268 Sara Gustafson: Understanding The Primal Self

You're fusing together all of the primal needs, you know, without one, like none of them work. So if you don't have your diet in place, exercise isn't going to work for shit. If you don't have your rest and recovery in place, none of the others are going to work. If you're not happy, then forget doing any of the other stuff, like, forget it. And if you're not working on yourself, like inner work and taking responsibility for that, then why invest in all of the other work? It's just, you know, you're asking for Groundhog's Day.

That's Sarah Gustafson, and this is episode 268 of Wellness Force Radio, where we discover the physical and emotional intelligence to live life. Well, in this podcast, we go down to the primal self, the essence of who we actually are as a man or a woman. We're understanding the primal self both physically and emotionally and of course, how this primal self, this connection, relates to us losing body fat, having more energy and feeling our most vibrant health. From the director of Women's health and the ambassador of authenticity at Primal Fusion, Sarah Gustafson. You know Sarah, she is this visionary, she's also a thought leader. I got to meet with this woman live here in my apartment in Encinitas on my couch. And this truth seeking provocateur literally sparks transformation when she speaks. She. She's a life coach in Austin, Texas, and she gives very unique holistic wellness programs across the world. This episode rocked my socks. I actually don't wear socks, but if I wore them, they would have flown off sitting down with Sarah, because this woman has really done her inner work. She has this mastery around being in the present moment, this skill of presence. You're gonna feel in depth from Sarah as we explore everything from her immune system, health issues she's overcome in life that led her to be a powerful healer and coach through for others the mindset of victimization or victor. The rapid growth we're seeing in the media, online, across the world, really the demasculinization of men. Men being demasculinated by the me too conversation as well as so much more. We also discover what Sarah calls STDs, spiritually transmitted diseases including spiritual bypass, spiritual materialism, spiritual narcissism, and spiritual activism. We're talking about how we can break through the modern world with its prescription medicines, addictions, and outside influences that numb and distract and really cloud our thinking. To embody what she calls primal fusion. This is the bridging of the ancient world with the modern world, and in the modern world, we could all use a deep breath. So before you go any further, this is your breath break. You've earned it. This might be the entire time today that you get reminded to take a deep belly breath. So let's do this together first. Wherever you are, exhale all your air out of your mouth. Now inhale for five seconds. Big breath. Fill your belly, then your chest. At the top of your big breath, hold it. Feel how good it feels for that breath to push against your diaphragm to fill your belly and your chest. Now breathe it out slowly for five seconds. And just know you can do that at any time. Inhale for five, hold for five, exhale for five and pause for five. These deep breaths. If you're angry, if you're stressed, if you're in a fight with your spouse, if you're in traffic behind some car that smells like diesel, you can go there. You can take a deep breath. It is therapy. It is medicine. It is always there. Do not forget, you always have your breath break. And if you can breathe, you can choose. This is why it's tattooed on my arm in Italian. Se poso resperare poso che guere. Which means if I can breathe, I can choose. Because for a long time in my life, I did not have the proper tools to deal with stress and anxiety. My anxiety actually used to own me. And if you're listening right now, if you're dealing with stress and anxiety that feels like it owns you. I have helped thousands of people, introducing them to breathwork and meditation and presence into their lives with the M21 guide this morning, 21 minute guide. I want to give it to you for free. If you're this person, if this resonates, to take that first step in controlling stress management, to learn about breathwork. In this guide, you're gonna get a week long breath work challenge as well as six science backed morning practices that are guaranteed by research to increase your vibration and frequency throughout your entire day. Just go to wellnessforce.com m21, that's wellnessforce.com m21 and download your free guide today. Now let's drop in for this exciting conversation recorded on my couch. That's how it's gonna feel for all of us together having this deep dive with the one and only Sarah Gustafson. You're fascinating. Which is why, by the way, thank you for being in my house. I appreciate you coming here.

Thanks for welcoming me into your house.

Oh, yeah, we were already looking at my grandma's cannolis and the original vitalogy book from 1907. And we're both just like, appreciating the fact that we're just one layer in these thousands and thousands of layers before us, and then thousands that'll come after.

Yeah. It's so fascinating.

It's so interesting, like, why we're even here. And I, I talk about this on the show all the time, like, what is actual consciousness, you know? Yeah. And you actually, you speak from a different place that a lot of women I found online don't speak from. And, and it really, it really moved me because I thought, here's a woman that she's obviously fitness minded, wellness minded, but yet you have this other side of you that's this women raise hell brand. And it's about, like, really speaking the divine feminine right now with where she actually is, not where she was 100 years ago, maybe not even a hundred years from now, but like, literally in this moment.

Right.

And I, I wrote down some definitions because I just wanted to jam with you.

Okay.

The first definition I would love to hear is what. What actually do you believe that the feminine is now, like, when people say the word feminine.

Feminine, okay. Feminine, I believe, is nurturing, balancing duality, being able to receive, and it's endurance, right. It's being able to encompass and work to support communities. And I really think the one word that stands out is nurturing is feminine. And that's the one thing that has always been so much so hard for me to attach and connect to with being feminine. Because I'm. I'm very much in the animus of being a masculine woman. And nurturing has been difficult for me especially. And I have three girls, I have three daughters, three kids. But I think that's really what defines a woman, is we nurture, we're creative, and we grow things and we build things, right? And so whereas the men, right, they are the inventors, and the women are like, the feminine energy is what helps breathe in the creation of that and nurturing that and the capability of breathing the fire and energy into that, becoming something.

It's the Kali energy, right?

So without that, it can't ever be something. And so feminine is just like looking outside and seeing the trees blowing in the wind, Right? And the masculine is the tree standing firm in it. That's what I think of.

That is a really cool definition because. No, it's funny. In my men's groups, one of my leaders used to say, you know, our work is to be the oak, to stand tall and be the oak, not to be. The oak bends in the breeze. The oak doesn't just stay there rigid and firm like the trees, and the branches move around. So I feel like part of being a man, especially in this age right now, is being surrendered to a man's own feminine quality.

Yeah.

And that right there, that one little part is, I think, the. The biggest learning curve. We had Boysen Hodgson on the show. He's the founder of the Mankind Project, and he said that right now, women's empowerment happens so quickly that we haven't had time as men to grieve the death of the old masculine.

I agree. And I love that guy. Yeah, he's great. And that's true, like, because I think there were so many stages of. Of women's movements that there wasn't really time or space within each movement for men or women to adjust or process that. Because there was the revolution in the 60s, and then there was the 80s, and there was the early 2000s. And with each movement, there was, like, this theme attached to each movement. And in each theme, they totally just emasculated men in new and different ways. And men just kind of had to, like, hang their head and put their tail between their legs and deal with it. And it was. There was no grieving. There was no processing. There was no ceremonial, like, well, this is the way it is now.

There was no ceremony to pass the power so that we all equally can thrive. No, it's just like, here it is. This is the new construct. Deal with it.

Yes.

And it was very quick, I think, very abrupt.

And it showed up as, like, caricatures in TV shows and in the media and advertisements and commercials, and it just. It became almost like a joke with each movement.

Do you have a sense that the reason that it spikes so quickly, like, we see boss Babe and boss this and, like, all this, like. Like, really almost angry. Not. Not that all boss Babe brands are angry. I'm not saying that, but there's almost like this pain body that Toll talks about where when there's a ripple in the water, I feel like we're experiencing the pain body still rippling from when women were treated like property.

Yeah, I think it's still there. I still have it. Yeah, I still have it. And case in point, you know, my partner and I, Alex, we got in a fight this morning, the dumbest fight. And we get in fights a lot. I mean, that's where the passion is in a relationship, and we can talk about that later. Without it, what relationship is there?

And conflict Is part of relation.

Yes, it's healthy. I think we talked about it in one of the chats or something on online at one point. It's like, love is supposed to be hard. It is supposed to take work, and a lot of people kind of just ditch it and move on. But so we had a fight this morning. And so for context, talking about this angst thing is that he made a comment about, like, well, I'll take the car and then I'll bring it back. Whereas, like, he could have just taken an Uber. And I was like, well, that's kind of silly. Why not just take an Uber and I'll drive? He said, well, I'm concerned about, you know, you getting in and out of the. The garage. And for him, he was saying that in a loving way. But for me, I received that. Feminine receiving, I received that as. So he just doesn't think, I can fucking get a car out of the garage.

Right.

I can just date three human beings and have my body split in half and raise children and start businesses and sell companies and do all these things, but I can't reverse a car out of a garage. Like, so those are all the thoughts going on in my head and all those patterns that come up. So, yeah, that angst still resides in me today. So much so that I'm unable to receive what the message was that he was actually trying to provide for me, which was, you're gonna have three kids alone by yourself.

You.

You're, you know, they're all going to be yelling and la, la, la. And it is. It's like a tiny, tight garage space. And he was just trying to make things easier for me. Yeah, that's it. And we got in this fight and I'm just huffing and puffing. So, yeah, there's that angst. The ripple is still there.

Yeah.

And it does interfere. And so I do feel like there's a lot of that messaging going on. And I recognize it also in myself still to this day. But I see it and it's in this, what I call spiritual activism. And I don't call it. I didn't make this up. I forgot.

Spiritual activism, yes.

There's what I refer to as STDs, Spiritually Transmitted Diseases. The common one people talk about is spiritual bypass. Then there's spiritual materialism. Then there's spiritual bypass. Materialism.

Bypass materialism. And then there's one more we know about bypassing. Like, we've talked about bypassing a lot on the show. Like people that say good vibes only yes. Which doesn't exist. I don't think that ever will exist. And there's the material. What's spiritual materialism?

Spiritual materialism. It's basically when you kind of project that any sort of spiritual practice or thought or belief is going to save you or get you to that thing that. That epiphany, that divinity, that, whatever. But really you're using that to protect your ego, and so you avoid anything outside of that. So it's really actually just ego driven.

Can you give us an example?

Yoga. People who go to yoga because they believe that that makes them more spiritual or church.

This is like what JP Sears jokes about.

Yes, you know it is.

He's wearing like the tights. He's like.

Exactly.

This outfit's way more spiritual than yours.

Right.

You know this you.

Right. Or having crystals all over the place because they make you more spiritual. Or only wearing ego hides behind.

I've never heard of that before. It's such a cool concept.

Yeah.

What was the third one? So there's the materialism, there's the bypassing, and then there's another one.

That was the one. I was just. I had a brain fart. Where did it go? Here it is.

We'll come back to it.

Activism.

Oh, spiritual activism.

Yes. That was the one. I actually had written it down. That's where the.

I love that you brought notes. This is awesome.

I was writing notes this morning. I was just. So spiritual activism is what a lot of these women's movements do. And activism is still a form of violence because you're segregating, you're dividing. This is right, this is wrong. This is me. This is them. I'm kind of like the holier than thou or my belief against your belief. And so, you know, it's rather than deciding that, like, my truth versus your truth, because one truth could have just as equal of a truth as the other truth. So you're not asking yourself that, you're dividing it.

So what about these people that say, look, I'm going to speak my truth right now? That can also be an excuse for them to be kind of mean or a jerk or hurtful to the other person. And they'll hide it by saying, this is my truth if you don't accept my truth. Well, that's. That's your problem. It's my truth.

That's spiritual narcissism.

Spiritual narcissism.

That's another std.

Okay, so this is what I see a lot. We're here in the Encinitas bubble, and I'm sure you're going to be here for a while, right? Like another week. So you're going to see people that wear like the big crystal and they walk around and you're going to be like, wait a minute. See, is he doing activism? Is he like materialist for spiritual. But there is a lot of men and women here that I've met and there's beautiful people here. I'm not. I'm not dousing Encinius with hate. I love Encinius. Why I live here.

But.

But I do sense when I come across certain people that there is this holier than thou, like I'm more spiritual than you, this narcissistic component. But I don't see that too much in Austin. What's it like in Austin?

There's little bubbles here and there in Austin for sure. Yeah. Austin is still very young. California, especially Southern California is like, man, they've been here for a long time and it's really hard when you're this close to the Pacific Ocean to not have that spirituality kind of like really flood through you. So I feel like it's been here for a while. Austin's still pretty new, like since maybe the 70s. A lot of the San Francisco people kind of came into Austin and that they were the original hippies in the 70s and then the hipsters came. So it's still new. There's not a lot of spiritual elitism in Austin yet.

It feels like it's a sister city though, like San Diego, like Encinitas and Austin.

Yeah.

They feel like they're sometimes walking on the same frequency.

Yeah. Because there's a lot of California transplants in Austin.

Yeah.

And so it's very, very Southern Cali in Austin. They call it the, the Blue island in the middle of the Red Sea. Because Texas is pretty widely known as very conservative state. But Austin is very not.

Did you grow up in Texas?

In Austin.

Oh, you grew up in Austin?

Since I was 10.

Born and raised.

Not born. I was born in Kansas and then lived in Virginia and then when I was 10, moved to Austin.

When you were young, did you have health issues or were you a pretty healthy kid?

Oh, no, I was sick since I was seven.

What were you sick with?

So I just had a really shitty immune system. No one really knew what was wrong with me when I moved to. And now this was a spiritual thing because it kind of isn't everything we.

Do spiritual kind of pretty much whether we know it or not.

Yeah. Very, very much connected to that when I was 7 or 8 and we lived in Virginia. My sister was in a car accident and my mom kind of sent me away for a month so she could take care of my sister. It was very, very severe. And some things happened to me when I went to stay with this family. And on a very soul level, I learned that I don't want to be sent away. So when I got back with my family, sure enough, I developed an autoimmune issue. And like clockwork, I was developing these chronic infections so bad that I had become resistant to antibiotics. So I got this ear infection that was resistant to all antibiotics and it traveled to my brain and I had to be put into the ICU. And when I was recovered from that, by age 8, since then, I was just always sick. So from 8 until 21, I was just. Every three months, I had really bad viruses, infections, you name it. I suffered from migraines, everything. But because antibiotics didn't work for me, they had to put me on steroids. And you know what steroids does to take prednisone. Yep.

Yes. This is what happened to me. We have a very similar childhood. Seven years old, though. Zero through seven is where we get all the imprinting.

Yeah.

So right at the edge of your, of your seven year window, you were getting. Life is hard. This is rough. Like your nervous system must have been.

Yeah, I'm always trying to catch up, always trying to catch up with my peers. I'm always trying to catch up with work, school, and I loved soccer, but I was always missing practices, always missing games. So I always kind of felt like the outsider. And so, yeah, I was just always, always sick and we were always moving, so I was always the new kid on top of that.

Military family?

No, my dad was a salesman.

What was he selling?

He was in the semiconductor industry.

Oh, okay.

So whatever country that he was most at, like Spain or Japan, we were moving to the state that got him the best flights, so whatever airport he needed to be at. So we finally made it to Texas and that's, you know, that we stuck here for the most part there. And so, yeah, I was just always, always sick. And prednisone, your development up, Prednisone bad.

Crushes you. Anybody that, that's had issues when they're a child knows that when the gut microbiome is altered early, it sets up an adult life of just challenges. Yeah, like challenges that I don't think a lot of people understand.

Yeah, bad.

So types of challenges you go through when you're a teenager, though, because childhood, I mean, zero through seven, that's that's hard enough. But then to have those health issues when you're like, first day of high school, I feel like crap. You know, what's going on?

Oh, my God. Yeah. No, I was so. Years of antibiotics and then years of prednisone, I was just like. Especially the awkward years of middle school. Like, I had the worst acne. I mean, I didn't want to leave my house. I begged my mom to homeschool me. There was hardly a spot on my face that wasn't just a bright red dot. I mean, I. Not enough makeup could, like, cover it. It was so embarrassing, so mortifying. I ballooned up. Like, I was an active kid as much as I could be, but I ballooned up, gained weight, and it wasn't like pudge. It was just like bloat. And so it was everywhere. Like my chin, my face, my cheeks, around my eyes. And I was just so awkward. I had migraines. My. My skin, my fingernails were like, you know, it looked like. It made me look like I had 80 year old hands and nails.

And this is not confidence building for high school.

No, no, no. It's terrible. It's terrible. And on top of that, I felt, like, very hypersensitive to all the emotions, feelings, and thoughts of people around me too.

And.

And I had always been that way, and I had always been very creative and that I went to. My parents were, you know, Evangelical Lutheran and so very conservative. And I was the youngest of four. So, like, compounding on top of feeling super awkward, I was also kind of expected to be very, like, very good.

Have your shit together.

Yeah.

Best foot forward.

Yeah. Don't. Don't express yourself.

Wow, this is like a cocktail for internal pressure. It's like, okay, look a certain way, everything's okay. Whatever happened in childhood, just deal with it.

You're in high school, don't wear your hair like that. Don't wear symptoms.

So at what point did you just finally hit the bottom? Because I. I'm feeling all this energy from you, and I'm like, there's got to be a bottom where you said enough is enough.

Yeah, there was a bottom. I mean, because, like, I kind of skipped over all the bullying that I'd gone through.

Were you overweight in high school too?

I wasn't.

Like you said, you're like.

I was like, really poofy and, like, kind of chunky. And then I lost a ton of weight when I got sicker and sicker. But like, in middle school, they redrew the district lines and Bust out into an inner city school. So there was, like, one busload of white kids who were kind of privileged middle class who went to an inner city school. And that was, like, recipe for disaster. Of course, I was kind of excited because I have, like, lots of empathy. But no, they were not. I had. I was. Got beat up all the time, punched in the back of the head, hair pulled all the time because these kids didn't like my privilege. They hated my privilege. I got thrown down the stairs. I was stabbed in the knee one time because one kid was mad I wouldn't let him copy my test. And, yeah, I was stabbed in seventh grade. And then by 10th grade, I was sexually assaulted. And that's when the bottom went out. It was, like, only a month or two after my best friend was killed in a car accident. And I just wasn't getting the support I needed from my family. And because that was sort of like, keep it hush, hush, put it under the rug. A lot of the kids who went to my school also went to our church, and if everybody finds out, like, oh, my gosh. So it just seemed like everything in me, all of the voices inside of me had been repressed and suppressed for so long, and I was just like, all of this, no, I'm done. I went to my school counselor. I said, I need to do something. So that's when I started this program and worked with her and some other counselors in other schools called Teens Against Dating Violence. And once a week or every two weeks, we all go to different schools and talk with girls about dating violence or what it looks like to have healthy relationships. And then a year later, I was on Oprah talking about this.

Wait, hold the. Hold the tape. You were on Oprah?

Yeah, when I was 16.

This is so cool. This is why I love getting to know people live on a podcast. Like, I didn't know that about you.

Yeah.

What was that like going into Oprah and did you have to share what happened?

Yes. Yes.

And at this point, what did that make you feel?

I was very nervous, but I was also like, this is what feels right for me. Like, this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to share my experience so that I can help other people. And I also knew that this couldn't have been more of a nightmare for my mom.

Her greatest fear brought to life.

Right.

Not just in the community, but on Oprah.

Right. Like putting all our dirty laundry out.

There in the world.

Right. But I knew that this was my truth. This is me being authentic. And sharing my experiences like, this was my journey. This is what I'm supposed to do.

Oh, well, this is probably the energy that I felt from you in that first video that I saw with you and Allison. Like, you speak from this place of. It's a knowing, but it's not. It's not a facetious knowing. I'm not saying, like, oh, you're. You're pompous or anything, or you're holier than. Though I'm saying I don't know. You have this. You have this quality. You have this, like, feminine leadership quality to you. And now I understand where it comes from a little bit better.

Yeah.

But I'm curious, like, when you're on Oprah to now, what made what. What about you made you choose not to be angry forever at the masculine?

Well, yeah, so that's. That's just the thing. I don't know exactly what it was. And you say knowing, which is funny because I always called it my knower that just. There's this thing in me that just. Yeah, I called it my knower.

It's not a cocky. It's just like a calm knowing.

It's almost like this entity that hangs out with me that tells me it's a knower. So the individual who did assault me, I just. I was not ever really angry at him. I was more so because I just. I've always been empathetic. Like I said, I've always been very sensitive to people's energies, their thoughts, their feelings. And that's also been a great weakness of mine as well, because it's not that I excuse what they do. It's just that I understand why people do what they do always. And that. That, you know, everybody in my family and. And, you know, teachers, mentors, have always warned me that that's going to get you run over all the time. That's gonna. You're gonna get taken advantage of. People are going to use you. And they have, you know, many, many times. But that doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is understanding the collective understanding the whole. Understanding the all. And I'm a part of that. And so whether I'm a victim of something, I also have to understand. I have victimized others as well. And as a product of being a victim, I then victimize men as a product of that, because I emasculated myself in order, subconsciously, in order to make myself not attractive to men, because I thought that would make me safe.

So.

So I went out on this whole thing of making myself very Masculine bodybuilding, make myself look tough. I walked around with this, like, look on my face, like, is this what.

They say it's called, like, resting bitch face?

Yes. I just always looked like I was mad. If a guy looked at me, I just, like, keep looking straight forward. That's emasculating. That's like, you know, if a guy tried to talk to me and be nice, I'd roll my eyes or like, you know, and walk away. And I did that for many, many years. And I look back and it, like, almost breaks my heart now because, you know, in my head I was just making myself firmly believe they just wanted to me. That's it. That's all they all want. And that was just my anger convincing me of that. That's just survival. That was just the limbic system just making me, you know, you're just. You need to survive. But in. In the consequence of that was I hurt a lot of men. And when I came to that realization after my divorce, my. With my ex husband, that was a terrible divorce, and it was very painful. And I left that divorce feeling very victimized again. But I said, you know, like, when I went through a lot of healing process of that, even though he did a lot of things that are not excusable, I had to ask myself, and this is where women have a hard time, right? Like, with healing is being brutally honest with yourself, especially if you feel like a victim. Because when you're a victim or you feel like a victim, asking questions like, how did I participate in this? How. How was I involved in these things? And that's very hard when you're feeling like you've been oppressed. And I really came into these realizations and looked back at how badly I hurt my ex husband, how badly I emasculated him, how badly he must have felt when my kid would ask me to open the jar instead of him and saying things like, mommy has the muscles, not you, and things like that, because. And I would laugh, you know, and it was just, you know, it just made me really spend several years diving into the masculine and the feminine to really understand that. And I came and looked at myself in the mirror and said, like, I'm no longer going to do that.

Researching and diving into masculine and feminine is one thing. Embodying your lessons is another. So. So it's obviously, you're a researcher.

Oh my.

You're a scholar. Like, you love. We talked, you know, about. We love history. We love the story. We want to know why, like, why does it happen? Yes, But. But Embodying is such a different skill set.

Yes.

Such a different intelligence. So what did you embody specifically? To move through the anger and let the anger go towards the masculine.

That's the hardest part really is to sit with your feelings and to be. Because it's not comfortable. So I, you know, four years of letting myself feel things was a new experience for me. And we're talking no drugs, no alcohol, no nothing. You just have to feel it. That's it.

No excessive working out.

No.

No excessive shopping.

Nope.

No watching Netflix for 20 days.

I didn't work out, I didn't train, no drugs, no nothing. And I mean it. Like, if anything's going to make you grow or, or turn you insane, that's it. Because so many people, you know, I mean, that will look at our culture, you know, we've got prescriptions for Xanax, prescriptions for, you know, anxiety, depression, everything you, you, you can think of that, that will numb the, the cry of our body is telling what, what, what our body's trying to tell us, right? Like here's, here's a pill for that or here's a bar to go to to do this, or here's an activity to, you know, swallow everything up and distract yourself from that. And so getting myself out of that, which is, you know, and one thing that I've always done is dive into books and dive into learning and dive. Like I spent 12 years in university.

And that can be a distraction of its own.

That's an addiction.

Hey, I'm a study freak. All I do is study, but I never actually take the words and apply them to real life.

Paul, check. Put me on a three month fast of no learning. Like I'm not allowed to learn anything for three months because I'm so addicted to like reading studies and research and learning stuff.

This is what's going on with the paleo community right now. Everybody wants to talk about fda, FDN and what's going on with the microbiome and are you methylating properly and blah, blah. It's like, hold on, are you sleeping at night? Let's go back to the basics. Always. Yes, but, but yen to go back to, to this releasing trauma and anger towards the masculine. I don't know what it's like to be a woman and I don't know what it's like to be a woman that's been, you know, perpetrated against by a man. But I can only imagine how visceral that coding might be. Like how visceral down that might go so for the people listening, for the women listening, that maybe sense inside of them, there's still that edge, that anger towards the masculine. Like, could you give them guidance or a process? I know this is part of what you do with primal fusion on one side of the health equation.

So. Yeah. So if you felt like you've been. So if you have been a victim, whether it's, you know, physically or through violence or of. Of anything really, like, you are going to have a visceral programming in you, like, that's just part of the limbic brain. We have three brains actually. You know, the neocortex, the limbic brain, and then the, you know, subcortex. So you have the thinking brain, the doing brain, and the being brain. And the doing brain is the one that's. That's the visceral and that's the sensual. That's what makes our experiences, you know, gives it meaning. And so that's the one that's going to remind you, like, oh, you smell something that reminds me of this or a song that reminds me of this. And so that's the one that's the hardest to, like, deprogram.

Yeah.

And same for the thought. So if you have an emotion that comes up, that emotion can remind you of something else that may not have anything to do with the thing. And so then the programmed thoughts will then come up and you may not have control of that. So my, my advice is brutal honesty. And so that's why I say women who raise hell. The reason I say that is not the angst. It's not to have women go out there and protest and. And burn flags and bras. It's about raising your own hell inside yourself. Is about turning the honesty inside yourself. Raising your own, you know, turning into words and burning that down.

Yeah. Oh, I love, I love that. Because when I first read it, I was like, wait, what does she mean, women raising hell? Because when I read that, I think like, oh, like women going out and revolting and like possibly burning down buildings. But it's not about that. It's about getting the hell out.

Right.

Of the pain that may be caused inside.

You know, Paul always says, you know, Paul Chek, he said, you know, what is hell? When he asks, you know, what is hell or what is the devil? The devil is. That's, that's the thing that lives between your ears. Right, right. And the devil, you know, he says, is better than the devil. You don't know. And so when I thought of women who raise hell, a lot of people will see that as women with angst going out there. And I'm going to tell everybody feminism, right? But that's who it attracts. It attracts those women, and that's who I want to attract. That's who I want to talk to, because those are the women who need to hear my message, because then I'm going to flip the coin on them, and that's what I'm going to tell them. The truth. The truth. And so that's my point, is that's how I address most clients, that's how I address most women, is I kind of provoke a lot of that. I kind of poke a little bit of the. The. The triggers. And I do that first by throwing myself under the bus because I. I don't hold anything back in terms of, like, what I've been through. I don't put on a facade about my. My life. My life is not perfect. My partner and I, we fight all the time, right? But here's how we get through things, that. Here's how we look ourselves in the mirror. Here's how we teach each other how to grow and how we get past stuff and why we are so happy in spite of these things. And, you know, I. I've been through all of these challenges, and here were my realizations, and I'm very open about that. I don't kind of hide anything. I don't have shame about anything that I am or have been. And then I. I will kind of poke out a little bit of uncomfortableness about, like, what I know women are hiding, what I know, how we manipulate, how I know that we victimize ourselves and how we blame and point fingers and hide behind these masks. And that tends to trigger a lot of anger.

What do you. What do you actually think women Want now in 2019? If you could be the voice for women right now, what is that? Like, what do women really want from men?

I think we, you know, women a lot of times say we want equality, but I don't think that's true because we have equality and we have power. I mean, we pretty much control the economy.

Yeah. 80% of all buying decisions in wellness are women.

You know, I don't. I truly don't know. Honestly, women, it's funny.

You're like, I don't know what women want.

Truly. It's funny. I think. I think women don't know what they really want. Let's just be honest there.

Do you ever have a sense that with the pace of the narrative changing so fast, that women actually need to speak out Loud to figure out what they want as time goes on.

Yes. I think women have not felt heard truly long enough and felt listened to long enough. They just want the truly know what they want. I think, you know, there's studies out there that like, you know, only 80% of women are having orgasms with intercourse. Or 80% of women are not. Are not having orgasms with intercourse. Like, they have to stimulate, like, manually or orally to get a. To get an orgasm. Like, that's, that's the. You know, to me, like, there's no connection. So without connection, you're not going to have a orgasm through intercourse.

I want to go back to the embodiment because you said that you're a scholar and you love to go into the books and oh yeah, there's this bridge between, like, the knowing and right. But there is a part of you that is beyond just the scholarly. And it's not from a place of hurt either. Like, you used your hurt to motivate you for a while, I'm sure, as we all do. But then you probably got to this place where you don't feel the need now to go and read incessantly because you've been in this embodiment stage for quite some time. I mean, it's why you're working with Chuck. It's why I'm so inspired to talk to you. So what is it about you that embodies this quality? The knower you called it before. What is the embodiment of this? Self love, self appreciation for what you've been through. And then the letting go process, you know, the embodiment of that letting go process of the old past shit. Because that's really where we're at in the conversation. We're talking about emotional intelligence to connect to our primal selves. But when it comes to the physical, it's easier said than done to always be eating healthy foods. But what if it's not about just the macronutrients you're eating? And what if it's more about what's going on deep down in the mitochondria in your cells? It's one thing to eat chicken and broccoli. It's another thing to deliver ashwagandha, spirulina, chlorella and superfood adaptogens directly into your bloodstream. This is where the micronutrients are delivered. This is where the energy comes from in the mitochondria. And this is why every single day I drink organifi green juice. I also enjoy the red and the Gold, but specifically with the green. These plant adaptogens, the ingredients in organifi, have been proven to potentially aid in stress reduction and energy production. And you can get the discount, the deep one, 20% off. I promise you. I've tried to actually scour the Internet for an hour and 20% from wellness force was the biggest discount you get out there where you grandfathered in with us. To get the biggest savings and the most energy, just go to Organifi.com WellnessForce and use code WellnessForce for 20% off. The men and women that have heard you have learned how you've gone through, but now that you're at this place where you're teaching and instructing, what does that embodiment look like for you now?

It's funny, you know, like, I've gone through so many stages in my life, but that's always been a part of me. Like I don't, I think even in my. On a conscious level and an ego level, in different stages of my life, I've been, I've worn many masks, but that's always been a part of me of wanting to. I've always wanted to break out of and present and demonstrate this authentic me. I've always been, as my family calls me, the tie dye sheep of my family. I've always been the rebel without a cause. Well, I've always had a cause, but to society it's without a cause. I've always been the anti or the against the grain, the embodiment of me has always just been the truth seeker, the truth teller. And as I've been diving further and further into past lives, past experiences and ancestral karma and history, I'm finding out, like, that's just part of the fabric of my soul. Like, that is my soul. Like, that's what, that's why my soul chose this family, chose this life. Because that's what I'm developing, because I've always been that in many, many lives.

Do you feel like your soul knew that this was the lesson you needed to learn?

Oh, for sure.

How so?

Well, maybe not so much as the lessons that I needed to learn, but the things I needed to develop and strengthen in order to continue this legacy, to continue this doing of what I needed to do.

What is it that you need to do?

I need to share. Like I need to help others uncover the truth of themselves. And so if that means that I need to break open myself over and over and over again publicly and then put myself back together again just so that I can help others achieve the same and let them know that they're not alone. Then I'm going to do that. It's just like very many people who have done the, you know, I mean, I'm not comparing myself to other crucified heroes, but that many of those heroes who've done that, it's like that you're being crucified. And then others look to that hero's journey and go, they look at the overarching message there. And it's not about sacrifice, it's about uncovering your truth. And you gotta decondition that, break it open, then put yourself back together again whole. And you don't do it just once.

Yeah. And there's tools that you've learned specifically, which I didn't know about. Before we had this conversation, I was doing a little bit of digging on you. Neurosomatic therapy, you talk about these five stages of rehabilitation. What is neurosomatic therapy and how does that relate to this conversation actually of healing, transformation, and being that light for people that need the healing.

Well, neurosomatic therapy, he, my partner does the NST is short for neurosmatic therapy. It sounds like something like you were doing yesterday on some sort of level. It works with the body on a somatic level. So it's almost like. So it's soft tissue manipulation, working with the peripheral nervous system. So that's like, you know, you've got the central nervous system, peripheral nervous system, and every, you know, everything that is along the lines of the sensory. Your smell, your taste, your sight, your. All the senses. Right, that program information into the limbic system. So if your emotions are attached to, to any sort of sense, sensory information, it gets stored into the body. And so what NST does is when you have like a tight muscle, say, you know, in your serratus or the late levators, and you've just got, you know, you keep injuring your shoulder, you keep injuring the neck, or your neck is always tight on the right side and you have to go to the chiropractor constantly, all the time for that. And it's never getting better. Well, nst, what it does is it addresses the muscle, but you don't address the muscle, you address the person. So it's going in there and releasing the muscle, but basically releasing the emotions with it.

What is the actual mechanism of. Are you palpating the tissue quickly? Are you doing some kind of reiki while you palpate the tissue? What's going on when you're actually addressing the spine?

It's all of the above. Yes. So you're talking while you're. While you're doing. You're asking questions, you're getting feedback. Sometimes people just start laughing. Sometimes they just. A lot of times they start crying.

Is part of it where you just hold someone, like, where you put their hand. You put your hand on them and just hold them and just send energy to that space on their body?

A lot of that is. I do that. Alex does most of, like, the nst. Now, he's very kinesthetically clairvoyant. So what, wherever someone's hurting, like, he doesn't even ask questions. He'll just put his hands over the butt and he can feel in his body where that person is injured. And then he'll go right over to the body and he'll just start asking questions, and he will hear in. In his own mind, like, what this person is, like, where that trauma came from and starts working through that. And people who go to him for the NST have, you know, he sees a lot of, like, professional athletes like NFL, mma, UFC go to him, because those are the type of elite athletes that, like, just constantly injured. Constantly, all the time.

And they can't afford the highest level of sport. I mean, they're literally seeing what the human body can do.

Yeah. And they don't. They don't appreciate being injured. They can't afford to get injured. They don't want to get injured. So any injury, they're like, I'm going to fix this right now. And they know Alex can take care of it very quickly.

What's your half of Primal Fusion? Because you guys have this together, right? Do you have staff you work with?

It's just he and I, it's you two.

So that creates a unique challenge of interoperation and being in a marriage. And how do you balance all of that?

That's like. That's where the spiritual growth goes. Like, because being in a relationship and running a business is like, being a relationship is spiritual growth. Now you add a business in there. That's because in the business, I'm the CEO, and in the relationship, he's the CEO. So at the end of the day, we got to switch hats. And if we're, like, really busy in the business, it's really hard to give him the hat at the end of the day or vice versa. So it does. It takes a lot of balance. Can't say that it's perfect ever. Ever.

Why did you call it Primal Fusion?

Because basically, you're fusing together all of the primal needs without one. None of them Work. So if you don't have your diet in place, exercise isn't gonna work for shit. If you don't have your rest and recovery in place, none of the others are gonna work. If you're not happy, then forget doing any of the other stuff. Like, forget it. And if you're not working on yourself, like inner. Inner work and taking responsibility for that, then, like, just, why invest in all of the other work? It's just, you know, you're asking for Groundhog's Day, it's just going to keep over and over and over again. You're wasting a lot of money. So it's just, that's why you gotta fuse it all together. All your primal needs need to fuse perfectly, be imbalanced for that.

I remember when I was talking with Paul, we did like, we spent like seven hours at his house.

Yeah. He's amazing.

Yeah. But there was this one moment that. That and I feel the same kind of energy with you where he talked about, you know, how do we know when our society has. Is reaching its demise or it's in trouble? It's when do we stop spending time with ourselves? When do we stop dancing with people? When do we stop telling stories? And when do we lose the mystery of life? These primal things, right? Like, what do you see? I'm sure there's a common thread with your clients, athletes aside, because I think athletes walk a totally different life. Yeah, but. But with everyday people that you might meet in regards to these things that are clues that society's reached its demise, what's a common thread with the clients that you're seeing? That they don't have enough primal in their lives?

Man, the most common, so. Well, you asked. Had asked earlier. Like my part in primal fusion, I. So Alex works mostly with the athletes majority and. Or men. And I work mostly the majority with youth or women. And for me, on my side, what I see most, what they're missing, the primal, is happiness. For real. Like, they don't prioritize or understand or believe really the value of happiness. They, you know, like when I try to explain that we're going to program happiness into your work, it takes sometimes up to a year with a client to get them to start practicing this because they don't understand the value of this. And when they are getting upset because they're still six pounds away from where they want to be, I have to hammer it in, like, well, because you're not happy. And if you're not happy doing anything that you're doing, how can you expect Any return.

But, Sarah, what about calories in, calories out?

Yeah, calories in, calories out. Like, that can happen. Like, that can work for some people, you know, in the very beginning, just because on a physiological level, of course, if you have a lot of weight to lose, like, just physiologically, that's. That's impossible to not work. But if you're talking about somebody who's 20 pounds overweight and they've been going at this for a while and they're just stuck at this plateau, like, mentally and emotionally. If you're just, like, hating every bite you take and stressing out every single time you're prepping your food or going to the grocery store, and then you got to count your points, and then you gotta get, like, get on your fitness tracker app. You're like, what the fuck are you doing? Like, that's the energy you're putting into your food, and that's the energy you're putting into your body. And that's what you're supposed to, like, that's the energy. It's so you're putting into your energy.

Isn't it intoxicating, though, to the ego? Because I felt it. I know millions of people have felt it. Like, if there's the tracking element involved, if I'm doing everything I can, well, then it should work, right? And if it doesn't work, then, well, I'm just destined to be this way. Well, that way the ego can be right. But I think what scares the ego the most is I'm not going to follow a guide. I'm going to be intuitive. I'm going to listen on the fly and adjust on the fly. There's no PDF for that? No, there's no PDF for that. And I think the only way that it happens is when you get guidance from someone to walk you on that path.

That is the scariest part for a lot of people, which is why I think happiness part of the program is fought with so much resistance, is because you're being handed basically this box that says you're the most powerful person you have. You're the most. Like, you are in control of your life and every decision you make, you have the power. Like, you are the creator and you can make anything happen that you want to happen. And some people are so afraid of that power that they don't want it. Because they are afraid that once they recognize and embody that power, now they're responsible for it. And when they're responsible for it, shit, they could fail.

Damn. I've never heard it Explained like it's the responsibility of our power that people are afraid of as to why they don't harness it.

Yes. And that's the same thing that with women in relationships. The reason they don't want to face their truth in relationships and how they oppress men, how they emasculate men, is they don't want to face the fact that they are so powerful that they have actually contributed to the emasculation of men, that they are so powerful that they have attributed to their own victimization. And that's really a difficult truth to face.

I just got like a chill in my. I had to readjust my posture when you were talking because I'm sure we all can relate to this. Someone will say something and it'll strike the body with such an emotion that there has to be like a physical adjustment. And that's. I felt like I needed a physical adjustment. You said that. Because I. My sense is that there's two sides of the coin right now in relationships specifically, we'll just talk about men and women, even though any relationship can be any sex, hetero, homosexual, whatever. But we'll just say for the sake of this conversation, heterosexual relationships. My sense is that there's so much wounding from men from the mother and from women from the father, maybe not being there, whatever it is, our whole adult lives, whether we're talking about it or not, on a. On an under energetic current level, we're all healing. We're all healing day by day. Relationship, relationship. Look what happened with you and your husband this morning with the car. It's like, you know, we're all doing this. So my question for you is with that long winded pre frame for people that are beginning this journey like they're in a relationship and they're maybe just coming into episode, this is their first episode of Wellness Force and they're like, what is she talking about? What is this energy and all this stuff? But, but what's interesting is that I value you. I value your input because of what you've been through and what you've created and what you're doing now. And so for those people listening that are starting this journey of how do I actually open up this kind of a conversation with my spouse from a woman or a man's perspective? Like the starting point of the conversation you and I are having, how do they take that and put it into their relationship for the first time?

Well, you got to start with. Well, it would be almost. I would say you have to start with yourself first because you have to be able to have. You need to be able to be brutally honest with yourself before you open that conversation with somebody else in your relationship. Because if you're not willing to get your partner's feedback, that means that you're not being honest with yourself. So step one, you got to be honest with yourself. So if you're in a relationship with somebody and your partner is triggering you and you're, you know, he's not meeting my needs. He's not. He's making me feel this way. He's not listening to me, and he's doing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you're feeling very victimized. And, you know, he. You. You've got a huge list of everything that's wrong with him and why he's victimizing you or oppressing you or, you know, he's. All these bad things on that list. You have to be brutally honest with yourself first before you take the conversation to him, because, number one, he's not responsible for your happiness. You are. So you got to ask yourself on all these list of things that is wrong with him, first question is, is that true? No matter what it is that's wrong with him, you have to ask, is that true? Number two, does he have an opposing perspective that is equally true. And the truth is, yes, he does, and it is equally true, and it is equally valid. So that's. That's probably the number one way women emasculate men is because we act as though our feelings and needs trump theirs. Because women also still walk around on the conditioned belief that men's feelings and needs don't matter because they're men.

They can handle it.

Yeah. They shouldn't have needs and feelings. They're logical. So therefore, we're going to use and manipulate our needs and feelings by saying, you know, crying or tears or this is how I feel. Right. So be logical about this. Right. And be a man and support my feelings and needs. But in doing that, we have just neglected and trumped their needs and feelings. But guess what? They have feelings and needs, and they are just as valuable and equal. So that's. Number two. You need to be brutally honest with yourself and ask yourself, do they have an opposing need or feeling or view that is equally true?

Yeah.

And that's that. And if that is the case, then that's a conversation to be had, not argued. And then you got to ask yourself, like, what is my motivation? Do I have a motivation behind these feelings? And what is the belief behind these feelings? And what is missing? What is missing? With this belief, like, there's a belief behind here. What's missing?

Yeah. Like, you're this way because I believe that men are this way. So I'm going to project that onto you. Is that kind of an example you're talking about? Yeah, an example might be like, we all are coming from this heavy imprint from 0 to 7. So if a father's always gone and he only comes, like, I don't know, a handful of times a year, well, then if the man in a relationship is ever gone or he's taking care of responsibilities, maybe even if he's communicated it properly, it's still not received because there's that 0 through 7 imprinting that's being applied to the current situation.

Right. It's getting filtered. And just like my argument this morning with my partner, everything he was saying.

I love how honest you're being.

Yeah. Like, I'm just like, that's what. That's how I am. Like, I. I can coach and, and, and be a therapist all day long, but that doesn't negate me or, like, omit me from conflicts in my life. So I'm going to be very authentic and transparent about those things. And what a perfect way to have examples in real life for how these things come up. But with this. This conflict that we had, everything he was saying to me was being filtered through these dialogues and these narratives in my mind. And I had to go through this list, these questions, and it was so difficult. And he even came back and said to me, can you tell me something positive before I leave for my podcast? And I had to tell him, well, truthfully, I'm having a hard time saying something positive right now, all jumbled up in my mind. And, you know, we've got three kids running.

Ah.

And so he's like, okay, you know, and then he just left. And then, you know, when he got back, we're just. We're fine.

Yeah.

Like, nothing. Nothing happened. And we're like, you know, having a good time and have great conversation. But the truth is, it all gets, like, filtered through our own narratives. And women, what we do is we expect men to think the way we think, and that's. That's impossible. Men think with one side of the brain at a time. And women, we are able to think with two sides of our brain at the same time. That's why we are so good at manipulating. We truly are. And that's another way you need to be like women, I'm saying you, like, as in you women who are listening to this need to be very brutally honest with yourself is because you. I'm not saying, like, all women do this maliciously. We do this, like, unconsciously. We manipulate because we can be logical and emotional at the same time. And when you weave those things together.

Oh, God. This is the history for me. This has been my learning curve of the feminine. And actually something that came up yesterday. I mean, you've shared solshare, too. Like, what came up for me yesterday that I thought I had done a lot of work on was my anger towards the feminine.

Yeah.

Like, it came out, and I realized it was because when I was young, like, 0 through 7, my mom was dealing with a disease, bipolar. And so. Oh, yeah. And so it was hard for me to, like, have a emotional center of, like, is this okay? Is that okay? So there was never actually a calm space. And then I flashed forward and I could see it all in reverse where in my, you know, adolescence, I gained weight as a buffer because food became a way for me to be in control. Yeah. And then that led me to being overweight, which then. Women didn't like overweight kids, of course. And because I think we all. It's not that they don't like overweight people. It's that we sense when someone's overweight that they're processing something, and so it might not be as attractive. So that led me to having this bullshit belief that women only like men that have a perfect body. Women only like men that are this. Have. Make this much money. Women like men that have this kind of a house or this kind of a network, whatever it is. And I realized, looking back, like, that drove so many of my decisions in my life, was just trying to, like, get back at the feminine.

Yeah.

And I guarantee you, if men are being honest with themselves, half the men in the United States would raise their hands right now. Or more.

Yeah.

Because there's almost like this badge of honor where I've slept with this many women. I. I got her, man. You see that? It's like. It's like a braggart thing. And I really just, like, cried yesterday in the session. I just let a bunch of. It felt so amazing. But at the same time, it was really hard to let go of because there was a part of my ego that identified with that anger. It identified like, oh, well, I'm always going to have the upper hand and be in control because I say so, and I don't need to say so anymore. And it's funny. I'm going to Rythmia tomorrow to go have a plant Medicine experience for a week. And I thought it was, like, perfect timing. I didn't know the conversation was going to go this way, but I thought, like, this is very contextual to what you and I are talking about. Yeah, it's the deep, deep down soul fabric getting down in there. It doesn't make me less of a man to talk like this. It actually makes me an even more powerful man, which is what women want. Now, this narrative, though, might spark some people as saying, like, whoa, that's a little too deep. And how do you even go there in your sessions? Do you ever take people to that kind of a place? Oh, yeah, like where they're crying, where they're shaking?

Yes.

They're hacking out phlegm?

Yes.

Possibly.

Yes.

What do you call that? What is it?

Release. Right, Release.

It's so amazing, yet it's so hard.

Yeah. I mean, a lot of working with women, a lot of times when they work with me, they get angry. That's when. When they get angry, that's them resisting the emotion. They don't want the emotional release because there's so much shame, embarrassment of letting it go. Yeah, they don't want to let it go. And the reason they don't want to let it go. And a lot of women are going to upset with me when I say this, because a lot of women do. And I get accused very often of victim shaming and victim blaming because of this. And it's so not the opposite. What this is is victim empowerment, y'.

All.

It's victim empowerment because you have to realize, like, if you are a victim, the rising up from that, that's. That's the part of this. So these women get so mad when. When we get to that part of right there on the edge and you're about to release, then they get mad at me and I allow it. I know. I understand where that's coming from because that's when they project. They project because withheld emotion, if you withhold it or like, trap it inside for long enough, it turns into anger because that it charges. Like you said, it gets charged for long enough. Like, it builds up, it becomes anger and it becomes resentment. And, you know, when you hold on to anger, everybody knows that saying, it's like drinking your own poison and expecting the other person to die. And so it's not victim blaming, it's not victim shaming. If you don't want that to be released, you are choosing to be the victim. You're hiding behind the mask of a victim and choosing to be a Victim. So that you can blame the victim mask and. And blame the. Whatever has victimized you for your problems. And that is nothing but choosing to be powerless.

I want to pause right there because that was a big concept.

It is big.

So what. What I'm hearing you say is that when someone we're speaking, let's say using a woman as an example has had atrocious things happen, she can choose to hold on to that anger and use that anger to charge basically all the functions of her life. I mean, the anger can run every decision, her business, how she inter operates with her husband, like, how clean her house is, everything, what color tiles she.

Picks, how she raises her children, anything.

So at some point, though, like, the wheels will fall off the wagon. And it typically shows up in a health perspective like weight gain or hormonal imbalance or skin or something like that. Is there a point when. Is it unique to each person when they know they're at that point? Or is it pretty much everybody reaches a certain point where enough is enough? Because I've seen some people not reach that point.

It is unique to each person. There are people who will not ever reach that point. There are people who get that are just trapped in that forever. It will show up as obesity. Obesity is a form of protecting your body. So a lot of people end up in obesity because they are either consuming a lot of drugs and alcohol or food to protect their body, to protect their soul, literally their soul. It's a very unconscious thing. So they're protecting themselves. And the deeper and deeper and deeper you get into that, the harder and harder it is to get out. So, I mean, it's a life sentence for so many people.

I just feel like right now, like, can you and I both just give people a deep breath and the permission if this is sparking something in them, to write to you, like right now.

Absolute permission.

If you've been listening to this and you're feeling like the deep breath that I just felt, just write to Sarah. Where can they write to you?

Sarah? S a r a@primalfusionhealth.com yeah, because first thing you need to give yourself permission is to. To take that deep breath.

Take the deep breath. And this is how I want to wrap our time together. I wish I had more time with you. I want to do another conversation with you.

Let's do another one.

Deep. This was deep, but I feel like we go a lot deeper.

We can go way deeper. I think that's what she said.

Consensually, with permission. I'm about to do this breath work event here in San Diego. Here in Encinitas, we have. We have Soma Breath coming with Wellness Forest. There's going to be like 50 people in a room. We're going to be doing really unique breathing styles, which I'm so excited for. Yet at the same time, energetically, I'm already kind of holding space for it because I know, I know there's gonna be people crying. I know there's gonna be people processing things. How do you see breath work? It seems like right now it's evolving pretty fast. A lot of people are getting into breath work. I think we need to be really cautious right now that skilled practitioners are doing breath work. People with history, people with the acumen to hold the space energetically. How do you see breath work in your practice, and how do you see breath work unfolding in wellness?

Well, you know, I've seen it two ways. There's always two sides of the coin. Like I said, watch out for those STDs, spiritually transmitted diseases. You know, there's always hype and stuff. You know, and just again, if it doesn't feel right, ask yourself why it doesn't feel right. There's a lot of practitioners out there. There's a lot of people out there who are amazing with this stuff, but there's also people out there who are just the hype and saying, like, I can teach you how to breathe. I can teach you how to do this stuff. Now, Alex, you know, he. He's a very skilled breath practitioner. He's amazing. You know, he's. He's taught very many breathing classes and things like that. And he's had other people take his stuff and then go and start workshops off of his stuff. And then he went and saw that he was. Those people were teaching it wrong, and it hurts him. Not because someone, you know, basically took his stuff, because it's not his stuff, it's breathing right, but that someone was teaching it incorrectly and then that, you know. So what I feel about this is like, in terms of holding space for this stuff and different breathing practices is that first, just make sure you are breathing correctly. Right? Diaphragmatic breathing. If you're not breathing diaphragmatically, any type of breath workshop won't work. Right. Like, we. We had a client who went to a WIM HOF workshop overseas, and I've.

Heard interesting things about those workshops. Yeah, good and bad, right?

A lot of people who are not getting the full benefit of this workshop were because they actually didn't know how to breathe to begin with. And so, you know, because Wim.

Wim just says, says, breathe in and breathe out. Don't worry about it. He's been on multiple podcasts, and he says, just get the air in and get the air out. It's like, no, no. You could be doing all chest breathing. You're never getting down to your belly button.

Right? Yeah. So be sure you're breathing actually diaphragmatically, but full breath is like. I really do. I'm excited about this workshop you're doing, too, because I think.

I wish you could join us.

Yeah, me too. When is it?

It's in March 30th.

Oh, yeah.

This show will be out by the time. I'll be already back from rhythmia by the time this comes out.

Oh, I'm excited about rhythmia, too, because I've heard really great things about that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Because literally every cell in your body needs oxygen, and most of us are not providing all of that oxygen to our cells, and especially the ones in our lower extremities. And a lot of our trauma is stored in our reproductive area, which is below the belly button. And that's where we're not getting most of our breath out. And especially that's where we're not expiring our breath from. So a lot of these breathing exercises help us to expire the breath out, and that means, like, really contracting your lower abdominals, and that helps to release a lot of our trauma, a lot of our shame, a lot of, you know, deconstruct our conditioning around that, our sexual. And trauma. When I say trauma, I mean, like, our conditioning, our thoughts and what we're taught. And so I think that's great because it helps us to express ourselves. It helps us to, like, hone into our authentic selves. It helps us to uncover our masculinity, our femininity, and it helps us to move and helps your posture, helps your confidence. Yeah, I mean, all those things.

Why do you think that breath work is going to develop in the next year or so? I mean, you don't have a crystal ball. I'm not saying I need you to project, but what do you see, at least in Austin? Because I see it here in San Diego a lot where there's breath work. Work popping up everywhere.

Yeah.

Do you think that it needs to be regulated? Do you think that breath work needs to have some kind of governance, or do you think that would taint it?

I think it would taint it. I don't think it needs to be regulated. I do think just like, you know, any, you know, certification there, there should be some sort of, like, because with.

Personal training, there's certifications and trainings that, that are accredited, but there's no accredited breathwork training, so maybe there is. If you're listening and there is, please email me. Like, yeah, I've never heard of an ACCRED accreditation.

No.

QC of a breath work.

No. Or some sort of certification of completion, at least, because. Yeah. That we've seen people being taught wrong, like, literally backwards rhythm of breathing. We've. We've seen that. We've seen breathing workshops being taught for bodybuilders using belts. Like, like, how do you. How do you even breathe when you're wearing a belt? Like, I. We've seen this. So, like, in some ways, like, we, we don'. Like to have the whole. Like, everything needs to be regulated, but on some level, like, there needs to be some sort of, you know, oversight a little bit, you know, or, or just more education and a little oversight of the education. And, and the more education, the better. And so. But, you know, that goes back to spiritual activism. You know, the more you're activating, the more you're. You're creating violence. And so the way to shift it is to change just influence. So just more influence, the better.

Yeah. And in order to influence, there has to be a true, genuine being to influence.

Yeah.

Because I think right now, in our age of social media, it's easy to see influencers, but are they being in influence? Yeah, it's totally different.

And that goes back to STDs.

Again, it's more STDs. I love your acronyms. We're going to link all these in the show notes today. I have this final question for you. And again, like, we have to do this again, like a really amazing that it's this intersection of the physical, the emotional, the wellness. This is like where we're all trying to be is at this point, how do you see wellness now? Everything you've learned, all the learning thresholds of your life, how would you define wellness?

Wellness for me is, am I aligned with my physical body, mental body, emotional body, and my spiritual body? Like, are those in alignment? And if they're not, then I'm not. Well. And so often for me, my mental body is always just like, hypercharged, hyperactive. And the physical and the emotional and the spiritual suffer. Spiritual is always charged. Like, that's the fire that drives me. And then the mental body is always taking all the energy of everything because I'm constantly thinking, I'M constantly learning and. And all of that. And so it steals from my physical and emotional bodies, and it creates this storm of, like, I'm not allowed to process. I'm not able to process my emotions, therefore, I'm not able to express my emotions in a healthy way. And physically, I'm just drained. And, you know, so that's what wellness is to me. So if those are off or one stealing from the other, I need to check myself, like, before I wreck myself so physically, like, if I'm not putting as much energy into my physical body as I am into the mental, then, you know, I need to put the, you know, computer and books down and go move, go dance, go do some drumming and harmonize myself. And that's wellness to me. And to think and believe and feel and say and do all in alignment, you know, like, believe and think what I say and all of those what I do, like, and never backwards. So anything I put out there or write or say, like, you better believe. Like, that's what I'm also doing. That's why I'm always very transparent about my personal life, because it keeps me in check. Absolutely keeps me in check. And I'm very, like, I'm very avid about that, and I'm like, you know, my thoughts and my beliefs and my words and my actions, they need to be a straight line, because if there's a little blip in there, that means I'm off, and that's gonna create a disease in my body. And I truly believe that, and I'm not fucking around in this life.

Sarah, how do you pronounce your last name?

Gustafson.

Gustafson. Sarah gustafson. Primal. Primal fusionhealth.com is the website.

Yeah. Primal Fusion Health. Yeah.

Primal Fusion Health. Thank you for doing what you do.

You're welcome.

I just want to breathe and acknowledge that you do such great work in the world.

Thank you. Thank you for everything you do. Lots of gratitude and thanks for being.

Such a great member of the Wellness Force community. You're always in there communicating, dropping your knowledge. Like, just so much gratitude for you, and I'm looking forward to getting to know you and your husband even more. Thanks for coming on the show.

Thanks. And I look forward to our next time and hearing about arrhythmia.

That's right.

Yeah.

Okay. We're talking about this in the group, actually, and I would love to do a survey of maybe like, five or six topics of Sarah and I in the Wellness Force group. So go there. Wellnessforce.com group and until we talk to you again, which is going to be really soon. I'm wishing you love and wellness. Hey my friend, thank you for hanging out out and growing with me today. Everything you learned on this podcast starts with your morning practices. So from over 200 world class guests and counting, we've distilled the gems, the best of the best science backed practices down into a 21 minute morning system guaranteed to increase the positive flow in your day. Get this free and powerful 21 minute life changing system over@wellnessforce.com M21 if you enjoyed this episode, tap your first phone. Share it with someone you care about because that is how we all get better together. Supporting the show is easy. Leave us a five star review right now from your phone. It helps us reach other smart and conscious people like you. Either tap your phone and hit the link in purple that says review this podcast or go to wellnessforce.com review and this show doesn't stop here. We're continuing the discovering process in our private Facebook group. You can be a part of it. All you have to do is go. Go to wellnessforce.com group and I'll welcome you at the door. Okay, now you get to go out into your world and live your life well. So until I see you again real soon, I'm wishing you love and wellness.