Why Hustle Culture Is Breaking Your Body & How Time-Bending Restores Focus & Energy

Welcome to Inside the Speakeasy Mastermind Podcast, the private room where today's sharpest founders, innovators, and renegade thinkers come to trade the ideas that move industries. This show is brought to you by HighLevel, the AI-driven business operating system trusted by over 2 million businesses to help automate, scale, and create real leverage. HighLevel isn't just a tool, it's the engine behind some of the most agile and high-performing teams on the planet. If you're ready to streamline everything, amplify your reach, and actually build a business that works for you, you're in the right place. Visit www.gohighlevel.com/speakeasy-mastermind-promo to get an exclusive 30-day trial for being a listener of the Inside the Speakeasy podcast. Enjoy the show. Most of us vision-driven high achievers are absolutely grinding ourselves into the ground. We're working long hours, living on coffee and adrenaline, slowly, oftentimes destroying some of our health or ruining our health and our relationships. But the good news is there's got to be a better way. And we're going to get way beyond time management today, way beyond stress management. We're going to get into what is called time bending by the person who coined the phrase time bending. We're taking our way out to the Denver chapter. One of my new really cool friends here who is an amazing member of the Speakeasy Mastermind community. Welcome to Inside the Speakeasy Podcast where we have Dr. Tracy Potter.

Welcome. Woo-hoo! Hey, what's up, Speakeasy fan?

What is up? Well, this is really cool. I was reading in the green room and in the bio and our prep sheet. I mean, I love this concept of time bending and you're certainly speaking my language as I'm probably the avatar as many of us are. We're all out there grinding, you know, you've tried to push our way through success. What is success? It's never good enough. And then meanwhile, like. Tick, tick, tick, life goes away. We're stressed. We're maybe not happy and we're probably hurting ourselves in many other ways that others around us at times. So I'm so excited because I know you're going to teach a couple of things today that I'm definitely going to take and turn into practice. And others listening today, you've got a lot of cool experience in this. I want to just start before we get into the good stuff where you're going to share some nuggets. I know it because I've heard, you know, heard some of the things you've talked about before. Your background is interesting. How did you get into this world? So tell me more.

Yeah, I mean, my father's deceased, but yeah, my father was a psychiatrist and He grew up on a farm where he, everyone was supposed to help out. So then he had us helping out in his psychiatric practice. So I had friends that were working like at Taco Bell over the summer and I'm in a psychiatrist's office like dealing with, you know, filing back when paper was a thing. And this was in San Antonio, Texas.

Okay.

And he would take me with him to the different hospitals, state hospitals, nursing homes. He didn't take me to the county jail. Was one place he saw patients I did not go. Yeah, but I was a support kid. I like to say back before boundaries were a thing, I was an emotional support kid and he would just take me. I think he wanted to show me what he was doing and it also would cheer up the people to see a kid or whatever. And even when I was in my 20s, he would still do that. Like as an adult, he would still have me go with him to do rounds. So, wow, wow.

Okay, so walk me through a little bit more in the background. So how did you get here? And I know you had some really interesting struggles along in your journey.

Yeah, so I had my first panic attack when I was 19, and I had been told up until then that anxiety and any kind of mental health issue was a genetic chemical imbalance. So I just thought, well, you're defective, then you're broken. And I would feel sorry for his patients because they had these genetic chemical imbalances and they were like those people. And then one day I was those people and I didn't want that identity. I didn't want to be this genetically defective person that was going to have to live with this searing anxiety and panic attacks the rest of my life. Wow.

I could see that growing up, seeing all the people and you're like, oh my God, this is like, I'm here, they're there, now I'm one of those. Okay. So how'd you get through this?

So it was a long journey. There were so many parts to it, but I will try not to ramble on. One big turnaround was living in Spain when I was in college. It was my junior year study abroad, and I ended up going back and staying another year. His name was Pablo. And I accidentally lost 50 pounds without dieting. Whoa, cow.

What?

And I tried dieting. I tried the low-fat diet. That was how I got the biggest. It was on a low-fat diet. Low-fat cookies, fat-free cookies, fat-free bread.

Was Pablo— you just running around chasing Pablo a lot, or what? I mean, this doesn't just—

I actually— Pablo was a great cook, and I learned to cook. I learned to cook real food. I learned to eat real food. He also was kind of weirded out, like, would go to this store called El Corte Inglés, which was like this department store The English Court, everything for your home. Anyway, and they would have a section of like American food import, and he would pick up the packages. Like, I remember him picking up Oreos and being like, "Esos son unas porquerías." He was like, "This is just crap. Like, what is this?" And I was like, "I don't know, it's Oreos." And so he made me see through new eyes. Like, people in Spain, they weren't hippies, they weren't earthy, they were just Spanish people. And they would know like which side of the pig, the leg of, Jamón serrano, which is like prosciutto, it would be priced differently depending on what side of the pig it came from because the pigs would lay on this side and then these would eat truffles so they'd have a different flavor. People had— the people were in touch with food and land and where it came from. They were at that time weirded out by the weird additives. And so I basically just ate real food, walked everywhere, and had a good time, and the weight just came off. And that's when I realized I thought I was overweight because of my genetics, because pretty much everyone in my family, almost everyone in my family, was overweight. So I just thought it was the genetic luck of the draw, because I was still in that it's genetic thing. And then when I just moved myself to a new environment, a new culture, new habits, a new thought world, my body completely changed. And that was a huge lightbulb moment for me. And then as I continued my studies— and I think I haven't mentioned this yet— I was a medical anthropologist. So I started out in cultural anthropology, got into medical anthropology. So if you don't know what that is, It's okay, a lot of people don't know. Anthropology is just the study of humans. Cultural anthropology, studying cultures all over the world. It can be anywhere from shamanism to biotech. I had colleagues who were, they were actually anthropologists on the stock exchange floor. It doesn't have to be just indigenous people. It's anywhere there are humans, you can study culture, right? And then medical anthropology is how people deal with their health issues from birth to death. So just the fact that we live in a body or conceive of a body. We also learned a lot about the politics of science, the politics of medicine. We learned a lot about how the pharmaceutical industry basically funds all medical journals, funds whole wings of medical schools, of universities. So I started to understand why everything was so pharmaceutical biased. I learned the history of how anything traditional or natural that couldn't be patented was stamped out of modern medicine. But I also learned a lot about traditional medicine and shamanism from cultures all over the world. And I also did field work. I did some field work in rural in indigenous rural Mexico, really beautiful. I still have such vivid memories of those times. And then I did my doctoral research in Cuba when Castro was dictator. And so there's this term nervios, which is like nerves, anxiety, depression, stress, overwhelm, whatever. There's a lot of nervios in the corporate world too and in entrepreneurial world. So people would use that term generally and everyone was sick from nervios and they understood that nervios didn't just make you affect your mental health, it made you have physical symptoms as well. And I realized I had no dreams before I even got there. But then living in a Stalinist dictatorship where there was poverty and where it was set up where people would inform on each other, so there were trust issues, it really broke down community and it broke down trust. And it was really one of the most toxic, emotionally toxic environments I've ever been in in my life. And it was actually traumatizing to me because I realized I'm very much an empath. I didn't even know that was a thing. I hadn't learned to meditate. I had no mind-body meditation, breathwork. I didn't know any of that stuff. I hadn't done personal growth. I'd barely done a little therapy in my childhood because my father had such trauma. Even though he was a psychiatrist, he was actually very psychologically abusive because he had horrendous, unspeakable trauma as a child and also immense poverty. Managed to become a doctor, and that was a huge accomplishment. So I loved him very much, but I also was very traumatized by him. So anyway, all this stuff is like setting me up to understand trauma, to understand our cultural environment, how everything's not just calories, or you can't just have a pill for every ill, that you can't just fix everything with a pill, that there are— that it's complex and layered. So the solutions have to be complex and layered.

Wow, that's fascinating. I mean, there's so many stories I would love to go down, down the rabbit holes. The industry, pharmaceutical industry, scary. If we have more time, we'll talk about that. I mean, the more I hear and talk to people like you and others, just how frightening it really is and how much we are all controlled out there.

And manipulation of data, public information. I mean, I know it's trendy right now to call everyone a narcissist if they're selfish or whatever. And but there are— there's a reason that term exists. And there are people who clinically qualify for a diagnosis. But sadly, I really— I'm not talking about individual actors, but the whole pharmaceutical industry. If you look at how it tells people, no, we're not the problem, you're the problem, no, you're crazy, how it gaslights, how it manipulates, how it has to be perfect and everyone else is the problem, operates just like an abusive narcissist. And it does that to doctors too, because doctors, you know, they're very— they're like in a straitjacket in their practice. You can't piss off the insurance company because like you have to— you have like all— I call it the guns to your head. You have the insurance companies, you have the medical board, which is controlled by the pharmaceutical industry that sets the standards of practice. Then you have, you know, just your reputation, what people think of you. If everyone thinks you're a quack, then, you know, you lose credibility. I mean, and then you're worried about getting sued. So you worry about lawyers. So these poor doctors are just working their butts off. They went through a dehumanizing process of medical school only to be put in this situation where their hands are tied. And now doctors aren't even allowed to practice medicine. The insurance companies practice medicine and doctors do paperwork.

Very, very scary. And I hope people— and I know people are getting their eyes more open to this. I think certainly the COVID experience and people, you know, out there, that certainly has opened eyes up a lot of what people are talking about and the doctors and all that. But and then one more I want to go back to. What were you doing in Cuba during Fidel's time? Like what prompted you to wanna go there?

Nothing that was like a mature adult decision. Nothing that, I was so curious. I think it was morbid curiosity when I was living between San Francisco, Berkeley, I was in the Bay Area for grad school.

Yeah.

And I kept meeting all these Cubans and all these people who would go to Cuba and Cuba's so cool and Cuba's so fun. And I was so curious what's behind the Iron Curtain, what's going on in there, what's really happening? And people were just really romanticizing the socialized medical model they have there, which by the way, given their limited resources, they actually— what they pulled off for a small amount of money is quite impressive. But you know, there were— if there were petroleum shortages, they didn't run their energy off coal, it was off petroleum. So if there's a petroleum shortage, then you didn't have electricity. And if the backup generator failed because you couldn't get parts because of the embargo, then people on life support, right? So that's— yeah, so it was heartbreaking. Like, there Yeah, it was such a mixed experience of really people's resilience, innovation, doing everything a lo cubano, un invento cubano. Invento cubano is just like a Cuban invention. It's just something they make up. Like people would make light fixtures out of like soup cans, you know, like duct tape was king there.

I mean, I just remember, I mean, I went there once and it was just so interesting and fascinating after you went just to think about this structure where everybody's getting paid the same, more or less from what I recall. Like, so the doctor surgeon's getting the same as the mechanic working at the gas station.

Yeah. It's like, 10 to $50 a month, like, you know, so there's a difference. You might get $100 a month if you're like a really high-power surgeon or something like that. But there were still doctors and surgeons selling socks on the black market to make money to feed their family.

No, no, crazy. But anyway, all right, so you go through that, and I know you got your PhD from Berkeley. Impressive. So you go— so continue on this journey here because I want to get into how, like, what you're teaching now.

So basically, I would say my takeaway from grad school is, number one, grad school is also a dehumanizing process. So I really— anxiety came back with a vengeance there. I teaching a class and my arm started going limp. I started having a panic attack. I didn't know what it was. My arm started going limp and I was like, couldn't breathe. And I kind of faked my way through and got out. And then I walked outside and there was one of someone in my cohort. He was sitting on a bench and I walked up to him and I was about to be like, I'm having a panic attack. And then he looked at me and he goes, I'm having a panic attack. So we just like spent hours together unwinding our panic attacks together. He ended up dropping out, sadly. But anyway, so, but one of the things I really saw, especially in the medical anthropology environment, a lot of the really good work at UCSF Medical School, the work we were doing over there and the courses there was just seeing how, and this is not surprising, just how so many traditional rural communities, indigenous people, they want to be part of the quote modern world, which by the way, indigenous people are part of the modern world. They wanted to be part of industrialized society. They wanted to live like us, be like us. So then they start living like us, being exposed to the chemicals, drinking soda, eating processed foods, and then now they have the mental illness and the chronic disease that we have. And I just— it became so clear, oh, these aren't just genetic chemical imbalances. We're not living how we evolved to live. We're not meeting our basic human needs. We are making ourselves feel unsafe with toxins, with not enough nutrition, with nervous system signals of fear and non-safety. I say from cell to soul, we don't feel safe. We're not meeting our most basic human needs and sending signals of safety on a cellular level. I love alliteration. It's one of the most fundamental things we need to do to be healthy and to reverse mental and physical illness. And even the fact that I have to say mental and physical illness, mental and physical, they're just— it's— you can't disentangle. You can't even disentangle the nervous system from the immune system because they share structures. The vagus nerve modulates manages your immune system. It modulates cytokine storms and other immune function. It regulates your immune system, but it's also your nervous system. You know what I'm saying? It's like, if you look at the reality of our bodies, we're such magical creatures, actually. You know, more microbe cells than human cells, more DNA from microbes than human cells. Like, all these things we're starting to learn that I remember when I used to, like, have to teach people this, and now people know this. They've heard it now, and it's so cool. Neuroplasticity— you can rewire your brain, you can change. So what's magical about what we are is we're so much more complex and connected and beautiful than we ever imagine, or we ever— at least our generation learned in like high school biology. But at the same time, you know, we're living in this world that's— everything is so synthetic and plastic. And then we're, you know, you know, that great thing about using the same thinking that caused the problem to try to fix it. So using synthetic plastic fake things to fix a world that is sick because of that doesn't make any logical sense.

And it's very hard to fix things that are backed by people making billions of dollars. Follow the money, right?

So I mean, that's all about making billions of dollars if you can do it in a way where you're not being an asshole and making people sick and destroying the planet. Like, if you can do that, more power to you.

I mean, going back to your story of the indigenous people, it's interesting. So what you're saying, and what I'm taking from that, is their body and everything was functioning beautifully because they were doing the natural things that, you know, back to caveman and all that, we were doing. And until we got poisoned by the, you know, the big corporate conglomerates that came in and slowly poisoned—

I mean, some of these people had their whole water supplies contaminated. Sometimes Some of it was just lifestyle, and there are certain cases where people were, you know, plantations were like the people, just deforestation right by them, and there was blowover of all these pesticides and fertilizers and other chemicals, and their water supply being contaminated, where people getting cancer just from drinking water that they had for generations, for thousands of years. These people had lived on this land and been drinking that water, and then suddenly it's causing cancer. So yeah, I mean, I could just go on for days about the plight of indigenous people in traditional rural communities on this planet and how they've become so invisible and unseen. And we like to think, oh, they're so cute and little and we love them, but oh, tell us about your traditions so we can learn your wise ways. But actually you just, you know, like a lot of them, they feel invisible and like they don't matter in their— in any way. That's a whole other thing. Yeah. But my big takeaway was that was just why we're sick. And I think one of the reasons my clients get better is because I'm coming with this biopsychosocial, cultural, the whole hug of humanity. Of, yeah, I can get really down with the super nerdy science and do the precision lab testing. I love peptides and I think stem cells are amazing and I like to work with supplements and that's all great, but that's a supplement. That's a little— gives you an edge and added advantage. It's like a tow truck that'll help you get out of the hole. But if you keep digging the hole, like, you know, you're never going to have the life. You're never going to get to experience yourself as— I hate to say full potential because it can sound so cheesy and cliché, but really We have immense potential as humans that we are barely tapping the surface of what we're capable of in terms of an internal experience and even the magic and playfulness we can create in the world because we're buying into this stupid hustle culture. I call it Russian grind hustle culture health crisis, but that's like, and we think it's normal and it's cultural. We're making it up. That's the thing. I remember, you know, there's that book, My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor. And she, you know, there's this line in the book. I don't know what chapter, but it says we're all figments of our own imagination. That's what she realized having a stroke and not losing her left brain and only having her right brain as a neuroscientist.

Wow.

And I realized that as an anthropologist, we're all figments of our imagination. I learned that as a meditator. I really got into meditation, by the way. Meditation, breathwork, mind-brain-body practices, the things we can do to change our neurology, rewire our brain, also rewires our whole entire biology.

So let's start getting into some of the stuff. So, so what do we— you had all these amazing experiences, you were teaching you know, an amazing PhD. What changed? What did you start doing that you figured out that you're now seeing in a lot of us entrepreneurially? Yeah.

Yes. And that I still have to stop myself from doing because I'm a human being too. So first I saw my mom had Crohn's disease when I was in grad school and she almost died 3 times. Once was from the Crohn's itself, from almost bleeding out. The next 2 times were from side effects from medication. From immunosuppressant drugs. And one time was because a doctor— she said, I have a cut in my finger, it really hurts. And she actually ended up with sepsis because she was on an immunosuppressant. And the doctor said, I do colons, not fingers. And they sent her home and she died. Yeah.

Oh my God.

So I do colons, not fingers. Need this. Yeah. What? So what? And then I just— when my mom had Crohn's, something in me knew, just something in me knew shutting down her immune system and taking her colon out, that was the solution. Her doctor said You'll never— I remember to this day, syntax— you'll never have a normal life unless you get that colon out. And it's not because he was from Texas that anyone anywhere believed that at that time. Yeah, could have done that with an East Coast accent or any accent, Tom Brokaw accent. The point is, he really believed that the only way to stop this disease, the only tool in the toolbox, was to take out her colon and suppress her immune system. But what I know how to do is help people modulate, regulate their immune system. Not too much, not too little. Like, you know, Goldilocks, or what was that, you know, in the Three Bears? Not too much. Not too little, just right. That's what your immune system needs. And it's tied to your nervous system, like I said, and your gut and your microbiome. It's complex. There are layers. Like I say, people don't want to deal with layers because they're overwhelmed. So what I saw with my mom was that I knew she had a lot of trauma, especially from the marriage with my father. And who doesn't these days? And then, you know, was eating complete crap, had an overeating issue, had an obesity issue. So I just figured if we could get her, this woman, to eat food that she evolved to eat and feel loved and feel cared for and get support, maybe we could move the needle on it. Maybe you could post— I don't even know. I went, honestly, I went, I followed my heart and I followed my intuition. Something in me just had to try, and I ended up finding books in this health food store called Sun Harvest, which then became Sprouts, and they were written by people who had healed Crohn's disease, two of them, and one had done it with a macrobiotic diet. The other one was Jordan Rubin, who did the whole Garden of Life, you know, kind of thing. Yeah, supplement company anyway. And so, but reinforced what I already believed, that if we eat real food, our body can heal itself. So I just had my mom eating real food. So long story short, we did only a couple supplements actually. Long story short, she's been quiescent, which is autoimmune talk for in remission, since 2004. No relapses, not even one. No immunosuppressant drugs. And she still has her colon intact. It has scarring, but it's there. She still has it.

Yeah. You— yeah, Mom, it's incredible. And I wonder what you said to that doctor after all that.

Yeah, well, one of the doctors that tried to put her on statins and said she had to be on statins died of a heart attack on the statins. Just saying.

I'm just saying.

Anyway, anyway, so you're getting confidence now saying, wait a second, there's something— I'm like, wait a minute. How is it that I'm some, like, nerd medical anthropologist who figured out how to heal my mom? Get my— I didn't heal her, she healed her. How did I get my mom to heal herself from an autoimmune condition that's supposedly incurable and go against everything that the doctor said? Even my own father. Like, I don't know how we got past the gauntlet of my dad because my dad was, like, not open to any of the stuff.

Yep.

That I was into. But anyway, how is it that I figured this out and medical schools and doctors. Well, I knew why that was a— I really knew why. I knew I understood enough about the politics of medicine and science that I knew that even though the individual actors are good people, I knew the pharmaceutical rep who brought us fajitas at my dad's office was a good guy. But the system was the problem and the people really making it.

You had enough data to essentially question what was going on in front of you. You almost like, let's just say, I don't know if I believe this guy because I know what his motivation got, right?

Meanwhile, I had lost 50 pounds and then I got into meditation. I got into yoga. That completely changed changed my life. Who knew that you could just sit and breathe and feel and it would change your life? That you could start having literally mystical experiences? I used to make fun of the people in Austin by Town Lake that would sit on the hillside and meditate and do yoga, and I was like, oh my God, they think they're so spiritual. Those people are so annoying. I would judge them, and I would even make fun of feeling at one with the universe. And at some point, I'm sitting here meditating, I'm like, oh my God, I literally feel at one with the universe. This is the best feeling in the world. This is better than sugar or chocolate or alcohol or like all these things we fetishize, all these destructive pleasures, trying to feel something. And I really believe we fetishize all these destructive pleasures because we're trying to get these cheap thrills, these cheap dopamine hits, because we want to— I think it's a deeper yearning to feel connected to something more. I feel like when we truly take care of ourselves, when we nurture and nourish ourselves, really we make time for it then it changes your brain states. You upgrade your brain states, you upgrade your intuition, your problem solving. I hate to say magic and sound like too much like a new age hippie, but magic is what I call when you are in awe of something. It's like a surprise. There's awe, you see connections, you— things unfold in ways you could have never imagined. I was having this conversation with a housemate and we're in the kitchen and we were having this conversation about how we're trying to solve our problems based on past experience and existing knowledge. But there's— there really is a field of quantum potential, of untapped potential, of things that, that have not yet manifest. Like, this is like real physics. It's legit, right? It gets busted around by super new age people or whatever, but that's actually real. There's a field of quantum potential. And I remember physicists saying in an interview that if the laws of physics allow it, it probably has happened or will happen somewhere in the universe. And so we're having this conversation about this and we're in our kitchen. The door to the outside lanai— this was in Hawaii— the outside terrace or whatever was open. And just as we say this, a bird flies in the wind in the door. Never happened before. Perches itself on the counter and just sits there and looks at us and doesn't flinch. And it just stayed there and we stayed there and it stayed there and we just sat there and we're breathing and looking at this bird and it was looking at us. And it was one of the most— that to me, that's the magic. That's magic.

Oh.

And so I've had— I started having experiences as I moved into, got into functional health. I just started learning about it. I did my PhD. I almost wanted to just drop out, but I didn't. Anyway, I finished my PhD, and then I moved to Hawaii, hung out with a bunch of friends who were meditators, opening a yoga studio. And I got really into healing myself and my emotions and my childhood and my body. And like, I really got curious about How good can it get if I really commit to healing myself from the inside out? How good can it get? And the answer is really, really good.

Right.

And so and then as I got into functional health, that happened kind of organically. And I learned about— I already was into integrative stuff. I was doing health coaching and, you know, teaching people how to cook for themselves and blah, blah, blah and take care of themselves and all that. And I came up— I coined this term. I love making up terms, by the way, if you'll notice this.

Yeah.

I made up a term called healthy hedonism because I had a client that said, well, I can't eat healthy because I'm a hedonist. And I'm like, well, I'm a better hedonist than you. Want to hear why? And he's like, why? And I was like, because I want things that feel good now but then make my future self feel good, like tomorrow and the next day and the next decade into the future. So future Tracy feels good too. That's more total life pleasure, much higher ROI than the crap you're eating. So this whole idea that we have to give up pleasure to be healthy Boo! Wrong. Not real. There's an intrinsic pleasure to giving your body what it needs. It feels like being at home in your soul. It feels like you came home to yourself. Like you realize you missed yourself. You didn't even know you missed yourself.

Okay, so let's dig in here because I think you're saying stuff intuitively makes sense, but obviously we're all dealing with the need to get short-term pleasure and avoid long-term pain, right? So if I can have that sweet or just follow the, you know, get the thing I want that's going to give me pleasure, versus this thing that requires the work, requires these things you're talking about with no concrete evidence or clarity to know what that end state is. It's hard for us to make that leap and say, if I just give up this sugar and these things now and eat right, this is what the end state will be. And what I hear you saying is this end state over here is way more beautiful than that quick thing you did today. You just need to understand what you could get. So, so what is that end state? What does that look like when we get there?

So that's such a good question. Good question, Eric. It's like trying to tell someone who's never seen snow what snow is like, or tell someone what Paris is like who's never been there, or tell someone what, like, chocolate tastes like who's never had it. Like, it's hard. It's hard to explain. But if you've ever had a moment of awe, like looking at a beautiful view or the most delicious food, or where you're with someone you love and you just love them so deeply it almost hurts. It's like all of that more becoming more a part of your daily life. Also, if you've ever experienced synchronicity, way more of that happening. And which is fun. It makes life feel like— I love that album title, Magical Mystery Tour. I feel like it makes life feel like a magical mystery tour. And sometimes I get sucked into the grind too. Sometimes I skip my practices and I usually will still always eat really well. That's something that's so ingrained in me. I just can't imagine not doing that. I even have so many strategies for travel for when I go to conferences or speaking engagements or that kind of thing. I have a system and I teach my system to my people and it's so good. They love it. It's so good. And you, it doesn't mean you can't eat out in restaurants. You have to be like this health perfectionist, but it's more about just, you know, there's a moment where I realized I'm made of cells. And I remember learning that cells by themselves, like cell, a cell by itself in a Petri dish, you know, it actually can live just a single cell if it has a growth medium or whatever. It'll behave one way. But then when you put cells together like a tissue, they actually will change their behavior to cooperate with each other and look out for each other. Then when you connect them to a brain, to a central nervous system, they behave differently for the good of the entire system. When I realized that we are made of these miraculous, intelligent human cells and microbe cells that are working together and changing their behavior in every millionth of a second, to try to make my life better and to protect me and to heal me and to look out for me. The least I can do is look out for them.

Right. It's almost like we have this amazing set of tools that's automatically, organically, by human nature, is going to give us this amazing thing. But we tend to ruin it and do things along the way.

Savage compassion for why we do it. You know why? Because we have this evolutionary biology. And the evolutionary biology is when we are stressed, It's in— everyone has heard this by now, the running from the tiger, the lion, or the bear, or whatever. We have this biology that when we don't feel safe because of chemicals, because of poor nutrition, because of toxic relationships, because of workaholism, because of fear of failure, because of whatever the thing is, you know, doom scrolling about politics, whatever the thing is, it doesn't matter. Your body's going to start changing your biology because usually what you've evolved for is your biggest stressors are famine, being chased by predator, or immediate danger, or fire, or something like that, and being kicked out of the tribe and left to starve alone. So we want love and belonging, we want physical safety, and we want nourishment, right? So your body has all these biological mechanisms in place for when it— when we're skipping meals because we're too busy, or we're eating crap full of chemicals but not enough. You can eat food that has hardly any nutrition. You can have calories but not have real nutrients, right? It can cause inflammation, it can damage your internal organs. Like, we've normalized eating food that damages our internal organs, that makes our brains not work that well, that shuts down our energy production in our cells. So what do you think? You're a health nut or a weirdo or a freak if you actually think that's a bad idea and you want to take care of yourselves. You want to be like, my cells are taking care of me, I don't take care of them, they're amazing, I love them, let's go. Now you're a weirdo. Now there's something wrong with you. This is a cultural problem we can all change. If Eric stops thinking that— I'm not saying you think that, but if people stop thinking and acting that way collectively, it'll change. It's so much better now. I was just talking to someone recently about how I feel like such a pariah. When I first started, I came back from Spain. I'm like, I'm going to eat real food and I'm going to eat local and I'm going to like, I want to buy from farmers and I'm going to take a bag to the grocery store and I want to recycle. And, you know, and people thought I was the biggest weirdo freak in the world, you know. And when I wanted to do natural medicine and I experienced so much rejection because I wanted to make a change. I wanted to be part of a change. I wanted to do things differently. And now all these things that I got made fun of for are becoming mainstream, at least in certain circles.

Yeah.

So, wow, that's super cool.

It's profound. It's interesting. It's like, imagine a world where if somebody picks up that dessert, they're like, what the hell are you doing? You're a weirdo. Or like, just something that's not good for us.

Yeah, or we just have healthy desserts. I mean, I eat dessert. I do eat dessert. I eat pizza, I eat hamburgers, I eat lasagna. I, I just— the ingredients are good. It's made of good stuff. Like, it's made out of food people would eat back in the day in France or Italy or whatever.

So, I mean, I love the theory of what you're saying. I think you've definitely opened up my eyes and just hearing you. So, so one of the things, and maybe that you talked about time bending is a big thing. Yeah, I want to talk about time bending and what you mean by that. And then what are the biggest things you're doing with your clients, people you're talking to, a lot of us listeners, that we should be thinking about? Maybe 2 or 3 things we should be doing immediately.

Number 1, judgment is no good. Judging yourself, judging others, superiority, arrogance, all that stuff. We all have egos, so our egos do stuff. And people are like, no judgment. I'm like, well, then you must be brain dead because brains judge. Like, that's what they do. We have an ego center of our brain. And oh, I just realized I didn't complete a thought earlier, and this will wrap back into what we're saying, but I think this is important to know for time bending. Is that when our bodies feel unsafe, our nervous systems feel unsafe. The amygdala— there are these two sites, you know, people have heard of it now. I used to have to always teach it, but they're like almond-sized parts of our limbic system. The emotional center of our brain is what people say to oversimplify it, to make it palatable. Anyway, the amygdala, when you don't feel safe, they switch gears and your brain actually, when you're chronically stressed over time, your amygdala get bigger and your hippocampus, which has memory, it can look out for your hippocampus, will look out for your future self. That'll shrink. Your amygdala gets bigger. Your amygdala does not look out for your future self, and it often won't even look out for other people depending on how triggered it is. And the amygdala are, you know, me feel safe now, me get what I want now, me survive now, me not die now, me feel good now. And that's— it's very primal, it's very primitive. And so it's not going to think about your future self, it is not going to think about healthy hedonism. So regulating your nervous system so that you're not being run by the two almonds or by the two peanuts is crucial so you can make better decisions. Because if when someone says to you, like, starts talking to you about taking better care of yourself or self-care foundations or whatever, all these things we become numb to that we think we should do, but we want to make fun of or be resentful of because we're like, oh great, something else I'm not doing right or not good enough at, or something else I need to pile on my plate that, you know, people resent that and they get angry and they get defensive. And I understand why. I get why people feel that way. But the thing is, when you get your head above water, at least get your nose above water, and you can breathe, and things calm down, and suddenly you feel time differently. We think of time as something we just measure linearly, and it's this linear thing. But 1 minute of doing squats with really heavy weights will feel a lot longer than 1 minute of listening to this podcast. right? Or just 1 minute of meditating will feel different than 1 minute of eating your dinner, right? So the way we subjectively process information and experience time is not linear. It's not— all minutes are not created equal. So when you are in a regulated, grounded, clear nervous system state, now goes from being this thing that you're rushing to catch up with that's always passing you by now expands infinitely in every direction. And the reality that there's nothing other than now becomes very obvious. And now you feel spacious, you feel clear. Now your brain can generate creativity, it can innovate, it can get downloads and intuitive hits. It can say, hey, maybe you should show up for that event that this person you met through Speakeasy is hosting, and then it turns into an NBC interview. It turns into getting invited to an event for 200 women entrepreneurs and getting stage time. It turns into, you know what I'm saying? Like, what I want people to understand is that when we optimize, we recalibrate our nervous system. We evolve our brain states. We elevate our brain states. We optimize our biology.

Right.

So we have energy, we feel calm, our cells are chill, our organs are working. There's flow. You hear about flow state. Flow state increases productivity by 500%. So we can just—

It's all about bending the time to getting it, slowing it down.

That's how you bend the time. You change your brain state. It's an inside job. So what people are doing to get more time is by cutting corners. I'm going to skip sleep. I'm not going to eat, or I'm going to order out crap. I'm going to— a lot of people forget to eat. And by the way, some people don't— are cutting corners because they're stressed, and some people are cutting corners because they're doing such exciting things and they're so excited about what they're doing, their projects, they forget their bodies, right? And so, so people, yeah, shave off sleep, skip the workout, grab another cup of coffee, forget to eat, or just kind of eat some crap to get through, or whatever. And a lot of people don't even know enough about nutrition to know how to feed themselves. And I'm talking about people with— they're brilliant people with 6 and 7-figure businesses and 8-figure businesses, people who I've worked with, some of the most brilliant. I've worked with politicians, I've worked with entrepreneurs, I've worked with public figures, I've worked with people who are capable of such extraordinary things, but they are destroying themselves with the very strategies that got them where they are, destroying them, breaking them down, and causing mental and physical illness. They're damaging their relationships. You can only do this for so long, and people done did it through their 20s and may not have liked it. And then it's like there's a momentum and you don't know how to stop. Wow. And I have this friend, he decided to just go travel for— he's in venture capital, he did a startup, all this stuff, got out of it, couldn't take the grind anymore, decides to get on a motorcycle and drive like to Alaska. Anyway, he spent 2 years on a motorcycle like camping out in the wilderness, like all kinds of stuff. Except for in Alaska. I think he must have stayed somewhere a little warmer.

Yeah.

And he, for months and months, he was already doing this and he still couldn't relax. And he met this guy named Chad. So he calls this the rule of Chad or the law of Chad. He meets this guy, like this other biker named Chad, super chill guy. And he's like, you know, I can't, like I've been out of corporate, the corporate world, like, and I can't slow down. And I just, and he's like, how many tanks of gas do you go through in a day? And he goes, like 1.5, 2 tanks. He goes, 1 tank of gas a day. And that's the rule of Chad. So if we could just go through 1 tank of gas a day because people have a super— have you ever had a super, like, productive day where you just get so much done and the next day you're like toast? You can't do it every day. It's unreasonable. There are other strategies for that. There are other strategies to fix some of that. And I do help people find ways to, you know, get things done more efficiently where they're not spending all day cooking or whatever. There are solutions for that. I have like a VIP program where I get people chefs and I get people their supplements ordered, and I have all this white glove stuff, whatever. I have things where I can take things off people's lap, or even if people are doing my mid-tier program, their strategies.

So you can focus more on the things that really matter to you and yourself.

And but you— here's the deal: what business doesn't have SOPs? What business does not have systems in place, right?

Need them.

But all these entrepreneurs, all these incredible people have systems for everything except for the system that matters most, and that's themselves. That's you. Why do you have systems for your business and not for your own biology, for your own nervous system, for your own happiness, for your own joy?

Right.

Or actually, we have systems, but the systems may not be functional, right? Because if it's making you anxious, depressed, overwhelmed, fatigued, if it's affecting your hormones, affecting your sex life, your libido, your sexual function, whatever— all these things I see all the time— your cardiovascular health, you're getting autoimmune. I'm seeing more and more high performers that are getting sick from mold and Lyme and things like that because they don't have the immune system and nervous system resilience to endure the exposure.

So, okay, so now what are the top, say, 2 or 3 things that if we are building our own personal SOP, where do we start?

Okay, so since we don't have time for the whole thing, what— where you start, and I know I sound like a broken record saying nervous system, nervous system, nervous system. So basically For me, time bending is slowing down to be more effective and get more done. When you optimize your biology, when you eat real food and take care of yourself and give yourself the nutrients and the balance of nutrients you need without doing like radical fad diets, you don't need to do that. It's like a chef. A chef can have a dull knife. A master chef. Imagine a master chef with a dull, rusty knife. That chef can probably still make good food and cut up vegetables. But do you know how much more work it's going to be? And you know how much longer it's going to take? So if your brain, if your body is like a dull knife because you've been grinding and grinding and grinding, the grinding doesn't sharpen your knife. This grinding dulls your knife. It's going to take you longer to do everything.

I'm trying to just put it all together. So an example in that case, slowing down, which seems to be the—

Yeah. Okay. So I'll give you concrete answers. So, okay. There's Two things. One is starting your day, pee, drink water, let your dog out to pee, whatever. As close as to waking up as you can, have a practice. I have something I call my magical morning sunshine ritual. It's like a, it's like a woven, it's like a lasagna stack or like a tapestry woven. I've managed to work, I think, 15 different somatic and brain retraining practices and emotional practices into one methodology that can be 15 minutes or 30 minutes. You can expand or contract it. I also give people backups like, okay, take 1 minute. What can— take 10 conscious breaths. Do breathwork for 5 minutes. Like, if people are like really like can't seem to carve it out, start with a micro practice and then gradually wedge in more practices. I have a meditation on my website that is— I call it a magic brain trick meditation. You know how I like to use the word magic because it feels like, oh my God, I just— it's such a cool thing. I'm not going to give it away. It's a surprise. But it's something you can do by closing your eyes. It's— anyone can do it. Even if you think you suck at meditation or if you think you've done meditation for years, then you're the expert, whatever. Just— it's good for everybody. Everybody do it. I have a Zen Buddhist monk who did a testimony on my website because he loves this. He loves all this stuff.

I'm going there. I'm getting that. Yep.

Yeah, you do. It's 15 minutes. And not only will it lower anxiety and overwhelm, like in 15 minutes, it also helps with physical pain and it helps with sleep. That was an accidental discovery from clients, and now I use it for that. So if you have trouble falling asleep, it'll knock you out. If you wake up in the middle of the night— now, if you have some neurological or severe hormonal imbalance, that won't fix your sleep. But if you're just stressed and overwhelmed, it'll put you back to sleep. You wake up to pee in the middle of the night, and then your mind's racing. You do this, it'll put you back to sleep. So have these practices. I have a whole toolbox I give people, and it had— to me, it has to be pleasurable. I like things that give you pleasure. Breathwork that makes you— like, I call it healthy ways to get high. If it makes you feel pleasure, if it makes you euphoric, if it makes you— yeah, if it makes you feel good. So I want people— healthy hedonism is about having euphoria, pleasure, yummy taste. It's about filling your life with things that feel good so your body can heal or not get sick in the first place, and you can have optimal longevity. And it takes the same amount of time and energy as destroying yourself. It's just you're doing different things instead. So it's hard to believe until you experience it, but it's true. I promise. And so anyway, so I would say start your day. You can do my brain trick meditation or whatever works for you. 5, 10, 15— 15 is good. Give yourself 15 minutes, don't be chintzy. And it could be 30 minutes, whatever. So the point is, start your day with some kind of mind-brain-body practice to get in your body, to get— go inside and be with yourself. It will change your whole day.

Okay.

Second, there's something I call weaving your hammock. So starting your day with a morning ritual, even having a bedtime ritual, people know to do that, but then in the middle everything goes to chaos. And we know there's gonna be unexpected things. Like I had some unexpected things today that threw me off, but weaving your hammock is a metaphor. I love metaphors for creating support throughout your day. So I'm gonna give you two things. I'll at least give you one thing. One thing is something I call half-speed movement. I got that terminology from a, a colleague, Beth O'Hara. She's not with us anymore. Yeah. Anyway, half-speed movement. And so that's when you just move slower. If you're in danger, you're not gonna move slow, right? So I want you to try something. Okay, this is gonna sound like a weird thing, but I want you to do it. Okay, well, the first thing I want you to know is you can slow down by breathing slow. So just breathe really slow, like really slow exhale especially. This is so like super simple. So you can just breathe slower. Just catch yourself, take 3, 5, 10 conscious breaths. There's physiological sigh, box breathing, all kinds of things. Now I want you to take your hand and I want you to move it around really fast in front of your face. Just move it around, move it around. Okay, now I want you to move your hands really slow, like you're tripping on some drug and you're like, whoa, my hands. I just like, look at your hands. Like, look at your hands really slow. Really slow. Can you feel something changing in your brain when you do that?

Yeah, no idea. I feel the hands vibrating a little bit, like I'm more— want to— yeah.

They get a little tingly.

Yeah.

So just slowing your movement. So I used to catch myself— I still do it— I'm gonna go to the bathroom real quick. Well, why do you need to go to the bathroom real quick? Why don't you go to the bathroom— why don't you saunter to the bathroom? Why don't you just saunter down the hall? Yeah. Why do you need to go fast? So I'm a very speedy person. That's my personality. That's my— I don't need caffeine. I was born caffeinated. So slowing down, moving slower, half-speed movement, breathing slower, half-speed breathing, slow-motion breathing. That's a very simple— these are simple things. Here's the thing people don't understand: the simplest things are the most powerful. We think we need stem cells, which I, by the way, I love stem cells. We need the super high-tech, we need the gadgets, we need all the things. Well, you are high-tech, you are the gadget. Go buy stuff if you want. PMF mats are great. Like, all these things are fun toys to have. I love saunas, I love red light therapy, I love cold plunge, I love all that. But use your own superpowers, learn what they are. We are capable of such cool things and we don't even know it because we're so focused out here. We don't even know what's in here.

Yeah, nobody gave us the proper manual on how to use our own body.

Yeah, no one taught us. That's just, I don't blame us. We, how would we know? So anyway, so time bidding, just to wrap it up, is to, when you have practices, when you start your day with these kinds of mind, brain, body practices, then throughout the day you weave your hammock with good nutrition, with slowing down, with stop and breathe before you you eat, things like that, things I can— they're so simple that don't— they take seconds, not hours, right? And then, you know, obviously good sleep and all that. You will— your brain will work differently, your experience of time will change, your access to intuition, innovation, to pattern recognition, to all those things, and creativity will blossom more than before. You're probably already very gifted or you wouldn't be where you are now, but you can be supercharged and super healthy and super happy And it seems too good to be true, but I'm a yes and gal. I'm not an either or person. I refuse all this either or crap. It's yes and. We can have— I really think we can have it all.

And as we wrap, you mentioned a lot on the food. And I mean, what's the one takeaway you would have from or suggestion in that area? You said healthy hedonism, obviously, but the food choices.

Yeah, well, I don't even know. That one's huge. That's such a huge topic. I mean, it sounds generic to say eat real food made of real things, read labels, know what you're putting in your body. I will tell you something. There's something I call the invisibles. These are molecules in food we can't see, so we think they're not there. But when you eat food sprayed with pesticides and fertilizers, or made— people say seed oils, I don't really like that. I say refined inflammatory oils because sesame seed oil is not bad for you. But anyway, that's a whole aside. The thing is, when you eat good quality fats that are good for your cells, your cell membrane, your hormones, your brain, when you eat food that is from nutrient-rich soil, from the farmer's market or whatever, that hasn't been sprayed with a bunch of crap, or even organic from the store, You eat— if you eat animals that, you know, if you're vegetarian or vegan, you can plug your ears or whatever. But if you eat animals that are wild game, that are pastured, they have completely— they're made of different molecules. Food is information. It's data. It's molecular data. And the most intimate thing we do isn't sex, even though I think sex is amazing. But the most intimate thing we do is eat, because the molecules of the food become you. That's the most intimate thing. So if you would choose wisely who you are physically intimate with, then you need to choose wisely what you bring into your cellular community.

That's a great way. I love that analogy. Thank you for that. Well, perfect. Well, is there anything else? I mean, you gave me so many good things to think about and so many good shares today. And I know everybody's probably buzzing and really thinking, I should say, hopefully taking a breath and bending time and slowing down for a minute too. Anything you didn't throw in today that you want to add that I forgot to ask or talk about?

I just want people to know there's more— there are more layers. I want to keep it simple to not add to the overwhelm, but I want you to know, if you just literally— what I notice with the people I work with is if they start with the nervous system stuff, and yeah, we can start running your labs and get you on some supplements to support you, just to hold— get some something holding you so you feel more held. We start getting your nervous system calmed down, suddenly dietary change or working out or getting fit or all those things feel doable now. The reason, if thinking about taking care of yourself feels like, oh, I can't stand it, go away, I don't, you know, leave me alone, or you're like, I need sugar, I'll, you know, whatever, you're angry at me for insinuating you should change anything about how you're living. A, it's not coming from judgment, but B, it just means you're very overwhelmed. It's just all it means is you're overwhelmed. So you have to lower the overwhelm. Once you lower the overwhelm, then you have space. You feel spacious, you feel creative, you feel curious, you feel exploratory.

Right.

And then it becomes an adventure and a curiosity. I love curiosity. I love adventure because that's way more fun than shooting all over yourself. Let's not shoot all over ourselves. Yep. Let's be curious. How good can it get? Not from an overachiever, overstriving habit, but from like a playful curiosity of a child. We still have that in us. We need to cultivate that. So just know it does. It's not as hard as you think and it doesn't take as long as you think. People can make really huge changes. In relatively small amounts of time, especially if you have support and you're not trying to do it all yourself.

And I imagine like anything else, just like going to the gym for the first time, you just make those small changes and that momentum is going to get more momentum and you keep going.

And I'm really big on— yeah, and I'm really big on helping people find what feels good. So they want— they naturally want to keep doing. One of the things I like to tell people, if you become the artist of your life, you create a life you love that you're in love with. You don't need willpower. No, because people— we don't need willpower to be in love, right? We need willpower to push against ourselves, to push against resistance. But if there is no resistance, then it's smooth sailing. And you really can— if you've ever noticed that there are days where you just get so much done in 1 hour, you get into a flow state where like you can do hours of work and it feels like minutes, or kind of the opposite where you feel like you did hours of work in 1 hour. When you are able to do that just 20% more, it changes your life.

Oh yeah.

You don't have to be perfect at it. You don't have to be perfect at it. You don't have to do it all the time. Yeah, but just to do it more and to get to know this, these capacities you have in yourself and you have more to choose from and you're not being run by programs, you're mastering your life and your stress response and your biology. You're creating it. You're not being run by some default program that isn't even your idea. It was— you were taught that it comes from the Protestant work ethic. That's a 500-year-old idea that if I sacrifice myself and work really hard and become successful, that means God favors me. And if I fail, then that means I'm damned by God. And literally, that came from Northern Europe and early colonial America, has spread all over the planet like a viral cultural disease that's hurting people and killing people. And so we need to take it back. We need to take back our culture and create instead of a culture hustle culture. We want connection culture where we're connected to ourselves, each other, and nature.

Love it.

Just love it.

And my last question, you talked about connections. I'd love to just turn it for a second and say, you've been an amazing member since we sort of launched the Denver. How was your experience been? How are you enjoying Speakeasy Mastermind?

I love Speakeasy. It's so fun. It's just started. And also, I just had moved here when Speakeasy started in this chapter, so I feel like people here have become like extended entrepreneurial family. And also, I love the online events where we get to meet people. I just got to meet someone recently who just opened up a whole world of possibility through her community, and she's amazing. And I got to know her sister, who's amazing. And it's just, I feel like I want to know who else is there that I haven't met. So everyone reach out, like, I want to know you guys. I want to meet more people. I'm just— there's so many beautiful souls part of this. And yeah, I'm curious to know who else is here. I definitely was telling someone who visited our chapter last night just how much beauty has come into my life as a result of Speakeasy Mastermind Mastermind.

Well, I appreciate that. And if you're listening, please reach out to Dr. Tracy for all the obvious reasons of listening to the podcast. Plus, she's an amazing soul and she's excited to meet you.

And some people think, well, maybe other people can do that but not me, or other people can have that but not me, or it's too good to be true. And everybody You know, my business is Inner Genius Health, and I named it that because I realized nature's genius. The more I learn about nature, nature's genius, and we are nature. So that means we have an inner genius that can heal and that can have an amazing life. So everyone has an inner genius. No one got left out. So I love that.

Well, thank you so much for coming in today. I know you take a lot of your time. Greatly appreciate you. And I look forward to talking to you again soon. And thanks for coming in today.

All right. Thank you so much, Eric.

And that's a wrap from the Speakeasy Podcast. If something sparked for you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it, review it, and pass it to the one person who needs to hear this right now. Want in on the real mastermind? Tap the link in the show notes to apply. Until next time, keep scaling, stay sharp, and don't be the smartest one in the room.