we'll get into all of them.

We're gonna, we're gonna challenge my gift of gab. There we go.

Here we go. So finish the sentence: most people's energy problem is not a sleep problem, it's a Alignment problem. I was gonna say, what a perfect segue to that. What's a number on a lab report that looks totally normal, but is actually a red flag?

Battling between 2?

Mm-hmm.

It's A1C.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, good one. You can tell a lot about someone's health just by looking at them. What are you actually looking for?

It's an odd thing I'm gonna say, but there's a sense of peace, peace and joy.

Yeah, I was gonna say it feels like energy. Yeah, right. Cold plunges, life-changing tool or the most overhyped thing in wellness right now?

Overhyped.

What's something that your body does every single night that tells you everything about how healthy you actually are?

How fast you fall asleep.

If you could only ask someone 3 questions to know the true state of their health, what would they be?

What's the energy in which you wake up in every morning? Do you feel joy every single day? And if there's one thing you could change in your health today, what would that be?

Beautiful. I hope everyone's answering those. What's the difference between someone who ages well and someone who doesn't? And is it mostly genetic or mostly choices?

Intentionality. Intentionality. Genetics load the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger. And it's always an intention problem. I say there's the equation that I have in my previous book, The Power of Ownership, where We live in a world where there's intention, there's inevitable outcomes. It's inevitable that this podcast will end. It's inevitable that our time together will— we will separate. It's inevitable that I will be back in West Hollywood this afternoon. What differentiates the outcomes that we get, if they're ones aligned with what we desire or what we fear, is solely dependent upon whether we are consistently building our habits and intentionally developing the rhythms. Or we're consistently building the habits with unintentional rhythms. Intentionality is that fine line that swings to the outcome you fear or the outcome you desire.

I love the way that you frame things. I'm in an era of wanting to unlearn what aging is.

That's great.

What media is telling us that aging is, right? And so if I really take that into consideration, do I really have to have stress over my wellness protocols? Do I really need to fear the future? Do I have to fear looking a certain way because it's not in alignment with someone else's views of how they think that I should look, right? And I feel like in this era of health and wellness, there's a tremendous amount of suffering that's happening right now. And I've worked with so many people who are doing all the right things on paper, and yet they're not waking up with that joy. They're not waking up feeling joy every single day. And there's almost like a sense of feeling lost or searching constantly, right?

It's almost where the disciplines that we've developed Have become the goal rather than the path to the goal. The path to the goal has always been to eliminate all of whoever's not the best version of us. And when the disciplines have become the goal, once you achieve the goal, you are left with the feeling of okay, well what's next? Is this it? I thought it would feel different. There was this client that I love telling this story where he lost his goal was to lose 100 pounds, and he pushed and he made everything so legalistic, and he became obsessed over the numbers. He became obsessed over the routines, his macros, couldn't— and he couldn't miss a day. And the day came where he came down to Miami. We had about 150, 200 of our clients down there. And that morning he weighed in, 100.7 pounds he had lost. And he came up, he gave me a big hug, and there was this look of sadness in his eyes. And he just started to cry. And he literally just said, I thought this would feel different. And it was at that point that I said, I'm so glad that you're here. I'm so glad you're at this point, because now we can actually start your health journey.

Beautiful.

Because now we can actually start to shape who you are. And we can realize that the disciplines that you've been going through haven't just been things to do, checkboxes to go through, but rather, they've always been about developing who you are, and you've missed that for the last 12 months. And so it's, it's the thing that we always come back to with people. And I've been processing this a lot over probably the last year and just kind of playing with it. So I'm going to, like, process it live with you here.

Let's do it.

And it goes back to what you just said, because when we think about science, we can make science say whatever we want. And when we think about this construct of how it's put forward and the obsession of the numbers, the obsession of the data. So often why we feel it's manipulated is because we as human beings are so often just wanting to be right rather than wanting to understand. And if we just switch that and we went from stopping to trying to make ourselves right and trying to actually seek to understand, immediately we'd be like, oh, maybe— This research paper that says that cold plunges are the best thing since sliced bread, but it was only done on an audience of 14 people for a period of 3 months. And the data said exactly what we needed it to say to ultimately prove the fact that we need everybody cold plunging so we can sell more cold plunges and ultimately build a business off of it. We go, you know what? That's just validating what I want to be right, not what my body's actually saying. So I haven't actually sought to understand what my body's saying. This thing that holds infinite wisdom, that is so intelligent that if we actually connected with it and we'd find exponential healing and the actual space of longevity that we're looking for. Because when people say they're looking for longevity, they're not looking for longevity. All they're looking for is to change the state of what they're in today. And so if we actually came back and sought to understand rather than seeking to be right, everything would change.

It's so powerful because I think a lot of people, they were stuck on these goals, right? And media, society, our parents, our coworkers, our employers, our bosses, we're all rewarded for achieving.

Totally.

And, um, yeah, I've worked with so many people. I ended up getting into NLP because I would help everyone lose the weight, get to the number on the scale, fit the wedding dress, get the six-pack, and yet no one was waking up happy.

Sure.

And I think where this applies for listeners, whether it's your health, your finances, the partner that you're looking for, the house that you want, the car that you want, you know, I've worked with people like you who have everything on paper and they still don't wake up happy. And now we know the power of our thoughts to dictate our biology. So what do you believe about your health and what are you actually choosing and whose goals is it in alignment with anyways? Right. So to finally be able to stop and reassess, I think is huge. Yeah. There's something that you talk about, which is living by default, right? Versus living a life by design. What does living by default actually look like in the physical body?

So I think I go back to that word intention. Right. And so many things in our world are built off by default. You wake up at a certain time because You heard somebody who is successful wakes up at 5 AM, so I've got to wake up at the 5 AM club. You heard that your coworker lost 20 pounds doing the keto diet, so now I'm going to go on the keto diet. And then you have your neighbors whose kids play 4 sports every single season, and they're the cool kids at school, so your kids go and do that. And so you've suddenly Abided by what culture has told you what to do, and that's what you've just defaulted to. It's just that's what life's become. You haven't intentionally planned, so you go. You look back; you're like, man, we haven't taken a family vacation in three years. My gosh, my wife and I haven't gone on a date in six months. My gosh, I don't feel. I haven't felt fully rested since I can't remember when. And so this default level of one foot in front of the other, just trying to survive the day, survive the week, survive the month, survive the season, has become the way in which we live, and yet we're surprised when the body that was so intentionally created starts to fail us, starts to push back, starts to get frustrated and give us symptoms that are simply warning signs. And I've come to love the body and I can't look at it any other way than just with great reverence.

Yeah.

Because when depression hits, I'm like, thank God, what am I doing wrong? What are you trying to tell me? When the insomnia hits, thank God, what am I doing wrong? And then the cold comes. Thank God. What am I doing wrong? Like, it is just this communication tool that it's trying to speak to me. And so often we don't speak the language of our body, but yet we're trying to speak everybody else's language.

Yeah.

And when you suddenly start to understand the body, when you start to understand that language, there is a level of intentionality that comes back so you can design your life around what your body needs in the time of season, in the time of life, in the time of where you currently are. And, and there, it's an iterative process. It's ever-changing. It's ever morphing. Our body is this magical tool, this thing that adapts. It is the best adaptation tool in that's ever been created. And so if we can be intentional and change that level of intention, that's what I curate back to a life by design where you are intentionally choosing the habits that you have, the rhythms that you initiate, and the time in which their iteration happens based upon the communication that your body's having with you.

We really can take full ownership for the fact that we're all in complete control of our destiny.

100%.

And yet we've never gotten a manual for how to run this physical vessel, which you can kind of laugh at. But I would love to put the ownership back on listeners right now to just stop for a second, think about all the symptoms that you might be suffering from. Yeah. And whether in that moment the belief behind it is, Hating your hormones, hating your gray hair, hating your thighs, hating your stomach, hating your love handles, hating your insomnia, hating your depression, as you said, instead of, oh my God, my body just really needs me to tune in. What do you need? What can I do for you? Right? How can I course correct in this moment?

Exactly.

So let's hover on this for a second, because I agree with you wholeheartedly. And I also have worked with people who are such high performers, top performers, high-level performers, who So they can drift. And in this kind of path of programming or not living by default, it turns into self-punishment or perfectionism, constantly being busy, constantly doing. I actually think— are you friends with Jesse Itzler?

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, there you go. So I was a mentor in his program.

Amazing.

For a couple of years. And I love that man and everything he stands for. Some people within the program, though, there was an addiction to this hypervigilance. I must be busy. I must be planning, having a misogi, like constantly Doing, right? I think that in that doing, for a lot of those people, it was also distraction from the body. We become decapitated because we're constantly thinking about how to live the greatest life ever. Totally. How do you know if you're living on one side or the other?

Man, it's such a great question, and I'm going to answer it in 2 parts. So I like to see it as a triangle in terms of what you just talked about. And it kind of— again, I speak in frameworks a lot of times just because I think it makes it— exactly. And so I see people hovering at the bottom 2 points of this triangle. On the far left side, you've got this idolization. Your habits have become your idols. There's the level of obsession that just takes over everything. So I can't miss my morning routine. I can't miss my night routine. I have to go hit the masogi. I have to hit my macros. I have to get my zone 2 cardio in. I have to sun. I have to cold plunge for this amount of time and have to get the toxin release. I have to go and do my colonics every quarter. And this is something I have to— it becomes the idol of whatever it is. that you've said health has become, the discipline has become the idol. It's no longer about the pursuit of true wellness and experience. It is, it is the god that you worship. On the other side of this, it's the ignoring. You ignore the body completely. It's the, you know what, I went all in for this period of time and I got burnt out, and now I'm gonna go and I'm gonna just ignore this thing because I didn't find health there. And so now, you know what, I'm no longer gonna track heart rate variability. I'm no longer gonna track sleep quality. I'm no longer going to listen to what's going on because my body is wrong anyways. You know what? This food that I eat that makes me feel unwell, that bloats me, that puts me on the toilet for 5 hours a day, you know what? I'm not going to listen to it. There's something else that's wrong.

Yeah.

And we oscillate back and forth. And I call this the devil cycle because it keeps us away from seeing ourself as in God's image, is that we were created perfectly. We were created so intentionally. We were created the only thing that God has ever called very good. And with the depth and degree of which we were created, when we suddenly see ourselves as a mirror and that we were meant to serve, meant to build, meant to create, that we are stewards of this thing, that we have to manage this. This is the only thing that we were asked to tend, the garden that exists within this body. And so if we can start to see ourselves in this mirror in a new way, you no longer idolize and you no longer ignore. You now see yourself in the image of God to use this for the to build capacity to carry the calling that is on your life. And that becomes this beautiful thing that you have to then bring back every thought that you have. You have to bring back every action and behavior that you've been operating in. You have to bring over every belief and put it through this framework. Am I idolizing this? Am I ignoring this? Or am I stewarding this based on the image of what I've been created in?

It's a beautiful reflection. I think it might be challenging for some people to just stop. If I'm finally making decisions based on my core values and who I am, would they be the same decisions? Because society, media, gurus, public speakers have all told me to do something else.

Totally. Yeah. And, and I think what you just said is beautiful. This is why when I told that story of the man who lost the weight, I said, now you're— now your journey to wellness actually begins, because now we can work on your identity. And until you're willing to start with who God says you are, until you're willing to start with that identity of who you are, until you know who you are, you don't know what to do. And if you don't know what to do, you'll never figure out how do it. And the downside is that you'll never experience why. You'll continue to be lost. You'll continue to be toiling. You'll continue to be seeking, striving, and reaching for something that is invisible. And that's the hard part about this. And when I talk about— this is kind of where I bring— this is where I see scripture and science. You cannot separate them. They are one. They were unified. What science is trying to prove, scripture has been known for truths for decades. for decades. Let's go thousands of years.

Okay.

And there's such a deep level of alignment. And so I talk about the 7 Ds because I want to come back. I think it's appropriate to kind of come into this. And when we talk about the 7 Ds of destruction of our health, we think everything starts with distraction. We're distracted with good things over God things, good things over great things, good things over things that we were called to do. And we say yes to everything. And so the distractions that come into somebody's life, and we all have these examples, right? It's like, you know what, I finally cleared my calendar and I finally got this rhythm that was theoretically aligned with what I wanted, but I never did the inner work to figure out how to heal my heart. And so I still am the performer. I'm still the pleaser. I'm still the perfecter. I'm still the protector. I'm still the person that is toiling in this area. And so I say yes to all these things and it, I get distracted again. Distraction leads to disconnection, disconnection from you and God, disconnection from you and your spouse, disconnection from you and your kids, disconnection from you and your accountability team, disconnection And that disconnection leads to division. Division of who you are privately versus who you are publicly. What you put forth and what you placate as versus what you're actually feeling, what you're actually experiencing. That division leads to further discouragement. Like, man, why can't I figure this out? Why can't I get this? Everybody else seems to be doing it. Why can't I do it? And then that leads to further depletion because the answer to that must be, I just need to work harder. I just need to do more. I just need to wake up earlier. I just need to go to bed later. I just need to get in more communities. I just need to get to more mastermind events. I just need to go train a little bit harder. You know what? I, now I need to go do the marathon. Now I need to go do the Ironman to say that I'm an Ironman and I'm building a business now and raising a family and doing all these things. And then that further depletion leads to disqualification.

Mm-hmm.

Because it's like, man, maybe I wasn't supposed to do this. Maybe I wasn't supposed to be the leader. Maybe healing isn't on my path. And then that leads to the destruction of our health, where the joy, the freedom, the peace, all the things that we were supposed to have with life and life abundantly gets destroyed and is stolen from us, literally right from underneath our nose, because we've slowly drifted but never started where it actually begins, which is in our identity and who God says we are.

That's beautiful. Yeah, I love I love that you're expanding my mind in ways around how we've come to similar information through different paths. Because I say the same thing about ancient wisdom and Ayurveda and Vedanta, which has proven so many of these things for centuries, right? And here we are in the struggle or the battle, right? Do you know the story of the Bhagavad Gita?

No.

It's a story of Arjuna who goes through a cycle of war and destruction and ends up being this kind of like inner pursuit of coming back to And there's a moment where, in witnessing death and destruction and war and what humanity has essentially come to, where he just stops and pulls back, and he just tunes into self for guidance, for answers, and what the actual truth is. And it's really hard to do living in today's world.

For sure.

And a lot of us, if we don't understand why we're chasing perfection or whose version of perfection we're chasing, it takes a lot of work. So I love that you break it down. down into understanding that it's not necessarily all going to happen at the same time. Yeah, it is a journey that you might want to commit to. Yeah, but having guidance is so incredibly powerful. Yeah.

It's— I mean, we kind of go back to like even my journey and kind of how I got here in this whole component is like that identity piece was always at the root of everything that I had experienced, from being the fat kid to, uh, then becoming the anorexic kid, uh, the anorexic kid that had liver kidney failure at 16 years old, the kid that ultimately was paraded through all these experts' offices and only ever heard what was wrong with him and how he needed to be fixed and how he was a problem to be solved, which led to me wanting to come to the States and on hockey scholarship and got 2 undergraduate degrees, did my master's degree, started to understand the body in a new way, went into the functional medicine space, went into the massage therapy, went into the non-traditional ways of healing, went and did my postgraduate doctoral research down in heart rate variability and sleep, and started to just want to— again, going back, I don't want to be right. I don't want to be right about anything. I just want to seek to understand, like, how can I learn more about this thing? And this is where I think even the story you just spoke about and scripture and science all come back together. Because what we're learning about in heart rate variability— and this is, I think, a great thing that I think a lot of your audience will appreciate— is we talk about the biohacking space. It's probably one of, like, my biggest triggers.

Me too.

It's like we start— we've got this, this, this whole industry that's built itself on obsessing over data, where data was never meant to be something to obsess over, but rather to be something that just is about communication. You'd never obsess over other form of language of like English and Spanish and being able to learn one another. You'd be like, hey, how do I understand this so I can communicate better?

Yeah.

It's like, I would never obsess over, oh, your dialect's wrong, or, oh, your, your accent is so weird. It's like, oh no, I just want to be able to understand you. And that's all all that data has ever been. So when you understand heart rate variability and you look at this as your body's communication tool to tell how well your body's adapting to stress based upon the habits and behaviors and life rhythms that you have said yes to consciously or unconsciously, and how do we understand if we are living in default or we're living by design? And when we come back to see that, it's like, oh, thank you, body, for communicating to me. Thank you for telling me that I was going be walking down a path to eventual destruction, to a path that I don't want to go down. What are you trying to tell me? And what different choice can I make? And that level of self-actualization, that level of awareness, that level of understanding, that's where freedom lives. That's where the peace and the joy and the vibrance and the life and life abundantly that you're seeking actually exists, which is why you can have longevity today and you don't have to wait until you're 80, 90 years It's funny, I told, I told Dave Asprey that I don't want to hack my body.

And I think that media just jumped onto the hacking aspect of it, right? Anything you can fix, anything you can purchase to fix yourself is where the money is. I think Dave truly has more of a spiritual backing to it for the feeling that optimization gives him.

Maybe. Yeah, I'll debate that.

I think he has the business mind as well, and he will go for the clickbait for that. Sure. I think he owns that. But yeah, it's become an Right, around fixing yourself.

Totally.

And I have— I know this is landing with everyone. One of the guiding light questions that I ask my clients is, until you get to a point of really assessing if you're following or following truth within, is to just stop in the moment and ask yourself, is this nourishing me and guiding me towards the version of myself that I want to feel and love every day? Or is this depleting me and keeping me anchored in the current state that I'm in?

Totally.

And that comes with the foods that you eat, the TV that you watch, the music that you're listening to, the conversations that you have. It really is that simple, but you just have to ask the question. And it's not that every day is easy, right? I think it's okay to stop and say, all right, universe, what are we, what are we doing today? What's coming at me today that I need to focus on? Do you have any other tips for people who, you know, where this kind of level of assessment or tuning inwards might be challenging or new to them, how you can help them?

Yeah, so I think there's, I think there's a few things, right? Is we, we live in a world of if fast is good, then faster must be better. If more is good, then even more must be better. And, uh, it goes back to like exactly how I said I start my day is if you go back to that acronym SLOW, and SLOW is just that reminder, let's find stillness. What does stillness look like for you? For me, it's breathwork. It's scripture and it's prayer. That's, that's what has allowed me to get slow, still, and silent so that I can listen, be obedient to gain wisdom for what to do next. And for you, you may not be there on your journey, and that's okay. But what does slow look like for you? Does that mean that's going and sitting in a sauna with no phone and just simply sitting in pure silence? A lot of people have a hard time with silence. You, you all of a sudden, you have to have the TV on, you have to have a podcast playing, you have to have music going, you have to have— White noise. You, you have to have, you, you can't listen to the sounds of the birds anymore. You can't listen to the wind blowing through the trees. You can't, um, sit in pure silence. And so if you can't sit in silence, how can you even listen to your thoughts and be able to understand what is truth, what is a lie? I think I start my new book, Holy Health, with, um, a chapter. It's, it's, uh, called A Letter from the Enemy and basically a letter from Satan. It's like, um, and the reason that I, I start that, it's, have you ever heard the Screwtape Letters.

Yeah.

It's, again, it was kind of written from the perspective of Satan. Like, what does that look like? And the reason that I'm able to go through this voice is because I remember this voice so distinctly as a young boy. And it was, again, you have to remember, young kid from 8 to 12, just teased, like, relentlessly. Fat, overweight, but hockey kid, just athletic. So the dressing room was not a safe place. It was a place where I was always Just put down and made to feel less than. And I remember at 12 years old, again, I was at the end of my rope, and I'd come off, was getting undressed. It was continuing to kind of just come at me from all angles. And I heard this voice, and it was like, "I can make all this go away. I can make all this go away." And I was like, "Yes, anything. I'm in. Like, just sign me up." And it was like I made a deal with the devil that day, and that's where the anorexia hit. That's when all of a sudden the depression hit. The anxiety hit, the addiction hit, the struggles through just my life that I went through in general, precancerous polyps, bleeding ulcers in my stomach, the burnout, the addiction to work, to drugs, you name it, all while theoretically having the life and leading the way that everyone was like, man, that is, that's the perfect way that you are supposed to do it. And so I bring that up because unless you slow down You can't understand the voice that you're listening to. You can't really hear it. You don't know who you're partnering with. You don't know what voice you're partnering with. And oftentimes, the voice of distraction, the voice that you're unable to hear, is the voice that is unintentionally guiding you down that yellow brick road, which is what culture says. Romans 12:1-2, it says, do not conform to the patterns of this world, but rather be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And so when we can start to change the way we think, when we start to change the heart posture in which we show up with, that's where true transformation exists. That's what we want to feel. We just don't want to feel a little bit better. We want to transform the way that we live. It's like that guy, like, I, I'll go back to the story of losing 100.7 pounds. He didn't transform until he started to do the work internally. Yes, he was half the man he used to be, or a third of the man he used to be, like, in physical being.

Yeah.

But he was still the same person because it hadn't been shaped and transformed from an identity and heart And so that's where we have to start to do a lot of the work. This is why you just can't lose weight. You just can't go on a diet. You just can't get a new sleep routine, get a new wearable device, do a new test with supplements, and suddenly feel like, man, I'm— my health is thriving. Health is mental, physical, spiritual, emotional. And if you disintegrate these areas, you will continue to see the disintegration of your health long-term, and you'll be left wondering why.

Thank you for sharing your story. And let's really double down on that for a second, to have a reframe of the fact that every symptom that you're suffering from suffering from is actually a gift.

Yeah.

And I know you and I want no one to ever experience true sickness or illness or disease. Your life stops when you get to that point.

Yeah.

Right? So until that happens, for— I hope I'll say that again. I don't want to say that, actually. So in a world where we're inundated with illness and disease, celebrate the symptoms as an opportunity to tune inwards to what you actually need. And I think that's going to turn down a lot of the noise of what we're experiencing in health and wellness today. I'm sure the majority of the people listening, because you and I share this as well, is that health and wellness is so complicated. Understanding what to do, how to do, when to do, why to do, all of it can be great for us until it's not because it's not personalized, right?

Yeah.

I think that that's key. And I want to go back to, you know, you mentioned the wearables and data. I love science too, and I love data, and I love wearables too, but I also understand when they become Sure. Right? And what am I chasing then if I'm constantly looking at these numbers, right? Is it in alignment with how I feel, right? So talk to listeners too, in a culture that's obsessed with data and wearables, what's a healthy balance?

So I'll go back to your first statement about like symptoms become like that blessing. And I think for anybody listening who, you've got an autoimmune disorder that you haven't been able to shake, you've got this diagnosis that feels like it's just stripped all of your life away, hope from you. I want you to hear this as a testimony that your body was created to heal and it was designed to thrive. Like, that is the promise. That is, that is the thing that comes around this. I've seen, I've seen too much not to believe. And that's the hope that I want you to understand as well. We've got 30 trillion cells inside of each and every one of us. 500 million of those become brand new every 84 days. That means every 5 to 7 years we become a completely brand new cellular human being. Your body is literally built to go through regeneration, renewing times like that. Like, how freaking awesome is that? First off, like, that—

You're renewing right now.

Yes, exactly. That literally just fires me up. And it also tells me that what you're currently experiencing is not your destiny, is not what is supposed to be there. It's just a communication thing. It's just trying to say, hey, I need you to do some things a little bit differently. And for some of us, we need a real overhaul. We need to really get honest about where have we given away our power and we've just accepted where we're at. Versus where do we have to take ownership back and start to step into something brand new and say, hey, you know what, small tweaks and small steps will help get me to where I will iteratively over time. But there's also maybe something that I have to take a real look in the mirror and say, where have I been passing off what is actually my responsibility? Where have I been passing off or blaming where the ownership actually left— sits on me? And when I take the mask off, it's actually me looking back At at who's there, and so I say that all to lead into where wearables and a lot of the data and the science has become this obsession tool rather than this communication and guiding tool. When I say you were created to heal, created to thrive, it's a scientific fact. Thirty trillion cells, five hundred million every eighty four days, five to seven years, brand new. Well, then you have to ask: Well, what do cells need in order to survive? What do cells need in order to thrive? What do cells need in an environment in order to operate well? Well, they need oxygen. They need the ability to detoxify, and they need nutrients. Those are the 3 core components that you, that you cannot argue, scientifically proven, scientific fact, fundamental about how we were built and designed. And so now let's use science and let's use data effectively. So we should probably understand, well, what's the language of oxygen in our body? How well are we using it? VO2 max. Let's understand that number. Let's not obsess about it. Let's not obsess over it and say, hey, I can't go for dinner with the family tonight because I need to go for my 2-hour zone 2 run. It's just not true.

It's just guidance.

It's just guidance. It's like, hey, oh, you know what? The choices that I've made compounded over the course of the last year have led to a drop in VO2 max, not the 2-hour dinner that you gave up to go and have with your family who's in town. And so, how do we actually start to use that as an understanding? Oh, you know what? I need to make sure VO2 max is increasing. And so, let me not make decisions that decrease VO2 max. We know marijuana use decreases VO2 max. We knew alcohol use decreases VO2 max. We know lack of sleep decreases VO2 max. We know these things acutely Have an impact. So let's not justify the use of these things where actually it's declining our ability to recover at the cellular level. So let's not start to take culture's viewpoint, but rather come back to truth and science and say, hey, this is what I need to do along with what I know is true for me. Then you go to detoxification. How do we detoxify? Well, we know that sleep quality is the greatest detoxifier of the body. The glymphatic system only turns on during those middle 2 sleep stages.

So.

How do I design my life intentionally to make sure that I optimize for the deepest states of sleep, not obsessing over my sleep percentages in REM and slow wave sleep, but rather use it as information to go, oh, you know what? It's probably not awesome that I'm having 2 glasses of wine before I go to bed in order to wind down. You know what? It's probably not awesome that I'm falling asleep with the TV on every single night. You know what? It's probably not awesome that I'm watching the game, falling asleep on the couch, and then slowly walking into bed. It's probably not awesome that I use my bedroom as an office as well as a kitchen, where in actuality my bedroom should be where I have sex and where I sleep, and that's it. And so what does that look like to start to change your understanding of what you're doing daily, to start to align with how your body was created? And then lastly, when I, I love, I love blood testing, but more specifically, I love cellular testing, understanding like, what are we actually missing inside the cell? It's great to look proactively at like your blood serum panels, CBC, CMP, um, lipid profiles. But another thing to look at inside the cell, like what's your body What's it missing? What are you taking supplement-wise or food-wise that maybe it's not absorbing or breaking down that we need to change a little bit? And so when your body is starving for nutrients, it cannot have a healing environment. And so how do we get back to that and not obsess about getting to zero deficiencies? Because that'll just never happen because of the world we live in.

Yeah.

But how do we start to use that as knowledge, as information, and go, oh, you know what, I have to change what I'm eating for breakfast, and I have to start maybe when I go to a restaurant ordering something a little bit different because that's what my body's asking for. And when all of a sudden we start to look at those 3 parameters— VO2 max, sleep quality, and cellular deficiencies— use it as knowledge, use it as information, it suddenly starts to give the nervous system the understanding that, oh, my body is being understood by the person who's inhabiting it.

Yeah.

And I start to go from a space of stress and like protection to a space of relaxation and trust. And healing. And suddenly you start to work with your body. And what happens when the nervous system starts to go into recovery mode? It feels too fun. HRV increases. And now you've got a number quantifiably you do not have to obsess over, but rather as a new understanding metric to say, hey, Mona, you know what? You're doing the right thing. Just keep going. Just keep learning. Just keep understanding. And when your HRV plummets for a week, it's like, interesting, what happened? Not, oh my God, I'm dying, something's going on. And I'm no longer good enough, and this is a reflection on me as a person. But rather, no, it's just your body's feedback. Now let's just learn what it's saying.

Your passion is palpable, and I hope everyone took that in as a personal message to you in this moment. I'm with you. You know, we've gone— the data that we get from blood labs and stuff like that can be so beneficial, and I find that for most people to take that first step to instigate and take action on first changes, they have a reason.

Yeah.

It's right there, right? But I think they also know, like, oh, my body is stressed because of these foods, this environment, this mold that I'm exposed to, or whatever. If you take away the stressors, guess what? Those labs will change, right? But going deeper to the cellular level, this is where I hope the future of healthcare resides, because we, if we just believe wholeheartedly, without a doubt, that your body can heal itself, that you are the healer, and that cellularly, if you are optimized that way— let's not even use that word— cellularly, if your body has what it needs, the right type of fuel, then it will stay happier longer and work for you.

The example I love to give, and again, I speak in analogies, I speak in frameworks, because I think it becomes tangible. It's like, my wife hates it. She's like, just speak normally, she says. It's so funny. But, um, I like to give this example. If, if, Mona, I brought you a beautiful box of fresh Georgia peaches— big, juicy, beautiful, ripe, like ready to go— you're like, Justin, thank you, this is so amazing, they look beautiful. And I was like, oh, Mona, sorry, I forgot, I need a couple things. And I took the box back and I put 4 rotten ones on top.

Mm-hmm.

How long would it take for the rest of that box to decay.

Exactly.

24, 48 hours, and everything is now having a little bit of rot, a little bit of mold, a little bit of decay. Well, that's just like our bodies. And even though the bodies are continually becoming brand new cellularly at the cellular level, that, that's how it was created and designed. If they're— if the new cells are going into a toxic environment, a decaying environment, an environment that doesn't have the oxygen it needs, an environment that doesn't have the nutrients it needs, an ox— or a, um, an environment that does not have the ability to detoxify the way it requires, The new cells are just going to slowly decay. And that's what we have to understand is our responsibility to shape the cellular environment and give it what it needs through our habits, through our behaviors, and through our life rhythms.

Do you like genetic testing?

I love it. I love it. I think it gives a really good insight as to not what you're destined to get, but rather what you have to be proactive with in terms of how your lifestyle needs to be shaped. Because if you have— and again, we can— we don't need to go deep into each one. We could go into like, If you have the MTHFR gene mutation, if you have the COMT, if you have the MRR, like we can go down that road. If you're predisposed to heart disease or predisposed to high blood pressure or predisposed to diabetes, we need to ultimately live in a proactive lifestyle that is going to repel a lot of the likelihood that we're going to go down here. And so again, it's just information. It's just information. It's just helping us understand this thing we live in better so we can make more intentional It's a part of science that I feel really excited about.

But I think it's also an opportunity. You have to recognize that there's 2 parts of it. Like, you know, learning perhaps that you're somebody who's a poor detoxifier. You know that you need to focus on detoxing. I know that I have beta thalassemia, so I'm a poor oxygenator. So I'll focus on oxygenated practices within my life. Then it takes the story away. It's not about, oh, I'm somebody who's constantly tired and fatigued. Why am I that way?

Totally.

am I like this? Instead, it's like, oh, this is my vessel. I need to do these things to optimize me and feel better in my body.

I love what you just said. And audience, I hope you do not miss what she, she just spoke about, because all of a sudden you don't oxygenate as well. Well, suddenly your breathwork becomes really important for you. Suddenly your zone 2 becomes a high degree of priority. Suddenly your focus and understanding of that VO2 max number becomes pretty critical. Suddenly your sauna sessions become pretty important. Suddenly the things that help oxygenate— your focus on maybe a supplement with SOD2 or some other form of nitric oxide becomes really important to help optimize. I hate that word. Let me go back.

I know, we keep going to it.

It's, it's again, it's even— it's the conditioning.

It's the conditioning.

But it is, um, you're able to come and build a life that's intentionalized. Yeah. Around what it is that you're required to understand. And that's where this knowledge, wisdom, and information becomes so critical. I still remember going through, it was my second postgraduate research class, and we were dissecting human brains. And it was like, our professor said, have you ever, have you ever looked? And I was like, well, no. And they said, if you don't look, how do you know? know? If you don't know, if you, if you don't understand the data, how do you know? Like, if you don't look, if you don't test, if you don't, um, have information about this unique thing you live in, how do you know?

How do you know? Yeah. And that is a different framework altogether because then it's not about I need to do this, it's I'm discovering what actually makes me feel good and I'm going to own that. Because I'm sure there's somebody who's listening who loves And that's okay if it genuinely makes you feel really, really great and turns your brain on. Fantastic. Until it depletes you.

And I, and I, and I will just say, even to that point, is this is where you come back to like, who are you? Because now has your identity been that I'm the person that gets into the cold plunge every morning and that's what makes me who I am? And so I've created a story or a narrative around this that, oh no, I'm not tired because of the cold plunging. I'm tired because I've got I've got 5 kids under 8, and I'm raising a family and own a business. Or is it actually that some of these habits that you've attached your identity to actually need to be shed in order for you to grow and get to the next level of what you're actually asking for?

It's so beautiful. We talked about our love of travel. Yeah. I remember having the thought— we were in Europe for a couple of months, and I remember getting back to Los Angeles, and I was like, ah, I'm back to all my places and IVs. teas and sauna and therapies and like just the access to everything that exists here, right? And that everyone does and talks about. But then the second I had that thought, I literally stopped myself in my tracks and thought, oh my God, when I was there, I didn't need it. I didn't need any of those things because I was so present to life and nourishment, right?

Yeah.

And I have a program called Build Your Ashram. I think it's within all of our abilities to cultivate and create this life and embodiment that you're speaking to. But it's the hardest thing in the world because we feel that it takes so much discipline. And I have a feeling, you know, the gift from your past and, you know, working with athletes and in that athletic world, it was about performance and achieving and optimization as well.

Yeah.

But I think you understood when it took a turn for the worse. So for somebody who feels like, gosh, it just feels like a lot that I need to do, what's a different reframe then, around discipline for them? I know it's part of your Ds.

Yeah.

And maybe, you know what, maybe let's, let's put this through the lens of maybe just as a woman who feels like I'm in a season of doing so many things and discipline's just like, oh my God, it's one more thing. Help us understand with just a reframe of how we kind of internalize that word.

I think a lot of times discipline has been attached to worth. If I'm a disciplined person, I'm worthy. If I'm a disciplined person. I'm good enough. What you have to realize is that you're already worthy. You're already good enough. You're perfect just the way you are. But this is all about shaping and formation. And if we're willing to be shaped and formed into the version we were actually called to be, then all of a sudden, we will see massive change. It goes back to what I said before. When the disciplines become the goal, we've missed out on the opportunity to be shaped.

Hmm.

Because disciplines have only ever been the path to the goal, which is to become the version that God created us to be. I have this, like, I remember reading this story, and it was this interview of Michelangelo, and he was talking about how he created David, the Statue of David, this amazing marble statue that was like an absolute marvel of the time. And the interviewer said, how were you able to create David? And he goes, It was very simple. I just had to chisel away everything that wasn't David. And that's all disciplines are for us, is they're literally chiseling things that aren't us. The habits that you do that really aren't who Justin was created to be, or who Mona was not created to be. And as you start to chisel away and have those things die off and have those things change, or add these new things to our life, it's helping me become It's helping shape me into somebody new. I'll give you the example is, and again, kind of get vulnerable here, is like I've always had such a soft heart, but because of things from my past, there were things— and again, my self-worth was totally tied up in what I accomplished, what I did, what title I held, how successful I was. My greatest fear at its core was that I would not be impressive. My belief system was if I wasn't impressive, I would be nothing. And if I was nothing, my soul would die. And that was— if every room I went into, I had to posture myself, I had to embellish the truth, I had to make things seem bigger than they actually were, because if Justin was not impressive, my gosh, he would be nothing and his soul would die. And it was only by getting still And starting to have the habits of journaling, have the habits of breathwork, have the habits of silencing the noise, that I was actually able to get back to the truth. And I'll never forget, it was just like the kindness of God is sitting in the sauna probably six years ago. Again, remember, I'd been struggling with this. This has been my identity for years as a young hockey player growing up, and then stepping, doing all my education and going through all the things that like I wasn't good enough. All these things. This was all beliefs that have been tied up. for years, sitting in the sauna. And as I was sitting there just in silence, I simply heard, if you can be nothing, I will make it something. And if I make it something, that will be impressive. And so when I come back to it— it makes me emotional just thinking about it— Yeah, me too. When I come back to it, is the habit and behavior of slowing down, the discipline of slowing down, of being able to go and do the breathwork and get silent and still and in helped literally shed and shape and chisel away parts that just— that were not Justin, that was a false impression of Justin that ultimately was leading to the destruction of his health. I mean, gosh, you come back at 32 years old, precancerous polyps in my colon the size of my thumb and bleeding cancerous ulcer in my stomach told me that I wasn't going to see 35, was all because of my habits and behaviors of striving, trying to overcome, trying to push for years the toll that my body had been telling me for a long time. Bloating every time I ate, headaches that wouldn't go away, body pains at 27, 28 years old. Even though I looked the part, I felt like death, and I ignored it because of who I thought I had to be. And until I came back to that revelation, that fresh revelation— and this is why I said again, for anybody listening who's going through something, like, I am the testimony Where liver kidney failure at 16 years old, thriving bill of health. Told I wouldn't see 35, thriving bill of health. Like, your body was created to heal, created to thrive, but we have to live in alignment with how we were created. And that starts with you actually knowing who you are. I know we started on discipline and I got away from it.

No, I'm with you. I'm trying to—

But when we, but when we think about that word discipline, discipline is not how worthy you are, but discipline is rather the shaping and forming tool that we get to go and actually experience who we're Your body was speaking to you the entire time.

And throughout your discipline, discipline was fine, but it wasn't what your body actually needed, right? And I think for so many listeners, that story is so powerful because how many of us have been doing all the right things on paper, even with discipline, but we still weren't feeling our best or weren't feeling energized?

Can I even give a mindset shift to that?

Yeah.

Is like, this just downloaded to me at this moment, was discipline is not always what it thinks. Discipline is not always Discipline is quite often in our culture today subtracting something.

Exactly. And the way that I interpret that, how I try to explain it, is your healthy living protocol— healthy living becomes you if it's the right choices for you.

Yeah, very good.

It doesn't feel like discipline anymore because your healthy choices are so in tune with turning everything about you on that it doesn't even feel like it has to be based around discipline.

Yeah.

Right?

It goes back to the construct that I had at the beginning of the podcast, the beginning, where it's when you know who you are, you know what to do.

Yeah.

Once you know what to do, people will come into your life and help you figure out how to do it. And it's only after you do that for years and years and years that you ultimately end up figuring out why. Because you've healed through things, you've overcome things, you've experienced new vibrance and thriving life that ultimately has become somebody else's Like hope. And that's why you actually had to go through it at the beginning, but you had to heal first. You had to get clear on who you were actually called to be. That ultimately shaped the what, the habits that ultimately developed the rhythms, the how that ultimately got you to where the legacy work was, which is in the why.

I really appreciate all of your heart references. And the second we sat down here, I just randomly opened up to a page in your book. And it's a section called A Pleasing Heart.

Yeah.

The pleasing heart believes this: if everyone else is okay, then I will be okay. This heart learned early that harmony equals safety. And before we started recording, I had a tear in my eye because, like you, my story was, if I'm not perfect, I'm not lovable, and someone's going to out me and I'm going to die.

Yeah.

Right? And here I am, you know, somebody who grew up with heart palpitations and then eventual heart surgery. And a lot of us are so disconnected from the truth of our heart, or being able to sit and be with the heart, or the power of the emotion around the heart. And, you know, you've done studying with, you know, HRV and understanding HeartMath and the resilience of the heart and energy and frequency and how we all hold this capacity around our heart. And I think that your journey The way that I hear about you speak to your practices is ultimately an act of self-love.

Yeah.

Right? Which goes back to your heart. Why do you include a portion like that in your book?

Because it comes back to the truth is above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life. And when we think about our heart posture, however our heart is postured, if we don't feel free in our life, if we feel imprisoned, and And I have 5 kind of heart archetypes that we see, and the pleasing heart is one of those. The performance heart is the other. The perfecter heart is the other. The pleaser heart is the other. And the protector heart is the other. And so when we think about this, right, and we sit in this space, until we heal the heart, the body will never be at true peace. It will never be at true rest, which is why, again, I love heart rate variability, because it is that language that your body does not judge. It does not dissociate between mental, physical, spiritual, emotional stressors. And what you're feeling at the heart's core is what the body will slowly start to express.

Mm-hmm.

And it's a delayed response to what is actually real and true. And we can hide it, we can push it down, we can We can dress it up, we can disguise it, but the truth will always win in the end. And that's where a lot of, like, my heart breaks for people who sit and suddenly find themselves at 50, at 60, at 70 years old with this major health episode that they're like, this came out of nowhere. And you look back and you're like, how can you say that? It's like, how are you that disconnected from your body? How are you that disconnected from your life? disconnected from the only thing you were called to steward, the only thing you were called to look after. I think sometimes we get so disillusioned by what it is that we have in this world. We might have the financial success, we might have the freedom to travel and do whatever we want, we might have the familial closeness, that all the things that we've desired, that we've sought after. But as soon as your health goes, you would trade a lot of things just to get that back. And again, as I said, we push it off for so long until we realize that, man, it was never about optimization. And I think optimization has always been the thing that's maybe scared people away. I don't want to optimize. That sounds like a level of perfection and a level of obsession that I just am not signing up for. Or it's a life that, you know what, it feels very rigid to me. It feels very closed-minded. It feels very harsh. And that's where we've got to really come back to, no, it was never about optimization. It was about capacity. Because you'll sign up for something where you're like, hey, if you die— and this is again where I start to argue with a lot of my colleagues, where it's like, I'm not going to sit here and tell you you're going to live to 120. I'm not going to sit here and tell you any of us will ever live to 120. But what I will say is, You will live well until you're called home, until your time here on Earth is done. Is that till 70, 75, 85, 95, 105, 205? I don't know. But it's only when we live in alignment with what we're called to, because all the data will show that even though in the last four years we've seen lifespan increase, we've seen healthspan decrease with all of these biohacks, with all of the tech, with all of the supplements, with all of this industry. becoming a $500 billion industry in America and only growing. It's like, how much more things do you need to buy until you realize that's not actually what health looks like?

And it's easy to go online and live in the doom and gloom of it all.

100%.

However, I think this is also one of the most magical times in wellness for us to actually And I'll fully admit, you know, I'm constantly being tempted by wellness optimization and the Western world of fixing. And it's literally like my hand to my head, like, ah, you're doing it again. Ah, you're doing it again. Come back, come back, come back. Because then you're always chasing. And if I'm constantly chasing being somewhere else and a different version of myself, then I'm not even living my life in the now.

Yeah.

And that's where the gift is. And, you know, I'm curious about, you know, we're always looking for tools and how to make this a little bit easier. reality. I wonder, in your book, I'm sure you, you give so many great examples, but in that form of transformation, until we can kind of get to a level of deciphering, you, with, for whatever gifts that you had, you got really, really sick and you know you will never go back to that again unless God has a plan for you to do, to go through another lesson.

Sure.

Let's not manifest that. Um, but for you to really just stop and assess, I have a choice in this moment to look at life through 2 coins. One is the doom and gloom, the fear, identifying with your suffering and the way that you are, versus I have a choice right this second to really fall in love with life and to look up and to be present and to make better choices and to nourish myself right now. It takes practice.

100%. I always say, don't listen to yourself, speak to yourself. And when we think about being able to speak to to ourselves. Do we speak negativity? Do we speak death? Or do we speak positivity? Do we speak life? Do we speak truth? And I think that's why I'm so passionate about this space, is because there is so much death being spoken that is disguised as life. And we've got, we've got data on about 2 million people. And when we kind of asked, like, what is the thing that you're to do from a health standpoint. It's weight loss, it's autoimmune issues, it's sleep, it's anxiety, it's, uh, longevity, it's whatever it might be. But the crazy part was it was almost literally equal across every single thing that people were asking for. So like, if you looked at a pie chart, it might have been 10 things that were capable of what people were looking at. It was like 10% each.

Hmm.

But then we were like, what's holding you back? There were 3 things that stood out. Number one is people are confused and have no idea what to do. Number two, there's too much conflicting information. And number three, they tried and they've invested thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars, but they've been left in the same, if not worse, spots than where they were before. And so there's a lack of hope. There's a lack of hope that there's something better on the other side. And that's where I've wanted to be, just this vessel of truth and this vessel of light and ultimately the hope dealer that allows people to know No, no, no, no, no. That like what you've experienced thus far is what the culture and what the world has told you. But what I want you to do—I don't want to be your expert. I don't want to be your guru. I want you to be your expert. I want to help you understand. I want to educate, equip, and empower you to understand this body at such a level that you have the same level of passion, the same level of reverence, the same level of understanding for your body that I do. That I've seen because I've seen too much, and I'm telling you wherever you are is not where you're stopping. And if it's not good, God. not done yet. And so as you continue to keep going, he's just trying to shape you. He's just trying to guide you. He's just trying to lead you. He's just trying to chisel away things that are not who you are. And as you abide by that, as you align by that, your body is going to do something so magical, so miraculous, that it will even leave you shocked and amazed. And ultimately, you will use that for whatever your next step in life is.

We're just the guides.

That's it. That's it.

What's your message for somebody listening who feels like, you know, I'm aware of all these things. I understand what you're saying. I know the things that would make me feel great every day, but I just can't seem to make it stick.

Yeah, I would, I would come back to, again, the narrative as to why. Um, I think a lot of people, but you just gotta do it. You just gotta pull the excuses away. And it's deeper than that. It's like, what's the belief set that's standing there? And oftentimes when we start to really get deep enough, it comes back to the sense of like, I'm not worthy to heal. I'm not good enough to heal. Um, I, I've, I've got insecurities. around how I'm operating. And so I would, I would have you again pause and come back to what is the real issue about not being able to go to bed at 10 PM every night, if that's something. Like, let's just choose one thing. If it's like, uh, you know what, I, I can't— I want to, I want to cook dinner at home every single night, but 4 days a week I'm ordering out and We're getting food brought to the house. It's it's not just okay. Let's build the meal plan and let's get the meal delivery service and let's get the groceries sent. It's let's dive deeper to what the actual problem is because the actual problem might be that you say yes to too many things. You overcommit to too many things. Your life is so chaotic that you actually notice that you don't have time to cook anymore, and so thus the habit you're trying to put into a disordered. rhythm doesn't allow the good habit to actually be there, which is why it can't stop with habits. It has to go through rhythms. And in the book, I start with who you are, what you do, the habits, the how, which is the rhythms, and then ultimately understanding why. And there's so many good habit books out there— Atomic Habits, Tiny Habits, um, Habits That Stick. But if we stop at habits, we haven't really solved the problem. Everybody knows what to do.

Exactly.

You should go to bed at a Normal time. You should wake up at a consistent time. You should exercise. You should, uh, eat well. You should hydrate properly. You should have some quiet time. Then why is it so difficult? Because we've developed these rhythms in life that are so misaligned, so disordered, that it doesn't allow space to hold the good habits. And rather it creates misaligned, disordered habits. And that's, and that's creates a disordered body. And, and, and it's It's, I, I, you see it so clearly in, in what culture has created. And it's not until we actually are able to realign that, that everything changes. When I talk about order, I'll talk about this. I think it's just so cool the way we see it again is the world again tells us to so focus and obsess on the physical, right? What habits should I have? What things should I do? And we obsess over these. Well, when we obsess over these, and it kind of speaking to that person that we were just talking to It all of a sudden starts to, uh, disorder or cloud the mind. It's like, man, I'm just not a consistent person, man. I, I just, I can't figure this out. Which thus creates a, uh, a heart that becomes imprisoned. It's an anxious heart. It's the person that feels like they're not good enough. It's the overwhelm. It's the anxiety that continues to come in and thus separates you spiritually from what you're actually called to do. But until you align spiritually, and going back to, again, I don't want to beat a dead horse, but who you are, who God's called you to be, like, who am I? It ultimately frees the heart. It's like, oh, I'm right where I need to be. This is just my journey. This is my process, which ultimately renews the mind. I am good enough. I am worthy. I am in this right place.

Hmm.

Allows me to slow down so that now you can listen to what your next physical step is. What is the next habit I have to implement? What's the new rhythm that I have to shape? What's that old thought process that I have to disregard that is not true, but it was a lie that's distorted the view of who I am, that ultimately has created this disordered life that ultimately has led to the disorder that I'm struggling with?

I love that reframe on rhythm. I always say that habits come and go, rituals become you.

That's great.

And if it feels challenging, you just haven't found the right rituals or rhythm.

That's right.

And which means that's really an exciting time because now you can uncover what that is. And you actually just nailed on 2 questions from Vedanta, which is, who am I? And what do I want?

Yeah.

I recently had to break up with that though. And because when I ask those questions, I'm answering 3 Yeah. What my mind and my intellect thinks that I want, which is preconditioned to what society is saying. Um, so I pull back and I say, what does my spirit want? Who is my spirit? And it feels like a process of remembering and uncovering. I think that we all came into this world as this like incredibly perfect, unique form of energy. And we're all ultimately just on this process of remembering who that was.

I think what's so beautiful about what you just did is you literally just made relationship with God. Like, you just separated and just so beautifully took what we talked about with religion as like this legalistic, rule-based, has to be done this way in order to be acceptable to this. No, this is a relationship. You made it personal. It's like, who does God want me to be? What is that spirit? Who does he say I am? It's not who am— who do I think I am? None of us are strong enough to figure that out. None of us are smart enough to figure that out. And quite frankly, none of us can take that weight because that's often what breaks us is we try to think, oh, I've got this all figured out. I can handle this. I'm gonna build the business. I'm gonna raise the family. I'm gonna heal myself. I'm gonna do all these things.

Yeah.

But then you're like, it's exhausting and it's heavy and it ultimately leads to something else 'cause that's a weight you picked up that you were never meant to carry. And until you come back to what you just did and make it personal and go, oh no, who does God say I am and what does God want for me? It's like, now I just get to be obedient. Now I get to walk in that. Now the freedom comes because now I realize that I'm just learning. I'm just being able to experience life and take it in. And I'm only ever trying to become more like him. And if that's And when that's the case, my gosh, you cannot fail. And what a freedom exists when you can't fail.

And when you feel free, you'll never try to fix yourself.

Amen. Because I— this is so good. Because when all of a sudden, and I have said this, our clients are the ones that said this to me the first time that just like hit it, was suddenly when they were getting everything that they wanted, felt great, when they were liking what they saw, when they were able to just feel aligned and free and peaceful, and everything that everyone else was selling to them no longer spoke to them, they became a non-consumer.

Mm-hmm.

And that's what a lot of us are looking for, is I want to help you become a non-consumer to everything else that's being marketed to you, because there's so much marketing science that is taught to speak to the pain point. But when the pain point goes away because the freedom Freedom exists. You're no longer buying or falling for everything that's there. You can spot it a mile away. And that's like, that's when you become empowered and equipped to be like, hey, I have aligned with what actually is here, and I am the healer, and I am the one that's able to actually experience this because I am so heavily aligned with who God says I am.

You're speaking my language on, on so many levels. And I think that what's so powerful about this is that you're really addressing the fact that there's a lot of suffering that's happening out there. And you're aware of, you know, a lot of people are holding that in through silence, and who are still on this path of searching, but doing it from a state of exhaustion. And tell us how then, through this book, could this really be— like, I see this as like a form of worship for self.

Yeah. Yep.

Tell us about Holy Health, and I guess the intention. I know it's about transformation, but how would this support readers?

So health, uh, or Holy Health helps you actually understand, like, how to use your health as worship. I love that you said that. Um, and how do you heal God's way? How do you become aligned with how you were created? How do you become aligned with how you were designed? And there's so much freedom there. It's not a legalistic way of living. It's helping you understand your body in a better way. And when you start to see the parallels of scripture and what science says, and you see that they're actually marrying together. What you've— the studies that you've seen for years, and you're like, oh, now I have to figure this out, actually comes back to a rhythm that was created. We know that, like, in the Bible it says, uh, evening came, morning came, that was our first day. Well, we live our days as morning and night. We think when the sun comes up and the sun falls that that's a day, and we push, push, push, push all day long. We give away our evenings, and all of a sudden we fall into bed exhausted. We wonder why we wake up exhausted. Well, until we realized that on the 4th day, God created the sun, the moon, the stars, and the sacred rhythms, and evening came and morning came. That was the first day we were called to have a still and sacred evening to replenish, repair, restore, so we could go and pour out and serve during the day. And how do we now create a rhythm at night that is about restoring, replenishing, reclaiming who we are, who we are in relationship to others? And finding peace so that we can actually have the most important time at night, which is when the circadian rhythm drops. And we know first day morning, or on the first day, God created light. The circadian rhythm is what garners whether we heal or whether we not, when, whether the body's in fight or flight or whether the body's in a parasympathetic recovery state. And so you're able to see some of these rhythms that align science and scripture so heavily together and are able to now start to see them. How do they align in my life?

Mm-hmm.

Like, how do they actually start to get brought into my life? How do we actually start to build them purposefully and intentionally so that I can take ownership and feel like I'm not striving for something new? And rather that, hey, by just altering and adjusting and coming back to some of the infinite wisdom that lives in my body, my body knows the truth. It's been pulling me here for a long time, but the world's been pushing me in a different direction. And for the first time time I feel pulled and magnetized to something that actually allows me to heal because I'm in alignment, rather than being pushed to something or forced to something that is telling me it's right, but doesn't feel aligned.

I think that every single person listening can recognize whispers that they have.

Totally.

Cutting out the coffee, Going to bed earlier, calling a loved one, spending more time in stillness. Those are all whispers that are guiding you, but are you going to take action and trust that that's actually your body communicating with you? Very good. Right? That's a powerful takeaway. Would you say for listeners then who really want to shift from this reactive space from wellness to rooted or red Yeah. What are 2 or 3 things that they could start doing right now before they get your book?

Yeah. So, I mean, the first one is you come back and again, I'll kind of come back into this component of kind of what I was speaking about, but like, what does it look like to actually rest at night? What does it look like to actually allow yourself to have a rhythm at night? I talk about a 3-2-1 rule. 3 hours before bed, no food. 2 hours before bed, no work. 1 hour before bed, no blue light. Because again, it allows for this appropriated rhythm for how the world was when it was created and we were put into it to make sure that that was actually able to thrive. So what does it look like to have a sacred time at night so that we can get into the quality sleep that we need, which is where we know we detoxify the most, so we can wake up with energy, vibrant, fully present in the morning?

Okay.

The second thing that I think a lot of us overlook, um, comes back to environment. And again, I love this story If I follow Genesis and kind of like the creation of the world, and we were created on the 6th day, we were put into an environment that was beautiful, that was complete. The animals, the food, the air, the water, the sun, the moon, the stars, everything was there. It was an environment that was perfect. And so many of us are unintentional with the environments that we operate in. You've got this beautiful environment up here. It's quiet. It's calm. We're in this beautiful podcast studio that has nothing but nature out front, massive glass windows. That we're able to see the sun all day long. Your house reflects that same thing. You walk into your house and there's intentional smells being put everywhere. You've got water filters, everything you've got. You've built an intentional environment that allows you to thrive. But so many of us are living in environments that create chaos, that environments that you go back to your bed. If you're eating in your bed, you're doing work in your bed, you're watching TV in your bed. bed. How do you ever expect your body to have a restful sleep in this bedroom that doesn't speak of that? Your car is an absolute disaster. There's, there's, there's bags and bags and bags and trash and just stacked up everywhere. How do you expect to feel peace and calm and serenity and actually hear when you're driving in silence when you're in this environment like that? So secondly is like, what does the environment look like? That you're in, looking at the light, looking at the people, looking at the sounds, looking at the smells, and then ultimately looking at how long you're in one space. And so that would be kind of like number 2, I think. And then the 3rd comes back to this form of rest. When you realize rest is a tool and rest is a weapon when used appropriately to give you greater capacity, capacity, it starts to change everything of how we operate. Um, the last thing that I'll kind of say about that is when rest feels like a sin, whatever has taken its place has become the idol.

Wow.

And that, that I think comes back to like something really important is we've been called to take a Sabbath day, one full rest day, one day off every single week. And how many of us abide by that? There was a study that came out, one of the biggest studies that was ever done on Sabbath day, and what it showed— it was about 214,000 people that went through this study— and what they showed was that those that, uh, the— of that population that abided by a Sabbath day every single week, they, over the course of a, uh, I can't remember the exact time frame, I believe it was an 80-year study that was, that was done, they had an average of 7 years of longer life, but the crazy part was 6.9 years longer. So literally 0.1 of healthspan on top of that.

Wow.

And so, you start to see how when you actually abide by just a simple Sabbath day, taking one day off and allowing yourself that rhythm, what happens on that day? You probably connect more with your family. You're probably able to be active. You're probably not running around, racing around. You probably get more creative. You probably have a deeper sense of peace. You probably have a deeper sense of connection. You probably are eating better on those days because now you've got the space to actually cook or do the things. You probably have some hobbies that you're enjoying. You're probably around people that are uplifting. So like, this becomes that important rhythm to start to tie in. And so this again comes back, those 3 things. Number one, what does resting at night and preparing for the most important thing you can do at night, which is sleep? Secondarily, is your environment, like checking that environment. What does that look like? And then third is that Sabbath day and how do we actually start to implement that. 3 things cost you nothing, just a little bit of awareness. And it starts to align scripture and science, physiology, theology so closely so that we can actually start to thrive and heal God's way.

Beautiful. And thank you for that beautiful reflection. Also, I really do consider all of my spaces as my sanctuary because that sets the stage for how I want to feel and how And I was in the wow factor around the rest because why is it that we just like, we consider resting as being, you know, wasted time, wasted time, not showing up. And yet we know it's our superpower. And it really begs the question too, are we really that, you know, overstimulated or overcomplicated by wellness, or are we just physically exhausted?

I think it's because we don't know what rest is. When we think about rest, Feel restored. People think that rest is scrolling Instagram. Um, I'm laying in my bed scrolling Instagram. That's not rest. Uh, we think that rest is, um, writing out, uh, the next day's script or doing little research just in a quiet room listening to quiet music. I'm resting. No, you're not. You're actively doing something. Uh, you think resting is a, uh, Netflix binge. That's not resting.

No, it's disconnection.

Exactly. And, and, and when you get back to like real rest. Rest is a weapon when used properly, and it's not wasted time. It's, it's, it is, it is literally the key to everything that we need. And I'll say that quote again because it's something that I think when I say it, a lot of people go, oh my gosh. But like, when rest feels like a sin, whatever takes its place has become the idol. And that could be your workout, that could be, uh, taking your kids to sports, that could be your work, that could be your emails, that could be whatever Whatever it is that takes the place of that rest, because it's just truly saying you're not truly committed to what your body's asking, and thus you haven't created an ecosystem in your home, a foundational philosophy of how your home operates. And that's, I think, the other thing that comes along with this is this is not just for you; this is generational. And whatever curse you don't break, you simply pass down to your children. And I don't want. I don't want my kids to have to race and run and strive and try to perform their way to love. I want them to realize that, hey, we have very sacred rhythms in this house, and this is how we operate, and this is how we do things. We do things differently than the majority of families. And all of a sudden, I feel great. And I've grown up this way, and I have this newfound understanding of of what the truth is and ultimately not having to walk the same battles that I did from the identity issues to the health issues to the anxiety and obsessive-compulsive issues. I won't even say disorder because I just hate that word, but even issues that I struggled with because of unhealed things throughout other family lineage. And we are called to break those chains. We are called to create a life that's different for our kids. That's legacy work. This thing is not just about you. It's bigger than you. It has everything to do about those that are growing up in your household and those that you don't even know yet. And if we can operate in a way that allows for that to happen, my gosh, you're, you're just creating a better life for everyone.

What a world, right? And to truly believe that your body is sacred.

Yeah.

I say that to my kids all the time. You're going to be a great dad also. Just want to put that out there.

Thank you.

You've inspired so many points. Thank you for bringing it all together. And no matter where you land on the lens of theology or spirit or religion, the essence of what you're talking about is the knowing I think we all have that there's something much greater at play that we have the opportunity to tap into. And based on your journey, and thank you for sharing so much of it, you're an amazing teacher for really kind of bringing that truth to light, that everything is in our control. We're going to link out everything to Body Health. I cannot wait to read this. How do you like to connect with your community? You've got quite a few platforms.

Yeah, the easiest way is Um, just to find me on Instagram, uh, @JustinRoth, a really easy way, um, to connect with everything that I've got going on. The book can be found at holyhealthbook.com. Um, but again, even just even what you said, and I love the way that you said it, this book is not to throw one thought process down your throat.

Mm-hmm.

This is meant to help you understand just how you were created in such a beautiful and unique way. And I think when you can start to read it and kind of walk through it, there's so many truths that hit the soul. The soul knows the truth. And I think that's the coolest part. Like, even as I went back and read it, I was like, man, I do not remember writing that. Like, I don't remember— like, that was such a download. And, um, the amount of people that were able to speak into that book from both the science side and, um, the theological side is like, you see that what was once separated and separated in culture so diversely and so distinctly is actually one. And what we're seeking is alignment. And when we can align in that, I think it's going to create so much freedom for people and also just create a lot of revelation, a lot of revelatory moments where it's like, my gosh, I never thought about that. And just as in where we've been talking and just like connecting on the heart's level, but also just knowing that everything that we're after is literally just the same thing said differently. It's like, my goodness, that's the truth that exists there. And that's kind of what the heart was behind it.

I love it. And it definitely lands. It feels more like it's an invitation to look up.

It's great. I'm going to take that.

Please do. I'm going to take that. Don't look down at what you think you should be doing. Look up. Look at expansion.

Goosebumps. It was so good.

Well, that's how I experience you. So, so good. To be continued. I can't wait to have you back. To our listeners, remember, you are your healer. And yeah, tune in next time.