Cannabis: SCIENCE of The World's Most Misunderstood Plant | Ryan Sprague @WellnessAndWisdom

I think cannabis meets a lot of people where they're at, where they're not really ready to go do an inner child healing workshop, but they might be open to the idea of, like, hey, let's pray before we interact with cannabis. Let's set an intention here, right? Let's set an intention to connect even with your partner, and so you can kind of meet them where they're at and allow them to experience what this whole world is with something like a plant medicine. And then you can teach them how to do it without it as well. Because I think that's one of the things that I focus on as much as possible, is that you don't need these medicines to access these things. They're only showing you what's already capable and already there in your life. But they show you, they give you the direct experience. So then you have motivation and inspiration to actually start diving into the real work and figuring it out.

Well, Ryan, we're here, man. I'm so excited. Yes, we have been looking forward to this. The master of conscious cannabis. This is a polarizing topic. A lot of people, they abuse it, but you put a beautiful spin on this. And this is consciousness. So you're wearing the highly optimized shirt.

Let's just start there. Yes.

Who are you? Which changes every day, so you don't have to go deep into the weeds with us. But who are you today, Ryan the soul. What's your mission on planet Earth? On a high level? Not too deep.

Yeah. I mean, really, my ultimate mission is to leave the garden of Earth greener than when I found it. And when I originally came up with that saying and applied it to my life, I wasn't really in what I'm doing now with cannabis. I was in the industry and whatnot. But as I started to think about that saying, I was like, you know, that's actually pretty on brand for what I do with cannabis, right? Leave the garden of Earth greener than when we found it. And when we think about the heart chakra being green too, there's so many different levels to that statement that as I started to resonate into it, I started to be like, you know, that statement really applies. So today, I'm a podcaster, right? I get to podcast with you, I get to adventure, I get to open up some amazing dialogue and. And then other times, I'm a coach, I'm a grower, a boyfriend, I'm a friend. I have many different faces that I wear. But today, I get to be a podcast with you, Josh. And I'm so excited.

Yes, me too. And it's interesting. Like, I get this a lot when I meet people, when I see them on camera versus when I meet them. You're tall. You're six. Three.

Yeah, six. Four.

Six four.

Maybe six. Five. Something around that. Yeah.

Do you have, like, a basketball or a volleyball background?

It's funny. Everyone asks me, if you want me to play knockout with you or around the world, I'm your guy. But real, real basketball, not so much.

Not so much. Oh, my gosh.

All right.

Well, there's so many ways we could start this. And what I was feeling into was just this conversation of yin Yang. You know, yin being the feminine, it's what receives energy. And then Yang being more masculine. Yang or yang, however you pronounce it. But. But cannabis is so special because the majority of cannabis plants, when I was looking up the research, they're feminine. Right. You want to grow and you want to harvest feminine plants. And I think that's so special because with all the ins and the shaking up that we're experiencing here on planet Earth right now, why do you think it's so special that many of the growers, yourself included, use feminine plants to give people, essentially, healing plant medicine. It's the ultimate plant medicine, really. I believe we're gonna talk about all the nuances, but why feminine energy and why yin when it comes to marijuana?

This is a beautiful question. You know, one of the things about cannabis that I found is that it feels very feminine in nature, and I imagine that's why people resonate with that. Being femin. I don't think there's any quantifiable science out there proving that it's feminine. But why I think it's so important right now in the world is that we've had this immature masculine energy running amok for a long time now. And with the age of Aquarius coming back in and so many men now starting to be like, you know what? Feeling things is pretty cool. You know, crying, not too bad.

You know, I mean, in the moment, it sucks, but it's good for us.

Exactly. It allows us to be able to hold space and be able to be there for the people in our lives and truly access what many people call the divine masculine. And, you know, the divine masculine. Divine feminine is kind of a cliche, kind of, like, silly term, but it does actually apply. And so I think it's thrown around a lot. But at the same time, in order for men to really be in touch with their emotions, they need to either do A lot of healing work. They can also work with medicines like cannabis. And I think that's one of the main reasons why I love cannabis so much, because men overall and women too, right? Because women have a masculine side. You know, they're coming more into this idea of femininity, but they're not fully there yet. And so I think cannabis meets a lot of people where they're at, where they're not really ready to go do an inner child healing workshop, but they might be open to the idea of, like, hey, let's pray before we interact with cannabis. Let's set an intention here, right? Let's set an intention to connect deeper with your partner, and so you can kind of meet them where they're at and allow them to experience what this whole world is with something like a plant medicine. And then you can teach them how to do it without it as well. Because I think that's one of the things that I focus on as much as possible, is that you don't need these medicines to access these things. They're only showing you what's already capable and already there in your life. But they show you. They give you the direct experience. So then you have motivation and inspiration to actually start diving into the real work and figuring it out. Because the actual experience with cannabis, with any other plant medicine, is just the P E A K peak experience, right? But if you just keep thinking that that experience is only able to be attained with plants, then cue patterns of dependency, especially with cannabis. Yeah, it's a big thing. Doctor. Yeah.

They're teachers. They're ultimate teachers. And all the plants, all the anim entheogens and the breath and the cold and the heat and the nonviolent communication. I mean, we have so many teachers in this world that are so powerful, yet we have to be willing to listen. We have to have the space inside of us to, first of all, be conscious and aware of what lessons are coming through. And then secondly, what kind of emotional, physical, mental, spiritual, and financial awareness and faculty do we have to actually put those things into use. So before we get into the science, because the science is super important. This is not a show, by the way. This is not medical advice 100%. We're not saying that y' all should go get high, right? Some people, they use it recreationally. I have no judgment for that.

Absolutely.

I use it very, very consciously.

Same.

Some of the strains that I've gotten have been okay. Some of the strains that I've gotten have been incredibly transformational. So let's Begin here. Your story with cannabis. You actually, at some point, you used to abuse it. And I think a lot of us do that. I was in fitness and I used to abuse the gym. So we can abuse anything, right?

100%.

Anything at all can be AB. So let's start there and then tell us how that came up for you. First of all, why were you abusing? Secondly, why do you think most people abuse? And then lastly, how did you transition out of the abuse model to the self love model?

Beautiful. When it comes to marijuana, I love getting into this. And so my story with cannabis really started when I was 16, and I tried every pharmaceutical under the sun for anxiety and nothing would work, Right. So I kept going to the doctor, expecting this is gonna be the one, right? And he would be like, this one's gonna work. And then it wouldn't work. It would make me feel less connected to myself. And so it was like SSRIs. Yeah, SSRIs, things like that.

Prozac, Zoloft.

Exactly, exactly. Zoloft was one of them. And so, you know, I tried going through all this, and at this age, I'm 16, so I still think the doctor in the white lab coat, he's gonna be the one that provides the answers, because that's the society I was raised in. And so I'm going there. I'm getting weird results where I don't know how to articulate this, but as I would say it now, I was just feeling more and more disconnected from myself. And so after talking to a friend about this, he was like, well, hey, I experience some of those same things you're going through. Maybe it is anxiety and cannabis helps me now. At that point, I was just saying, no, the Nancy Reagan approach, because all of the people that I had in my life up until I was 16 that were using cannabis were using it just in a way that I didn't resonate with. It wasn't in alignment for me. Yeah. And so when I started interacting with it the first time, the effects really hit me because it takes a couple times when you're interacting with medicine to actually figure out what the effect is, if you like it, etc. But the first time that it really hit me, I felt so connected to myself. And I was like, wow, this is amazing. And so I continued using it. I had no guidance on how to use it. And that's the slippery slope that I'll get into in part two, because there is no guidance out there around this, except for Budtender guidance, which is sometimes really challenging. But I started using it, and then I kept using it more and more and more, and I thought, wow, this is amazing. It can connect myself. But at that point, I was using it as a means to an end where I was like, cannabis makes me feel better. So therefore, to feel better each day, I needed more and more cannabis. And so I thought that that was amazing in and of itself, just that ability to connect me with myself. But then I started to get into growing. I talked my dad into purchasing me a kit when I was in college, and he was going through some hard financial times, and I was like, you need a good hobby. Let's do a father son project. And when I was around 17 or 18, I had this instance where I started peeing blood one morning. I didn't know why I was unhealthy up until that point, right? And so I got really freaked out. My father brought me to the hospital. On the way there, he was like, are you doing drugs? Right?

And.

Because he kind of knew, but didn't really know. And so I was like, I'm interacting with a lot of cannabis, but nothing else. And I saw him have a sigh of relief. And I was like, that's interesting, right? Because my dad was someone who. He didn't interact with any cannabis. He didn't drink. He had his party days in the past, but he was just a very sober consciousness type of guy. And so when we got to the hospital, I started sharing with him, like, hey, dad, I've actually done research into this, and there's actually a lot of stuff that I've found that's really conducive for helping me with anxiety. So to his credit, he didn't have any cognitive dissonance. He watched the videos with me, saw the science that I was presenting, and he was like, wow. I guess that back in the 70s and 80s, they didn't have the full spectrum to this. Right. Pardon the pun. And so being able to show my dad that allowed us to connect deeper with each other in the hospital. And then right after that, I went to the Boston Freedom rally.

Wait, you gotta tell us why you were peeing the blood, though.

Yeah, okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's funny, I leave that detail out sometimes when I'm sharing this with people and they're like, what happened? So I had a benign cyst on my kidney that broke open and put blood into my. Into my bladder. And so basically what happened was they never found out why it happened. I didn't want to go through all the testing and Whatnot, but what I kind of, it was my wake up call, it was my mortality crisis where I actually started realizing like, hey, my choices with what I'm putting into my body matter. And so I really am grateful for that event because most 18 year olds, they don't get that event until years later. And so I got it at 18 and I started exercising, stopped drinking soda, started drinking water, all the stuff started at that point. And at the same time I started interacting with cannabis a little bit differently. Not super differently, but a little bit more differently. And I couldn't really describe like what type of way I was interacting with it, but it was a little more spiritual is how I would interact with it or say it today. And so after that event I went to the Boston Freedom Rally and I was in school for psychology at this point too, but I was starting to have a dark night of the soul and realizing that I didn't want to wear khakis my whole life, so what the hell am I going to do with this degree? And so at that point I went to the Boston Freedom Rally one year, which is this big public display of disobedience where everyone goes out into the green, they interact with cannabis, the cops are there, but they don't really bother you. And so I go there and I forget my sunglasses, I got blue eyes, right? So I can barely see anything. And I hear this guy yelling, who wants to make butter with me? And I'm like, well, I imagine he's talking about cannabis butter. I happen to like cannabis butter. So let's go see what this guy's all about. So he's giving out these pamphlets for a basic eight week semester with cannabis. And so it's opening up right in my house. So I go home, I tell my dad, I'm like, could you help me out with this? Being a pro college student, he's like, I'll do you one better, I'll join with you. Because he was just so interested in this subject that he wasn't interested in.

A pretty open minded guy.

He was amazing. And so we go to the school together. We're meeting people that have cancer, that are curing their own cancer with cannabis, which if you haven't heard this before, this can be pretty alarming. Like what? Cannabis can cure cancer. There is actual research out there for anyone listening that can look up THC killing cancer cells and CBD inhibiting their growth. There's a lot more research needed though, because those are just two constituents out of the full spectrum of the plant. And so we were witnessing these things happen at the same time. I was getting into organic regenerative agriculture there, learning how to make my own soils, learning about Korean natural farming, biodynamic farming. So I was all in, right? I was like, this is what I want to do. And so medical was going to start there soon. And so I went to a music festival in June of, I think 2014. And I went out there and I had a blast. And it was the first time I interacted with a different medicine. It was mdma. And so I had been going to clubs for years, seeing people interact with this. And I was like, eh, that just doesn't look like it was kind of like me with cannabis when I was younger. I was like, that just doesn't look like the scene I want to be a part of this in. So I went out there with some good friends who. It was all our first time we tried it, we had this beautiful experience and I felt this really interesting feeling to do with my father. I didn't know what it was, of course, my first time interacting with this medicine. So I knew it was a heart opener. I'm like, maybe I'm just connecting to what I love. And so I went home and on June 22, I woke up to go help my father with yard work. I go to grab the handle of the door to the porch and there's glass that I can look out and I see him out there and just something felt strange to me. I didn't know if it was a glitch in the Matrix or what it was, but something felt off about that that day. So I go out there and I talk to him and he's being a little short with me, which is interesting because he's usually not like that. He's just like, I am right? So he's very talkative, very high energy. And so I go out there and I start talking to him and he's like, well, I got some news. And I'm like, well, what kind of news you talking about? Right? Because he was selling his business at that point. I'm like, cool, you know, did you get your business sold or is that the recession? And he's like, well, actually just found out from the doctor that I have terminal cancer. And I was like, wow. And I didn't know how to take that in. I thought it was joking at first. And I was like, he would never joke about that. And so.

And you had felt that at the concert?

Yeah, I had felt that. And it connected to me in that moment. Now I Didn't know what sense to make of that. I was like, how did I feel that? And like, I had so many questions. And so over the next couple weeks, you know, at first he told me he wasn't going to take treatment whatsoever because he had just got finished of a three year period bringing his brother to Dana Farber in Boston every single week and watching what radiation and chemo had done to his brother. And he was like, I'm not going to go through that. I want to live my life the way I want to live it. And so I had a choice to make. Do I love my father for the person he is or the person I feel he should be? Right. And so I made the first choice. Of course I'm going to love him for who he is, as hard as it's going to be to watch him go through this. And so a couple weeks later, you know, I was having a lot of challenge connecting with him after that because I didn't want to frame him as the sick person. He didn't want me to either. He didn't want anyone to. But at the same time, how do you just hang out with someone that means so much to you after you figure out they're about to die, Right? And they had given him two months to live. I didn't find that out until a little bit later, a couple weeks later. But he started experiencing some pain a couple weeks into it. And so I started talking to him. I was like, dad, you know, if you're not gonna take treatment, could you at least interact with cannabis with RSO or feco, which is the cannabis product or extract that people are using to treat cancer. And so after a little bit of like pushing and shoving, right, because he was like, I'd like my normal lease on reality, he agreed. And so we took the last harvest that we made together and we turned it into rso. And I started giving him this. And I would sit with him because.

What does RSO mean?

Yeah, RSO stands for Rick Simpson Oil.

Okay.

Rick Simpson is the guy who kinda brought this into the mainstream. He has a beautif company named Phoenix Tears. For anyone listening, they can look it up. There's a lot of research there.

Specifically for cancer?

Yeah, specifically for cancer. And there's a lot of other things it helps with too. But that was the main thing I looked into. And the real name for it, like, if you're not going on, his name is feco. Full Extract Cannabis Oil. There's actually a guy named Chris Bennett who's done a lot of research to suggest that that product is what Jesus was using in his anointing oil.

That is a bold claim, doctor.

Yeah. There's a 750 page book called cannabis and the soma solution that for anyone listening if they want to look this up and deeper into it, this guy is a megalith of a historian with cannabis. It's fascinating. Wow. Yeah, that's in the show notes. Okay. And so, you know, I ended up interacting with cannabis with him. And at this point, we hadn't interacted with cannabis together. I was interacting with it. He was supportive of it because he could tell it's helping you. You're in school, you're doing your stuff, you have a job, you're fulfilling responsibilities. So, hey, I'm supportive of this. But when we first started interacting with it together, I would sit with him to make sure that, like, he was comfortable. Right. Because for anyone who doesn't interact with cannabis a lot, just flour alone can be very uncomfortable, let alone the strongest product you can have with cannabis. Right? Like, that's very strong for someone who's never interacted with cannabis, at least not in the last 30 years. And so during that time, you know, I got to connect with my father so deeply where we got to take a lot of the pressure off of his diagnosis together. And we got to laugh about questions like, what do you think happens after you die? Right? Like, what do you think heaven is? Do you think it really is a heaven with a hell? And it wasn't a charged conversation. It wasn't heavy fun. It was light. And I got to watch him make amends with his grandchildren, with his other children. Right. With my mother, with his own mortality. I got to watch all of this happen. And it was at that moment that I realized, like, wow, this plant has so much more opportunity and power and potency than we're giving it credit for right now. And so I started to feel like, what is the missing link here, Right? Like, why are most people not seeing this side with cannabis? And so that began my investigation. And from there, after that experience, he passed away. And we prolonged his life a year after or a year, a year longer than they had given him.

That's amazing. Just from the rso?

Yeah, just from the rso. And when we were getting his scans back, his tumors were stopping. Like they weren't continuing to grow, but he already, at that point, had had brain tumors and such. They were interfering and giving him seizures and such. And so eventually he did succumb to it because he continued smoking cigarettes and Doing all the things that he knew that he wanted to do. So I wasn't gonna tell him not to do it.

What kind of a process did you go through? Emotional. Knowing that he probably. Well, we don't know. He might have had a longer life if he wasn't smoking the cigarettes and doing the unhealthy behaviors. Like, what. What part of you had to really become more conscious in that moment?

Yeah, well, it was. It was my own story around how he was supposed to go, because I think this is where a lot of people get really challenged. I had watched many of my family members, really close family members, get absolutely wrecked when they lost their parents or brothers or sisters. And these things are hard, right? There's. They're meant to be hard. Like, they're supposed to feel hard, I really feel like, because they allow you to actually tune into the value and importance in life and how special and precious it really is. But really what happened in that was that I had had a story about how my father was supposed to go. It wasn't supposed to happen then. It was supposed to be different. And those were the things and are the things that could wreck someone, and those are the things that were wrecking family members. And so I realized in that moment, I only had one choice, which was, I know what's going to happen if I take those types of beliefs on and I don't want to live that way. So if I don't want to live that way, well, then how do I want to live? And so I actually started moving into, like, okay, I'm going to accept this, and then I'm going to realize there's going to be trauma that I have to deal with later on. And that didn't happen until a couple of years later when I finally got into real healing work. But, you know, when that whole thing happened, I started really unlocking what I would call now purpose. And I think purpose is this thing that's talked about. It's like, find your purpose. Right. But I really agree with what Eckhart Tolle says, where you have an inner purpose, which is to wake up. And that event definitely helped me in that waking up process. And then your outer purpose is just wherever your heart leads you. And so my heart was leading me into cannabis. And so I got into the industry from there. I ended up working at a dispensary right in my house. Had a beautiful experience there, working with over 5,000 patients as a patient care advocate, also as a lead cultivator, and being able to actually dive in with them about health. Because, like I was mentioning a little bit earlier, when you're talking to bud tenders, most of them, they don't really understand the full puzzle of holistic health. They might know a little bit about cannabis, but most of the advice you'll get, if you come in and you're a new person and you're like, well, how much should I interact with? They'll tell you, like, hey, this is kind of what people suggest, but at the end of the day, you can't OD on it, so justyou can smoke it whenever. Right.

Do you find that most of the bud tenders just give people, like, the highest dose possible?

It's, it's. It's a little bit of both. Sometimes they do that, but also people come in expecting that. Like, they come in like, yeah, what's the best bang for my buck? It's like, it's gasoline. Right where they're like, what's the cheapest price and how much can I get? That's what I see. A lot.

This is what I love about you. And by the way, like, just deep honor for your process. You know, I know that loss is part of our human experience, and it's not easy. And the way that you've grown from that. I know we haven't talked too much about your addiction yet, which I want to, because I think it's really important to. To cast the dark and the light on the conscious cannabis conversation.

Absolutely.

But I just want to give reverence to the way that you have lived and the way that you serve now, because it's really special. You know, loss is something that we all will go through in life, but there's no exact timeline. It's unpredictable. And I'm curious how you feel about this. We have this soul contract. We come into this world, and then events happen for us. We either create karma, which is like a credit card, and then we live our dharma from that, or. Or we just go with our soul contract and we don't create as much karma. What are your thoughts on that? How have you seen that play out in your own life?

Absolutely. Well, I mean, the first thing is just feeling. Right. Like, when I'm following my heart, when I'm feeling my intuition, my heart feels so much more alive. And as a result, my feeling is just so much more euphoric and ecstatic in nature when I'm going against the grain, living more in the mind. Like, for instance, perfect example, that dispensary I was working at when I first started working there. The owner that ran, it was really centered, you know, like he was, he was in New York when 911 happened. And so he had really terrible PTSD and he was a very high up finance guy. And the only thing that got him to be able to move through that PTSD was cannabis. And so when he retired, he was like, this is what I want to do. I want to bring this to the world. I want to help medical patients. So when I started working there, I was like, this is amazing. Well, after about two and a half years, he sold the company. And it's a very cutthroat industry, the cannabis world. And so he was just like not cut out for it. He was way too nice to be honest. And so the company that bought us, they had, let's just say, a different way of doing things, right? Much more of like the finance or real estate way of doing it. Like, what's the cheapest we can do things? What's the most bang for the buck we can get, you know? And as a result, the medicine suffered and the experience there suffered well. I ended up staying there another three years because I felt, this is what I want to do. I'll thug it out until I can find the new place that I want to go to. But during that time, my life got really challenging because I was going against my heart. And this is also where that dependency came out with cannabis. Where I started realizing after another MDMA ceremony that I was like, wow, I am actually interacting with this plant unconsciously. And at this point I was following all the right, quote unquote rules within cannabis. Like, I knew I wasn't an all day smoker. I was only attracting one bowl at night. So it was almost like I was more of a functional alcoholic, right? Where I was doing everything. I had all my health stuff on point. I was eating organic food, eating clean, sleeping enough, working out, doing all the things. But I was going home every night after being frustrated and having all the motivation I needed to make a change. And I would interact with the feminine medicine, feel content and comfort, and then I would go back to the job the next day, get frustrated, build up the motivation, come home, relax. And I didn't notice I was in that cycle. And I think for a lot of people, they're not aware that they might be unconsciously interacting with cannabis. It's just that thing that helps them feel better. It's the same thing as when you go home and you have a couple drinks or you interact with tobacco or whatever it is, right? Because how you do anything is how you do everything. And I think that, you know, when I realized that, when I had that like consciousness elevating experience where I realized, wow, like I can't hide from this anymore, I decided to follow my heart, because that's what my heart was telling me. And that was really when I started following my heart 100%. Because at that point I had picked up threads, right? I got into health. I was obviously working in an industry that was in alignment with me up until a certain point. I went to school for psychology, which was fun. I was playing music, so I was following my heart in some ways. But it wasn't all the way when I went through that experience. Of course I'm still working in the industry. Everyone there already knows me as a certain type of individual. So then I have to start going there, or I get to start going there and saying, hey, I'm actually taking a three month break from cannabis right now. And when I did that, the world opened up. I mean, it was like a full on psychedelic experience. Every day, in a completely sober state of reality, I took a break from everything. I wasn't drinking caffeine, I wasn't taking kratom, I wasn't doing anything during those three months. And literally every day I would put on music, start tearing up and crying. I hadn't cried in years. There was so much emotion coming out. That was all based, or a lot of it anyway, around my father because like I said, I had to deal with that trauma later on. So this is when it really started coming out. And as a result, you know, not having the cannabis there, I had the motivation and inspiration to start really pouring my heart out and being vulnerable in public. Right? And by public, I mean putting posts on Instagram and Facebook. And I had no idea what I was doing at this point. I just knew it was coming through me. So I would pick a topic like perspective and I would speak my mind and heart on what I felt about that subject. And during that time, I made one post, I think it was actually the perspective one, where I tagged one of my buddies now, one of my great mentors, my buddy Mark England, who runs this company called Lifted.

Oh yeah, I know Mark.

Yeah, Mark's the man. And so procabulary. Yes, procabulary.

Meaning of words and the etymology of our human experience.

Yes. Man, that guy is amazing. And so I had heard him on a podcast about three years prior on Positive Head. And so I tagged him because someone mentioned in the comments, like, wow, that stuff on language you mentioned is really cool. Where'd you hear that? So I tag him. One hour later, I get a Facebook message, a voice note from him, and he's like, hey, man, I really like what you're saying. We should hop on a call. And so we hop on a call, and he's like, hey, man, have you ever thought about being a coach? And at this point, I didn't know what coaching was. I was like, do you mean, like, coaching basketball? Like, you know, height? I'm like, what do you mean?

You have to wear the PE Shorts.

Yeah, exactly. You know? And so I was like, what do you mean? And so he started telling me, and I was like, wow, this sounds really cool. And so at that point, you know, like I said, I was going through a challenge in my job, and I had about $2,700 to my name. He tells me the price for his program. 2,700. I call Rachel. I'm like, what do you think? She's like, what does your heart say? I'm like, I want to do it. She's like, do it. And so I do it. And then literally a month after I started, the pandemic happens, right? So now I get gifted with this amazing opportunity to have more time by myself. I get to leave my job at the dispensary, and I just have all this time and space, and I'm getting into coaching. I end up taking level two after level one. I've been lifted. And then around August, he invites me down to his lake house. And that was another opportunity of just saying yes, following my heart. And I go down there, I meet all these amazing people that at that point were just Zoom icons to me, right? Because I had met them on Zoom. And then from there, some other guy, my buddy Chris Marhefka, goes, hey, I'm hosting a retreat in a couple weeks. You should come. I'm like, okay. I go to that retreat. I meet amazing people there. One of the guys that I ended up staying up late with one night, my buddy Danny Rios, he's like, I'm going to Mexico in a couple weeks. You should come. I'm like, okay. Then my buddy, at that point, he was just a friend that I met. He was now my business partner, Alex. The next day is like, hey, in about four weeks, I'm hosting a retreat in Oregon. I'd like you to host it with me. I'm like, okay. So I go to Mexico, then I go to Oregon. Mark hits me up and do another lake house. Okay? So I just literally spent the next two years saying yes to Everything. Having all these experiences, going through all these programs. And it was after about two years of working with Marcus Gurzi and a lot of other amazing individuals, my buddy Angelo Sisco, trying to figure out what I wanted to do within this realm, that it finally dawned on me after hosting a retreat, like, what if maybe soft talk, Acknowledge using Mark's term. Maybe I'm meant to do a cannabis program. And as soon as I said maybe to it, the downloads came, and I started having all these synchronicities within how to host. I mean, how to create modalities around cannabis and around, including manifestation and meditation and breath work and, you know, nonviolent communication and all of these different things that I loved into the cannabis realm. And so as soon as that started happening, first of all, all my mentors were like, of course. Like, we were waiting for you to realize this was your thing.

It was already written all over you.

Yeah, exactly. Like, when were you gonna notice this, man? You know? And so since then, that's really when Connect with Cannabis was born. And, you know, we can go into a lot of that stuff more in detail. It's so beautiful.

Oh, my gosh. I mean, your story, it' swhat I get from you is, like, when you're going with the flow of the water and when you're actually going with, you know, the current and you're not fighting it, beautiful things can happen. You know, doors open that. That could never open before. Because when you were stuck for three years in the dispensary and you were really going through from. For me, it sounds like an identity shift. Like, who is Ryan if he's not working at this company? Who is. Who is Ryan if he's not doing exactly what he thought he should have done?

Exactly.

You said something really cool. You're like, well, well, I would go home at night and I would smoke the bowl, and I would use the cannabis, and it was really unconscious. There was some point, though, that it clicked. Was it the MDMA ceremony that unlocked that for you? Was that truly the turning point?

Yeah, and I'll go into detail because it's a really fun story, you know, so things sometimes happen in the most weird places, right? Like, we think these type of awakenings. At least I'll make it more personal. I thought these type of awakenings would happen, like, you know, in an ashram or somewhere like that. Where it really happened was a strip club in Las Vegas. And I'll break it down.

That's so conscious. You're so conscious, dude.

It was like, it Was one of.

Those things where, like, spiritual awakening at a strip club.

Yeah. We went to Las Vegas for this convention called MJ Bizcon because we were feeling a lot of angst. Rachel worked at the dispensary with me. That's where I met her. So we were like, you know what, we know this cannabis stuff. She was a grubber too. We'll go out to Las Vegas, we'll pitch what we do, love grown cannabis, and we'll find our own investors and we'll do our own thing. And so we went out there with the full intention that this is going to be great. We're going to go out there, it's going to be no big deal. It's going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. Everyone will want this type of modality because we know how to save money through organic regenerative agriculture. We have all the things. So we go out there and all it was was a bunch of suit and tie. Chad and Brad's being like, how much, how many grams per square foot can you get me? What balloon boosters do you use? That kind of stuff? And so, so it gave us a little bit of a dark night of the soul because we were like, wow. We thought we were gonna come out here and find all the answers. And we actually feel less like we found answers than before we came here. And so the last night after this convention ended, I asked Rachel, I go, hey, you know, the last couple nights here, what do you wanna do? And she was like, well, do you wanna go to a strip club? Because neither of us had ever been to one before. Like, literally, we'd never been to one. So we were like, well, if we're gonna do it, let's do it in Las Vegas.

Yeah.

And so we went out there, we took a little bit of mdma and we just had all these beautiful conversations with the strippers in there. And we were talking about life plans and things like that. And at the end, I had the task of keeping track of time, which I royally messed up. And by the time we left, it was like 8 in the morning. We were just having fun. We were having a blast. And Rachel was working on this big project for this Illinois dispensary. She was helping them write their application, which, like, you want to talk something that smells like office supplies, reading it, writing out a 600 page application for a dispensary that is like, I'll take things I never want to experience for 500, please. It's like, not my jam. And so when when she realized it was late, she went through this, like, experience where she was like, oh, my God, how am I going to get this project done on the plane? Because, like, I didn't sleep. And in that moment, you know, I took ownership over. It was my responsibility to keep track of time and I really messed it up. And so I empathize with her and I felt her low. Like, I felt that feeling and in that moment I was like, whoa, I don't think I've felt a full range of my feelings in a long time. And as soon as I had that curiosity of, like, why, Immediately the voice was like, well, hey, look at your relationship with cannabis, right? And so on the plane ride home, I have a pounding migraine, right? I slept like two hours. I'm on the plane ride home and I'm just thinking, like, wow, you know, like, it wasit was bliss because I was like, oh, my God, I'm feeling real lows. And so when I got home, I immediately just stopped interacting with cannabis. And I knew it wasn't cannabis fault, it was how I was interacting with it. It wasn't the plant's fault. And that's one of the ways I think a lot of people externalize their power with cannabis and other things too. They blame it on the plant. It's like, guys, the plant didn't hold a gun to your head and say, interact with me, right?

Or even people that use it and it doesn't give them the expected result. Like, yeah, I tried some cannabis and it didn't make me feel that good. And I still have pain, but, like, maybe they weren't using it in the right dosage or program or frequency.

Yeah.

How we do something, the intention to come from is so important. You can kill somebody with a hammer. You can build a beautiful mansion with a hammer. You know, cannabis is the same thing. It's this. It's this incredible powerful plant, but it's so abused and really, it's so misunderstood. So when you finish this opening, we're gonna go into the science of it, because I wanna talk about the paper mills and the hemp industry and all that.

Dr. Yes. I'm so excited.

Dr. Continue.

Yup. Dr. And so, you know, going on what you just said too, you know, one of the things that, you know, I really focus on a lot within how I look at cannabis is that, you know, when the plant is interacting with you, or when you're interacting with a plant and you're experiencing something like anxiety, you know, if you understand how the plant works, the Number one way, being feminine medicine.

Right.

Where in a salsa dance analogy, if you're looking at a salsa dance, the male is the one that actually gives a direction. Right. For the woman to be able to feel safe enough to express herself. If she knows that he doesn't know where she's going to go, then she doesn't know if she can really express herself. Cannabis is the same way being feminine. So if we, whoever the human is, is not providing that masculine component of the direction and the intention setting, then cannabis is like, well, I don't know where you want to go, man. Like, that's not my part of the bargain. And so I think that's where a lot of people get challenged results. Because if they don't set an intention consciously, then whatever is in their subconscious going through is what's gonna manifest in that experience. And so cue anxiety, paranoia, and all these undesirable results. With cannabis, on the other hand, say if someone is in a really happy state and they interact with cannabis and they're like, oh my God, it was the best experience of my life. And then they expect that the next time, but they didn't necessarily set that intention, so they don't know what gave them that experience, well, then they're not gonna be able to replicate that time and time again. Right. And actually interact with it as a medicine. Yeah. And so once I started taking this three month break, after that break ended, I decided to start applying some structure into my relationship with cannabis, where now it was only gonna be ceremonial use. I was only gonna use it on weekends because the weeks are where I'm gonna be most prone to stress. And I wanted to make sure that I wasn't numbing that out because that is a really good sign when I'm stressed. It's like, hey, maybe I need to take a break. Maybe I'm putting too much on my calendar. If I have this numbing out thing at night where I can just hit the reset button, well, then how am I really gonna know what my body's trying to tell me? That's right. Cause my body has innate intelligence. Right. And so ever since then, for the last four years, I've been interacting with cannabis only on weekends. And I always tell people it's not my responsibility or my intention to tell people how to interact with it or like, how often they should interact with it. I'm here to bring awareness to how someone might interact with us consciously because I've met people that have a very healthy relationship with the plant that do use it pretty Frequently. And then I've also met people that only interact with it once a month that have a very unhealthy relationship with it. They just numb out with it. And so there's really a lot of interplay within this of how to bring your relationship conscious with cannabis. But I do have some processes we can go through in a later part in the episode that can give people some tangible things to take away from it that they can do.

You know what's most fascinating to me is this morning I typically go in the sauna and that's how I prepare for a guest. But today I just chose to sleep in and I modulate myself and I regulate myself based on my OURA ring data and how I feel. I have an internal faculty, it's like a homeostatic compass that I just, I listen to. And when I go against that, things don't work out too well. And so I could see how if someone was using cannabis as a crutch or even caffeine as a crutch or nicotine as a crutch or kratom as a crutch, I'm a fan of feel free. But I don't do it every day.

Exactly.

So what does it look like now for you on a weekly basis? Just give us a weekly basis of how do you regulate your stress and how can you help somebody with us, somebody present with us, modulate their stress? Is it breath? Is it hot? Cold? Is it like a loving kindness meditation? And the recipe is unique for you. So whatever your recipe is, show us what that is and show us how cannabis and the conscious use of cannabis goes into that recipe.

The first thing was changing my language from morning routines and nighttime routines to morning rituals and nighttime rituals. Because again, if language creates that reality, abracadabra with my word, I create, then I wanted to give myself something fun to look forward to every day. Not something that felt like more work. Right. And so that was the first shift. Right now my jam is I wake up, I go right outside and I do three rounds of breathwork right in the sun. And usually the sun's just rising, but I get that, you know, that vitamin D right into me in the morning.

And then I do the butthole sunning.

I don't do that yet, but only because Boston is cold most of the year and my butthole would not be excited about that.

I've yet to try that.

I tried it one day actually. Recently I was at Rachel's parents house. We were watching their house for the weekend. And so they live in the middle of wildlife sanctuary, so there's no one around. And Rachel was like, you know what I'm thinking? And I was like, there could be a lot of things. And she was like, you want to sound your buttholes your butthole with me? And I was like, done.

That's a very bonding way with your partner.

It was amazing. And it really. I mean, I've only done it once, but correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation. But I felt fucking amazing that day.

Awesome.

And so that was really cool.

Yeah.

But what I do most days is I'll go out, I'll do three rounds of breathwork. Right now, the breathwork I'm doing is Joe Dispenza style. I love that style. And I have actually figured out a modality of how to include cannabis into that, and that's a wild, wild modality. For anyone listening, if you're curious, reach out to me. I can give you the modality. Yes.

And we'll link your program right now.

Perfect.

Give us the link right now. Just so people are watching.

Yeah. So you can go to highlyoptimized Me. And the full info for Connect with Cannabis and the new course we're creating now, which is Grow with Cannabis. It's all about how to cultivate a sacred relationship through cultivating. The plant is on there as well, so you'll find all that stuff excellent. Yeah.

So you do dispenzas, and then throughout your day, you encounter stress and. And go practical with us, because so many people. I would say the number one and number two things that people request on the show is how do I clear my stress? Which is why I built the breathwork program. Breathe. That's why I've been facilitating breathwork for four years now, because, gosh, without it, I don't know where I'd be. You know, my. My relationship with cannabis is just opening up. It's really like. This is why I wanted to have you on the podcast too, because I thought, wow, what a misunderstood plant that I've abused myself. And then I just stopped using it for, like, probably five, seven years.

Yeah.

So give us the rest of the daily recipe as far as stress mitigation, specifically.

Yeah. You know, one thing I'll say real quick based on that is, you know, I think it's not a lot of people's fault necessarily, that they're abusing it just because, like, there's no user manual out there for it. Right. Like, no one gets the user manual. The guidance is low.

That would be awesome if somebody Got their strain. And it came with a little booklet like how to consciously use this.

You should do that, you know. So it's really funny. We're actually in the process of creating the long lost cannabis user manual right now. Koneko Cannabis is that. But for people that aren't ready to fully go into the program, we're going to create a whole manual based around that so that you have all the tips and tricks in there. So I wanted to touch on that. But the other things I do every morning is I'm an initiate of the modern mystery School. So I do my rituals every morning as well, which take about 15 minutes and in which case I'm calling in everything I'm looking to manifest that day and I'm tuning into that energy. And then right after that, I'm then going into a Joe Dispenza meditation. I usually use a little Zen mist from Mitolife or Mitozen. I think it's Mitozen. Yes. And I love their meditation mist.

Dr. John is such a friend. He's been on the show three times now.

He's amazing.

Yeah, it's an incredible tool and I like it in the mornings too. I don't really use it multiple times. Same once a day is great. It's got some hop A and oxytocin in there. There's a link, link right below this. You can just go to wellnessforce.com forward/store. It's in the store. I love it. It's like part of. And actually Carrie and I have a practice where. And we're going to get back into this more where in the evenings to connect, we will just use the hopping oxytocin and just hold each other and just be there. It's powerful, man.

It's incredible.

But I digress a little bit. So keep going with the day.

Yeah. And so what I really feel like I'm looking to do with this, right, with doing the meditation after that is I'm trying to catch my energy and put it on point beforehand and see everything that's happening for me so that I can go into my day with that energy. Because once you go into your day with that energy doesn't mean you won't have stress. You might not face challenges, but you have that energy to ride on. It's almost like, say, you know, for people listening, you just bought a new house or something amazing. You just got married or something really big and something stressful happens right after. You might feel it. But you're like, my energy is just so perfect. Right now, I'm not really worried about it. It. Yeah. What if you could do that every day? That's what I seek to do. And with this formula that I've been using has been working really well for that. I just love Joe Dispenza. I think he's just fantastic. And his meditations really resonate with me. And, you know, part of being on this show right now was that I called this in. Like, this is one of the things that's been in my Mystery school rituals every day for over a year and also in my Joe Dispenza meditation. So correlation doesn't equal causation necessarily, but it is a very interesting correlation.

Well, it was your way of being like, I get. I probably get like 10, 20 people a week that email, like, I want to be on your podcast, but they're all canned.

Yeah.

And when we had the conversation, I was like, this isn't a show about getting high. This is a show about connecting with your heart and soul and using conscious tools so that you can truly live the best life possible.

Yes. Yeah. And. And you know what?

I was your way of being. That got you here.

Thank you, man. I really appreciate that. And you know, it's funny because, like, when you. When you mentioned how you want to. To do this episode about, like, hey, I wanna make sure we give both sides. Like, that is my ultimate passion. Like, I'm here to tell most people, like, hey, if you're not doing breathwork and meditating and doing all these things, it might not be the right time to even interact with cannabis.

That's right. Actually, there was. There's a PubMed study. There's a PubMed study that we're gonna link, and it was about cannabis, marijuana and cannabinoids, what you need to know. And in there, they said that because of its feminine essence, it's really, really potent with. When you pair cannabis with other healing modalities, that's actually when things really come online. If you're just using cannabis, that's fine. I'm not gonna knock people for that. But when you build an ecosystem of cannabis, breathwork, meditation, maybe some visualizations and other things that you might know, things start to really, really come online. It's synergy stacking. I don't know if it's a term that I made up. I googled it. I couldn't. I couldn't find it.

Sounds legit.

But we do that in the Breathe program. We use some safe vape cbd. And I'm curious because we'll do that for creative purposes and for people that want to go for a writing binge, maybe you want to do some breath work and stack CBD with safe vape on a weekend. But I keep interrupting. You go throughout the day, and then we're going to go into the history and the science, but finish out that day for us. The conscious use of cannabis in your recipe.

Yeah, so. So that's what I'm going through. That, you know, that breath work, those rituals and that, and that meditation every single morning. And then through the days on Monday through Friday, I'm not interacting with cannabis. So what I'm doing is I'm being much more aware of how I'm doing throughout the day. And I like to stack a lot of stuff in my day. Like, I tell some people that I do between six and eight podcasts a week sometimes, and they're like, that is insane. I just love doing it. I'm a.

Sounds about right.

Yeah. Like, I love doing it.

It's like my week.

Yeah. Nathan Riley actually. Actually was like, dude, that is a lot. And I was like, I just love doing it. He was like, as long as your energy is on point, man, go for it. You know, and so it's funny, you know, because, you know, I think one of the main things that helps me with my stress is that I'm fortunate enough to have found a lot of threads and being able to follow my heart into what I love. So my entire day is doing what I love. So even if I'm tired, even if I'm frustrated at something, you know, in business, many of the different areas, not working out or an email campaign, not getting sent to the right people, whatever happens, because things come up, you know, I can at least be like, okay, I'm doing what I love, though. And so that really helps as well. The other thing that I do is at night, I'm giving myself time to wind down, because that's normally when I was in my unconscious pattern, when I would just hit the reset button, interact with cannabis. And of course I'm going to be relaxed when I interact with cannabis. But it's been a really fun journey of how to relax now without cannabis. And that's where on the weekends, then I check in and I go, okay, I'm gonna interact with cannabis. I create a ceremony out of it, and I see what objective relaxation feels like, like, the best example of what relaxation feels like for me. And that's one of the main things I work with cannabis on. There's other things, too, but we'll Use relaxation as an example. So on the weekend I interact with it and I experience full on feminine energy relaxation. And then on Monday starts me throwing chum in the water, where now I don't have cannabis, right? So now anything that might come up, I can't numb out. And so I call it like throwing chum in the water, where like, if you're in Cape Cod in the summer and you don't think it's Chucks in the water, throw some, you know, chum in the water and you will real quickly realize that there are sharks in that water. And so being able to have that chum in the water throughout the week allows me to check in and go, okay, how well am I doing? What are some notes I can take as to what I want my intentions to be the next weekend? Like, okay, I had no problem relaxing on the days I was doing doing podcasts, but on the days I'm writing new modules for the program as an example, that was really frustrating for me. Okay, what's going on there? And then I check in and maybe it's like, oh, I was running a pattern of perfectionism. Okay, cool, let's dive into that, let's sit with that, let's feel the sensations there. And then after I feel I've worked through that, let's test it the next week by writing more modules and seeing if it comes out again. And so that's kind of how I'm going through my days. And if there's a point in the day where I feel really overwhelmed, I'll hop out in the sun. I'll go for a walk at one of my favorite parks. It's a peninsula, so three sides are ocean. And it's like whoever made this park and planted what they did there, it's like the best smells throughout that park. And it's the ultimate relaxation for me. So I'm doing that normally every night, unless it's raining. And so I'm going there, I'm walking around. And I really feel that walking is integration. And so I'm using that modality throughout the day because for me, I like moving, you know. And so for me, like, journaling has never really resonated with me too much. Right. Like, the way I journal is I walk and I'll take notes on otter, right? I'll speak into the phone and I'll take notes that way and I'll track things that way. But those are a lot of the ways that I keep myself, you know, dialed in and also give myself the grace that if I Am. Maybe I have a stacked schedule and I feel overwhelmed. I'll just reach out and go, hey, I'm not in the headspace.

You know, I cancel things all the time. And it's interesting. And I loved how you. That was a beautiful recipe, by the way.

Thank you.

I think about really what you're doing is. It's just a. It's a smooth, conscious inquiry of what is making my nervous system feel way too much sympathetic versus what can I do in a healthy way to bring me back to rest and digest.

Yeah.

And the big one for me, and this is where we can dive into the science. The big one for me is the endocannabinoid system. So in the BREATHE program, a lot of the research that I did was on CB1 and CB2 receptors. CB2 receptors are the immune and gastrointestinal system. And then CB1 is brain. And throughout the body, most of us, because of the quality of food and honestly just not enough fruits and vegetables, we're completely deficient. Our endocannabinoid system is like starving for these receptors to have the lock and key mechanism work. And so go into this a little bit. And I'm sure you talk about this in the program in depth. There is so much beautiful science. A lot of the things we've explored have been very spiritual, very personal. But shift gears with us. The CB1, CB2. What have you found in your research where you were like, wow, that is so amazing. That is so exceptional. I had no idea because I know I felt that way when I started to research for breathe. But CB1, CB2 share about that.

Yeah. Well, the first thing I'll say is that the endocannabinoid system is the largest regulatory system in the body. And it's the only one that communicates back and forth as well. Right. So it doesn't only send messages, but it receives and then sends them back.

Yes. This is the afferent and efferent messages.

Yeah.

From the brain to the nervous system, back and forth. It's like literally the communication signal of the body. It's fascinating.

It's so fast.

The body is wild.

It's so cool. Right. And you know, there's a certain point where you start to realize like, wow, all I really have to do is just get myself out of the way enough to let the body do its thing, you know, and that's really like a big mind fucking a lot of the times because it's like, wow, this is really interesting. Like, as a doer. Right. Like, I was so trying to like, you know, do all these things and take all these supplements and do all this stuff with cannabis to realize, like, oh, actually this system works better when I actually do less. And so I always say subtracting is harder than adding in. It's easier to add things to your thing. It's hard to take them out. And so when I looked into the endocannabinoid system, one of the things that was the most fascinating to me is that it's not objective, right? Like, everyone's endocannabinoid system is different. And that's why I might interact with a strain and go, josh, this is the best strain ever. It's gonna make you feel this, this, and this. And this is the big problem with dispensaries, right? And then you might go home and go, I didn't experience any of that. Now, there's obviously, like, the physiological, the psychological, psychological. There's so many different ways in which things can end up having different results. But I think that most people don't have the same collection of CB1 and CB2 receptors. And so, in addition, if you have certain mutations in genes like the AKT1 gene, you might be more prone to anxiety and paranoia.

How would you know that? Would you get, like a strategene test?

Yeah. So this is my next point. So I've readi met this guy recently, Len maybe, who he works with a company, I forget their name. It might be endohealth, I can't exactly remember. But they don't exactly do endocannabinoid system mapping, which is starting to happen, and I'll get into that and what's really cool about the future. But what he does is very similar, where he'll do all these genetic tests on you and kinda give you a report on what terpenes are gonna interact with your system more effectively, what cannabinoids you're going to interact with more effectively, what ratios of them you like. Because here's the thing, most people think, oh, the higher THC is, the better bang for your buck. But in reality, some people, like, say if your endocannabinoid system is already producing a lot of endocannabinoids, like 2Ag and nandamide, you might not actually like high THC strains because you're already blissed out, doctor.

Which would make you feel more anxious.

Exactly. It'd make you feel more anxious and kind of just wouldn't give you the result you're looking for. There's about 15% of the population, 15 rather, that has thatthat Endocannabinoid mutation, where it's just creating more nandamide and two aggressive. And so if you have that right, like, these are things that are so important to understand that are more on the science side. But where is this testing being done unless you really seek it out? What the future I really feel is going to be is that especially for medical cannabis, it could be for recreational too, but more for medical. When you meet with a doctor in theory, you know, hopefully what's gonna happen is they're gonna be able to send you for a test. You're gonna be able to get your endocannabinoid system mapped. And instead of having all these names for strains which are fantastic, I love, you know, goofy names for strains.

Jelly sickle.

Yeah, Jelly Sickle. Alaskan Thunderfuck. I'm like, you know, it's really funny as a side note, to watch people that are not into cannabis come in and ask for something like Green crack or Alaskan Thunderfuck or something. It's really funny, but at the same time, it kind of gives a lot of anxiety to these types of people. Right? Because like, if you're elderly and you're walking in, you got to say a name like that.

Yeah, it's not gonna work for grandpa.

Exactly. And so, you know, with these endocannabinous system mapping technologies, you'll be able to go in and go, okay, you get a number issued to your endocannabinoid system makeup, so maybe you get a 43. So you'll be able to walk into any dispensary around the world and be able to say, hey, do you have anything close to a 43? And they'll go, well, I have a 45. And you'll go, oh, that's gonna be pretty conducive to my individual needs in my endocannabinoid system. And so I really feel that's what's missing in the industry, because right now every individual experience is going to be different, and it's based on your endocannabinoid system makeup. And so I think that's the most fascinating thing I found and really the lowest hanging fruit for being able to put a lot more science into howwhat experience you have and how you're able to get that experience with cannabis.

That is so profound. So for everybody with us, you can, and we'll get the right information from you and we'll link this in the show. You can literally get your metabolic, individual biological thumbprint done so that you know which strain is going to be the Most efficacious for you. I mean, talk about, like the most amazing use of technology.

Right.

Like, a lot of people, a lot of people are anti technology, but this is actually a beautiful side of technology.

Absolutely.

And I'm feeling into the whole technology. You know, newspapers, when newspapers came out, they were technology. Right. The hieroglyphics were technology. Everything is technology. Information is technology. And I think about the ways that the technology of cannabis has been intentionally blocked in not just our lifetimes, but going way back to, like the paper mills and how hemp came into being used. Hemp is an incredible plant. It's such a strong plant. I believe it was even used on ropes for boats and sails.

The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.

Okay, I did not know that.

That's wild.

This is why I love podcasting. So give us. Give us without. You know, we don't have like another hour for the history of cannabis, but we probably could fill an hour with the history of cannabis. Give us a high level overview of the ways that cannabis has been intentionally blocked. We can go first to, like, the paper mills and then transition into the pharmaceutical industry.

Yeah. So a lot of people don't realize that the way in which cannabis is viewed, especially in Western societies, is not really based on any science whatsoever. It's actually based on completely the opposite, just fear mongering. And it's actually all based on this conspiracy that Harry Anslinger and Andrew Mellon and a couple other individuals that ran journalism empires. You know, they had nylon industries, cotton industries, they all got together and were like, hey, this thing hemp, I don't know if you guys have noticed, but it doesn't take, you know, 10 years to grow it like trees do. This could totally put us out of business, this. And so the theory goes that they went to the lawmakers in pretty much the middle of the night and they invented this term called marijuana. And what they said was, this new plant marijuana. And I'm going to use some language and story here, that is not my personal view. So for everyone listening, this is. It might sound crazy, but this is actually how Reefer madness started. So they literally went to, I believe it was Congress overnight and said, hey, this plant marijuana, Mexican men are coming over the border and raping white women with this medicine. And so we need to make it illegal immediately. And they were like, well, should we wait until the morning? And they're like, we need to make it illegal immediately. And so overnight, this plant marijuana got banned. And then every doctor woke up in the morning and Went, what in the fuck did they do? Right. Because cannabis at that point was in almost every single medicine that was being prescribed to people, along with other things as well.

I read that it was a treatment for cholera.

Yeah.

Very early on, the doctors were using it.

Yeah, it's wild. And so all these doctors were like, what the hell happened? And so that really started Reefer Madness. What Reefer Madness is, is, I believe it was Andrew Mellon who owned this journalism empire. So imagine, like, how the mainstream media is now. They're kind of all controlled by the same powers. Well, at that time, it was journalism, it was newspapers. And so they started writing these crazy stories in there. If you read some of them, they're actually pretty comical. But it's challenging because, like, people really took this as truth. They were saying that someone, if they interact with marijuana, they would run through the streets with a hatchet and hatchet people alive. Like, this is the kind of stuff they were saying. And people were eating it up. They were saying that you could grow enough cannabis or marijuana in a window box to murder an entire town. Like, this is the kind of stuff they were saying. And because they had control completely over the media, it was being bought and eaten. And so this then led into the just say no campaign, or rather even before that, you know, Nixon and all this thing with the, you know, the drug wars and all this stuff. And it's very interesting because, you know, cannabis has been used for thousands upon thousands of years. And if anyone wants a really deep dive into this, look into Chris Bennett's work, where he looks into pretty much that every single occult practice since the dawn of time has had cannabis included into it. Like I said. I mean, there's a lot of evidence to suggest that cannabosum in the Bible is not calamus, which has been translated to, but it's actually cannabis. And when you look at what Jesus was doing allegedly with this oil, it's very similar to what cannabis can do.

The History Channel. The History Channel, we'll link in the notes, did a really beautiful expose. And. And they said that it was dating back to Asia, 500 B.C. yeah, in Asia.

It's even farther than that. They found it up to, I believe, 8500 BC. And there's a great book called Cannabis and Spirituality that I believe. The chapter in there that does this is Chris Bennett's chapter. He wrote a chapter in there. But they found a mummy, essentially, in Central Asia, I believe. I think it was China, actually, that was about 8,500 years old that had Cannabis on him. And they think he might have been a shaman, he had arrows on him and stuff too. But it's very interesting because, you know, last I checked, we don't have a system in our body specifically designed for alcohol or, you know, opiates or any of these things. Yet we do have this system that just so happens to perfectly interplay with the phytocannabinoids found in the cannabis plant. They fit into the same receptors. And so that's very interesting. It means we've co evolved together for a lot of time. And cannabis has been here long before humans were. I mean, cannabis was around when the dinosaurs were here. So it's very interesting when you start looking at the history and you start realizing that it's really only the last hundred and fifty years or not even that it's been bastardized and turned into this demon, demonistic plant. And that's why I say that cannabis is the most misunderstood plant medicine in existence.

And also too, if you look at our evolution, just our spiritual evolution, our consciousness, I think about the ways that the government has always tried to step in. Anytime there's a plant or a substance, even MDA or sassafras, you know, like the sassafras tea, I believe at some point when Dr. Pepper first came out, there was some sassafras in Dr. Pepper. And so it seems like, and I'm curious how you feel about this, it seems like anytime the government in combination with the USDA and FDA finds out that there can be a compound, whether plant or entheogenic, that can open people's hearts, that can make people more compassionate, that can make people love and really be in the practice of understanding one another more that it gets demonized. I don't think that people have evil in their hearts. And I think most people are really good, actually. I bet if you went to the FDA in the USDA, like 99%, the people that work there really believe that what they're doing is helping people. But, but there are these fractions of people that when they feel something, maybe somebody at an executive level in, in the 50s or the 60s, which then led to Nixon's campaign and the say no with Reagan and all that maybe somebody took some sassafras or used some cannabis and they didn't have the faculty, they had no understanding of how to use it. They were scared of how they felt because they're used to operating in a way of just hardcore master masculine closure. Get it done. What if that's what this is all about, that actually It's a war on consciousness. It's not really a war on plants.

I actually agree with you. And I also agree with you that I choose to believe that people are doing the best they can with the information they have. Because if I choose to believe the opposite, the world gets really scary. And so I can't quantifiably prove that, but I just choose to live in that reality. And so if I'm going on that hypothesis and that theory, then when I look into it, you know, I kind of think a couple different things. Number one, I think you touched on something really powerful when you were saying that. Sometimes I think maybe the lawmakers interacted with this and they didn't have the faculties to be able to understand it. And they went, holy shit, it's scared. Yeah, it scared them. And so they're trying to protect the public, and they really believe they're doing the right thing, but they almost. They just didn't have the user manual for these things. And so therefore, yeah, they didn't know how to use it. And so I think a lot of it could be that. I think the. The other side, too, is that there are some people that I imagine look at humanity. And you could call these people maybe sociopaths, whatever. They look at humanity as a business. And so they go, hey, if we want people to buy bottled water and things like that, right? Then if they're interacting with things that make them realize that all they need is a hut in the woods and the right people around and a warm fire and some food to eat, that's not good for business.

That's right.

And so maybe they truly believe that the whole world will fall apart if we don't have this capitalist type society. And so there's a couple different angles there, but I'm with you, Josh. Like, I like to believe that people are doing the best. They're just misunderstood or misunderstanding these plants. And I think that the war on consciousness is really, like, it could be seen as either people are just unaware of really what consciousness is. And so there. It scares them. And they're like, oh, we need to protect people from this or that. It's just harder to control people that have more consciousness because they don't. They don't like to be controlled.

Dude, I feel so fortunate to be alive right now.

Same really.

Like, I just. In my heart, I'm just like, thank you, God, for letting me be alive right now. So that. Because we're at this. We're at this edge where we're juxtaposed on one side, there's the old adage of thinking where marijuana, cannabis, they're bad. They can make people stoners, you know, dope heads, potheads. That's true. But in true duality also, there is this beautiful side to it that we're seeing not just in medicine, but also in autism for children and in regulating people's anxiety. And even, I'm sure it's probably there a lot more research on anxiety. But I'm curious, in all of your coursework and the students that you help, it's been quite a long time you've been in this world, what have you found specifically about depression, anxiety? It makes sense with the right dosage and the right mapping of the genome to figure out what number strain is good for you. What have you seen as far as. As depression and in treating depression?

Yeah, so it's a slippery slope with cannabis and depression because most people don't know how to interact with it. And so they end up doing more harm than good because they are releasing more dopamine. Yeah. They're getting addicted to the plant or dependent upon the plant, and they're actually getting deeper into depression a lot of the times because they don't. They don't yet get it. They're running from the depression and they're using cannabis as a means to an end, to get the high, to not be sitting with a depression. But what we know about feelings and transmuting and alchemizing energy is that you actually have to look directly into it. And so one of the ways in which I use cannabis with my clients for depression is I actually have them set the intention to go into their depression with cannabis, to go directly into it. Because if you laugh at the devil, he will run away. Might not run away right away, but he will run away eventually. And when you actually look at something directly in the eyes, it's never as scary as it seems before. It's the more avoiding you do, the bigger it seems. And I always use the analogy of in cartoons where they'd be in a dark alley and there'd be this huge shadow of what looked to be a lion, and they'd get all scared and then it would be a house cat. And I think that's a lot of what depression is, at least in my own case when I've gone through depression, is that it's a lot of, you know, there's obviously chemical imbalances and those kind of things that happen too, which are a little bit different, but, you know, within the realm of just like the idea of depression, it's a lot of living in the past. Right. And it's a lot of. It should have been this way. It should have been that way. It's a lot of, like, second deep rumination. It's hindsight. Yeah.

And.

And I think hindsight is a slippery slope, too. Right. Because you could have always done things better or different after you've gone through it, but you were that person then, and so it happened the way it did. And until you take ownership over, okay, it happened. What am I gonna do from here? Then? You can actually use depression or anxiety or any of these things to work with you. Because now with my anxiety, for instance, you know, it crippled me for a couple of years because I allowed it to. And I don't say that because I consciously allowed it to, but because I wasn't taking. Taking ownership over my ability to have say in power in the equation of my anxiety. But now my anxiety actually helps me a lot because when I'm getting ready for a podcast, the anxiety might help me go, have I done enough preparation for this? Have I made the right questions?

Yes.

But I'm also able to balance it and go, okay, have I done it? Yes. And then put that flag in the sand and leave it behind and know that I have done the right work.

I've always felt this because I've struggled with a lot of anxiety waves in my life, and I am. I'm currently working on being an attached style. I'm recovering anxious. Right. So I. I. And I heard Dan Brulee told me this at the Bel Air Treehouse. He said, really, Josh, Anxiety, it's just excitement without breath.

I've heard that quote. I didn't know it was him that said that, but it's so true.

It's so true. Anxiety is just your heart and soul wanting to come in and knock out a podcast or, for me, speak on a stage, or just all these things where our soul is guiding us. And it's like. It's so exciting, we just. We forget to breathe. So if we can. There's so much healing, so much peace that comes from that.

Absolutely.

For anxiety. And depression's different, though, because, you know, the nuts and bolts of depression are really. I think depression is the opposite of expression.

Yes.

So if I'm depressed, it means that there's something wanting to express itself through me, that for whatever reason, because of lowercase capital T, trauma is not safe to come through. I don't feel safe to express that. And I want to go circle back to that Question again. Like, when it comes to conscious cannabis and depression, have you seen any medical literature? Have you seen any anecdotal from students, like, what does that world look like to you?

So there has been some studies I've looked into where they found about a 50:50 ratio, but at the same time and 50:50 ratio between cannabis helping with depression and cannabis actually hindering depression. Right. And actually making it worse.

Yeah.

But the thing is that most of the people that are prescribing the cannabis in these studies have no idea how to use it too. And then you think about the set and setting they're in, like a hospital type setting where they're interacting with cannabis.

With, like the big lighting and like the gray walls and the paper.

Yeah.

I mean, that is not a very friendly.

It's nice. And so I think a lot more research is necessary. But what I have seen in my preliminary research, and again, I'm not conducting my own scientific studies with controls and things like that, but what I have seen with clients I work with, it is that when you can combine cannabis with a modality like coaching, where you actually have some guidance of like, okay, you're gonna go home, you're gonna try this exercise. Like, one of the ones I love doing is. It's one I call the Blistening Exercise with Cannabis, where I have people tune into what four songs are resonating with them at that time. And then in the sober state of reality, I have them attach a meaning to that song. What does that song represent to you? And then I have them go interact with cannabis, and I have them lay down and I have them listen to those four songs. And I have them really move through those emotional states or states of awareness that they placed upon those songs when they were sober. And then when they come out of it, I have them first check in as to how was the experience. And then I go, did the meaning you put on those songs shift at all? And why? And in most cases it will. And so for depression, a lot of times, like when they pick those songs, they might think of a certain story that it applies to, but then when they go through it, they might actually see that story. Let's say, for instance, they make a song of sadness, right? And maybe their initial meaning is, I just feel a lot of sadness. And then when they go through that, they might see, well, actually I'm experiencing sadness right now. But what's underneath the sadness is actually this other emotion that I was able to experience in that. And actually the sadness was actually much easier to move through, because I realized I was separate from the thoughts of that sadness. And so instead of being encapsulated in that experience, I was able to observe it a little bit better. And so just that a little bit of dissociation allows them to realize that they are not actually their depression, they're experiencing depression, but they are the awareness behind what is experiencing the depression. And just that experience is just so powerful.

When you were speaking right now, and we're going to put this on the screen, there's a video of how synapses get grooved. So right now you're seeing on the screen all these different myelin sheaths and the dendrites and the axons coming together. Literally when we wake up in the morning, these grooved pathways, these neurological pathways, they are set in plastic, not in stone. And that's a big differentiation because a lot of times people can identify. And I just. For a long time in my 20s, I identified as somebody who was just depressed. You know, I was just. I was a fitness trainer. I was shining light on other people, but, like, the end of the flashlight was dark on my side. And really, when I started to go deeper into wellness, when I made that transition from fitness to wellness, I started to disassociate in a healthy way. Not like just sweeping stuff under the rug so that I trip on it when I get home. But, like, like, literally, I am not depressed. I'm a soul. I'm experiencing depression, I'm experiencing anxiety, I'm experiencing anger, but that is not the identity of who I am. Can you speak about the identity of emotions? Yes. And how cannabis can help us to unpack those. Removing the label of this is me, a depressed person, to, oh, I'm a soul experiencing depression.

Absolutely. Well, the first thing I'll say is that cannabis gives us the opportunity to dissociate a little bit and start observing things. And that was what I experienced with my anxiety way back when I was 16, was I had that point of observing and going, oh, I'm not the thoughts. I'm the one observing the thoughts. Right. And we hear this all the time, but knowing it and realizing it and actually integrating it are two very different things.

That's right.

A lot of people know it. Right. Our intellect has been going to the gym since we were six years old. Right. Going to grade school. And so we all know a lot of stuff, but we need the direct experience of it for it to actually be able to apply to our individual experience of life. And so one of the things that I've noticed with regards to emotions that cannabis can help with is a level deeper than what we've been talking about, like flipping the story on it, right? So maybe you experience a sensation and at one point, right. Anxiety and excitement, let's say, for instance. Right. Maybe you've experienced that emotion or that feeling and sensation before and attributed the story of anxiety to it. Because maybe you were a kid, you went up on stage and you went home and told your parents, I felt really awkward when I went up there, and they were like, oh, honey, you were just anxious, right? And you're like, oh, that's anxiety. Okay? So now maybe years later, you're on a first date, and you start feeling that, and you're like, oh, my God, I'm gonna get anxious. Then your mind, because you're thinking that, then the feeling is creating thoughts that are gonna be in coordinates with that thought and so. Or with that feeling. And so then you're starting to actually play into the story, right? And then this gets into the slippery slope of playing the victim, too. I'm anxious, and there's nothing I can do about it. And so when we interact with cannabis in this type of way, we're able to observe it first. Then we're able because we're more in the subconscious, because cannabis helps us go from beta brainwaves into alpha and theta, which is the doorway to the subconscious. And the subconscious really is the body and what's known to you in your experience of life thus far. Then you're able to actually start shifting the stories by tuning into the sensations, watching them dissipate, and going, oh, that was just a sensation. Why did I think that was anxiety? Right. Maybe it was actually excitement just waiting to be transmuted into excitement. Right? And so these kind of things are how I found cannabis to work and how I coach it in the program that people are really able to do their own software and hardware upgrades and be able to actually go, okay, now that I'm conscious in my relationship with cannabis, maybe I can be more conscious in my relationship with myself. Because that's what the whole program is based on. It's not based on a program that, oh, now you need to use cannabis to access all this. It's that, hey, you know, if the moon or the sun is your intuition is your own ability to be a sovereign being, most people get it confused that cannabis is the moon or sun, but it's actually the finger that points you back to that when you get disoriented. But that's where people get really Confused is they start thinking, oh, I need the plant to do these types of things. But the plant can remind you of what you were never taught in high school, that you can redo stories, you can drop into sensations and just feel them fully without the story attached. And then from there, a whole new world opens up to you, because then you have a buffet and you're able to go, okay, do I like the sensation? Do I like the story on it? Okay, let me tune into that and go, what if the sensation was actually really good? What if it was the same as me going in an ice bath even though I'm about to walk on stage and I might feel anxious? I felt the same feeling when I'm going in an ice bath. What happened on the other end of the ice bath? I felt amazing. What if I'm about to feel amazing when I walk on the stage? What if this feeling is about to transmute and alchemize into something that's the best feeling I've ever felt. The other side of this, too, is that with positive and desirable emotions like euphoria, happiness, et cetera, we all have right now an experience in our lives that is currently the top of what we've ever known. Happiness, euphoria, any of these things to be. But what if that wasn't the actual top? What if we could actually dream in new levels to how happy, how euphoric we could be? Cannabis can also help us do that because it can get us into imagination. And in order to create a new reality for yourself, you first have to imagine it's it. And like the Bible states, if you want to enter the kingdom of heaven, you must first enter the mind of a child. And so if we're able to access that mind of a child, which cannabis can bring on and enter us into curiosity, awe and wonder and imagination, then we're able to then go into our subconscious, look at our belief systems and the resonating sensations and emotions attached to them, and go, what do I feel about this? And then consciously choose which ones we want to take away or translate and flip the script on and which ones we want to just completely do away with, which ones we want to bring in. And then we're able from those belief systems to have a new experience of life, because our experience of life is created from what we believe about life. And I think that's really fascinating.

If I had a microphone in my hand, I would drop it right now, because that was mic drop. What an incredible conversation. I'm so happy with the places we Explored.

Yeah, me too.

And I think about the people that are with us and maybe share this podcast. If you have somebody in your family or in your friend group who's just like, cannabis. Eh, I mean, this. We really went into all the aspects of the consciousness and the intentional use of cannabis here. So share this podcast. And also for the people that are with us, that might be a little analytical or logical mind, I'll tell you this, that Einstein himself said that imagination is more powerful than intelligence.

Yeah.

And this is one of the smartest intelligent minds to ever be on Earth. So if we have the most intelligent mind, one of the most intelligent minds ever on planet Earth, telling us that imagination is more powerful as a muscle than our intellect, there's something to look out there. 100% absolutely something to look out there. So, Ryan, thank you so much for coming to the house and sitting in the studio here. I'm excited to be on your podcast. Tell people where they can get involved in the program. And also, I think there was a discount code or something, so just. Can we make the discount code, Josh?

Yep. Perfect. Great.

So if you guys want to get involved in Ryan's program, just use the code, Josh. Ryan's gonna share with you where you can get it. I absolutely, wholeheartedly believe in Ryan's heart and his intention. And especially after this conversation, man, I really feel your sole purpose. I really feel what you're doing here on planet Earth. So tell people where they can get involved.

Thank you first for seeing me, brother. It's amazing. And, you know, it's. It's. It's really wild, man, because, you know, getting into cannabis the way I did, you know, for a long time, I thought I was the odd duck. You know, no one was talking about cannabis this way, even though there are people. But I just wasn't in their wavelength. Right. I wasn't learning about them. And so to be able to talk about these subjects on your podcast and be able to share such an amazing dialogue, man, is truly a gift. And so I first want to say thank you for seeing me and thank you for receiving me at the same time. You're welcome. And, you know, where people can find me is if you want to find me on Instagram, that's the place I'm on the most herealryansprague S P R A G U E is my last name. Hit me up. Voice note me I love. I will always voice note you back. I love talking. It's probably why I have two podcasts. And I'll tell you where you can find those too. We have the business account Hily Optimize where we're giving out constant free tips and pieces of advice on how you can bring your relationship with cannabis from the unconscious into the conscious. And then we also have a free Facebook group called the Ceremony Circle where we're doing free lives and all of these things where you, you can come in, you can join our zoom chats, you can have a voice in this, you can talk to me, you can ask me questions. We're constantly giving more advice in there as well. And one of the things that I'm really big on is community because I really feel that right now in society we're not going through an epidemic of loneliness. We're going through an epidemic of the inability for most people in the world right now to connect deeply to themselves, those they love, the world around them and the important work they're doing. And so that is the gap that we're hoping to bridge with the Ceremony Circle and with the, the community we do. And then with the podcasts, you can find them on Spotify, Apple, anywhere podcasts are found. Highly optimized showcases conscious leaders living a life beat of their own drum and the trials and tribulations have undertaken to live life on their own terms. And then this one time on Psychedelics is my baby project where I love diving into true firsthand accounts of the experiences, benefits, risks and transformations taking place within the ever expanding world of plant medicines. And the website that we listed already is highlyoptimized me. You can find the info for connect with cannabis on there. You can also find the info for grow with cannabis which is gonna be dropping soon. Which isI mean it's my ultimate forte within the cannabis realm is growing and cultivating and so I'm really excited for that one. And we're also gonna have the Conscious Cannabis workbook available soon, which is gonna be a free PDF which is gonna go through a three step process that anyone can do, regardless of how long you've been interacting with the plant, to take your relationship from the unconscious into consciousness. And then the three ways to understand cannabis which we spoke about Feminine, the mirror and imagination medicine. So that's where you can find me.

Wow, that's quite a lot of work you're doing. And I'm sure that, you know, for somebody that was out of alignment, they would feel stressed in doing that. But I don't feel a stress from you, I feel a passion from you. And it's really refreshing because I used to view cannabis as Just kind of something people did to get high. So this has been a total flip of the script, man. As we say goodbye, all the links are there. The code is Josh, you guys get involved if you're feeling like you're pulled to this from your heart. But as we say goodbye, you know, in the center of all the things we've discussed and even in the artwork that I have here in the studio, in the very center of this, there is our quest and really our birthright, to have well being, to embody well being. And on wellness wisdom, we always explore the four things I learned from Paul, which is mental, physical, emotional, spiritual. And I've added financial to this house, you know, so. And all those things. How would you define living your life? Well, you know, what does wellness mean to you? How does Ryan live his life?

Well, this is a beautiful question. You know, I think for me, what I would say is that well equals feeling fulfilled at the end of the day, because for me, fulfillment is different than success because success is a slippery slope, because who knows what success is? But fulfillment is something that I really feel everyone finds individually, because true fulfillment is not something you can rent, right? It's something that's given to you based on what you do and who you be really. And so for me, it's all based on fulfillment. You know, I think wellness is synonymous with fulfillment because if you're fulfilled, you're going to feel well, and if you're feeling well, you're going to feel fulfilled. And so I think they're really synonymous in nature. So that's what I would say is, you know, ask your heart each morning what you're being called to do and then follow that beyond all logic. Because trust me when I say none of what I'm doing now is based on logic. I mean, still my analytical mind is like, are you sure? But it's just trained enough at this point to go, well, he always does crazy stuff and it seems to work out. So we're just, you know, we're taking vacation vibration here and letting the soul lead. And so that's what I would say for that answer.

That's beautiful, man. Such a great podcast. Thanks for coming on.

Thank you.

We're talking more about Ryan and the group wellnessforce.com community. You can just go to the wellnessforce.com website and learn more about Ryan. And until Ryan and I see you again very soon, we're both wishing you love and wellness. We'll talk to you then.

Woo.

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