James Sol Radina: The Healing Power of CBD & Breathwork For Anxiety | Wellness Force #Podcast

James, where did the soul come from? Sol the son.

My mom is just my middle name. She was given to me at birth. It's one, I think, you know, I let. My mother died when I was 4. So it's like, to me, it's like one of those gifts that is well beyond her life on this planet.

Yeah, I always wondered that. I'm like, why do they call him James Soul Verdina? Yeah. So it's a tribute to your mom. Yeah. That's beautiful, man. Yeah. And you grew up where? Where'd you grow up?

I was born in Phoenix, Arizona. Have plenty of family there. But then my dad, after my mom died, moved us, my brother and I, to Kansas and grew up on a 40 acre farm in the middle of the wilderness on a dirt road with very few neighbors around. Yeah.

In Kansas.

In Kansas, of all places.

Kansas is not like the traditional hotbed for entrepreneurial growth.

No, but it was in my blood. We had a family restaurant, and I just would go back to Eric Arizona in the summers and learn to work the restaurant business from every position from the back of the house to the front of the house, from sous chef to cashier, and just learn entrepreneurship from the family. And then.

Yeah, you started early.

Well, that piece. Yeah. Well, I always thought I wanted to own a restaurant until I got to college, and then I said, I'm gonna own a nightclub, wrote a business plan and found myself owning a nightclub. Because nightclubs or restaurants, I mean, Kauai went to college student. Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, at that time, this is.

Fascinating to have been here in Kauai for a month because it's really just cycled me down, my friend. Oh, my gosh. Talk about, like, going from fifth gear to first gear. Like, this island attracts a certain type of personality. What is that personality?

I mean, it's an interesting question to say the island attracts certain people and it kicks out and spits out other people. But when you get here, if it welcomes you in, I believe that the slowing down tends to allow for the truth to start to show up of what am I really here to do? Am I really running so fast I'm not pausing to take a look at what is mine to do? Who am I to be in all my relationships and my business and everything I'm touching in life. And so, you know, there's a beauty in that that I wasn't finding elsewhere unless I would travel and go for a week or two at a time, take a work vacation, slow down and go, oh, this is what I want to do. This next year. But Kauai offers that 24.

Seven people get a taste of that. They'll go on vacation or they'll go somewhere, and it's like, oh, this is what my nervous system's supposed to feel like.

Exactly.

But.

And this inspiration. Oh, what I want to do next is. That feels so true. And then we can tend to go right back in the old environment, and then that just, like, gets filled up by the next 911 fire. We're trying to put out an urgency.

Yeah, that's a great reminder. I'm gonna leave the island in a week, and we're going back to Encinitas. And what you just said, I think is so easy for us to fall into. Man or woman, human being, like, getting caught up in the rat race. And this is why I'm so happy to have this podcast with you, man. You need to understand the true efficacy of having a safe vape tech where you actually breathe in CBD compared to just eating gummies and doing drops and things like that. Beyond that, it's like a tool for people to come back to what's true. You know, breath work is really powerful. But combining safe vape cbd, and actually breathing in, we're gonna talk about the science of that. It's so different than anything else I've ever experienced. And it's just one of these tools that I think brings people back to that calm nervous system state over and over and over again. Like, how did you even get involved in the CBD world? Cause you were in it five plus years ago, way before the kind of.

Craze turned on, you know, what you just said is, like, really about getting back to center in so many ways. And I believe CBD is the greatest tool I've been able to find that helps me get back to center when it comes in a capsule. Now, breath work, yoga, meditation, also help get me back to center. And so how did CBD come to me? I mean, I was a serial entrepreneur. I sold an app company, and I was spending, for the first time, some time off. I bought an rv. I was up the coast in Big Sur in California, and I was saying no to every project. And I went to go see, do a silent retreat, went to see my teacher Adyashanti, and I asked, I stood up, everybody got a question. I went up and I said, listen, I'm at this place in my life where, you know, in a sense, I can sit on the beach and I don't have to do anything. For the first time in my life, And I'm scared. You know, part of me wants to do something. He said, don't move until you're moved. Stay there until life picks you up. And CBD is what the answer eventually came.

Be there until life picks you up. Yeah, that's an interesting phrase.

That's what he said. Sit there then, until life moves you. And so this was, in a sense, the theme of taking a little bit of time off and Big Sur going, what do I do next? What do I do next? And I had been doing many years of Crohn's and Colitis foundation work as a volunteer. And there was a little boy named Lance who had Crohn's and he was Rady's Children's Hospital's youngest Crohn's patient. And I fell in love with him and his. And I basically adopt him as an older brother. We go to amusement parks and just hang out. And here I'm watching this child every month go back into the hospital and they're giving him more drugs. He's becoming more terminal. It's a downward slope. And we finally asked his mother if he wanted to try cbd, because we were also filming at this very early stages seven years ago when I started to get in the industry, long answer to your question, but essentially with the film team, we said, let's try Lance. Let's actually give a child cbd, which seven years ago wasn't as common as we are today, giving CBD to children. And his mother wrote 100 letters to the school teachers, to the principal, to the church, to her family, to her friends, and asking all of their permission before she gave it to her son. And they all said yes because it was like, what else can we do here?

Yeah.

And within three weeks, it was remarkable, the results. And he's been hospital free for his Crohn's now, for now, over five years.

And this is just through taking in how much, how much product?

Well, at that time we were using oil based CBD that was in syringes and we were trying to give him 150 milligrams to 300 milligrams. Now he's taken of a water based CBD. He's taking 30 milligrams.

Yeah. The research is so powerful. I mean, I feel like when I go on pubmed, it just keeps stacking up and up and up. Whether it's not just stress reduction, but like literally people that are having Parkinson's disease or. I know we can't like make claims for cbd, but we can make References and awareness and we can understand what's really going on. Just from my own perspective, when I do the drops versus the vape, I notice with the vape, it's right away. So there's something with this bioavailability cbd. I think for many people right now it's like they've heard of it, but there's not a lot of clarity around the ways that it gets in there. What's the pathways with the inhalation, with the safe vape tech or the drops or just eating it in a gummy or food. Can you share what that's all about?

Yeah, I mean, when we look at cbd, there's all different types to take it. You're right. There's a lot of this gummy craze that came out. It's like, get CBD in your system. And so, yes, and a part of us is, well, let's take it orally, let's get into our stomach, let's get into our blood. But it can get into our bloodstream in other ways. Like the safety technology we're talking about with the vaporizer where we simply push a button and healthy, in a healthy way, vaporize the CBD oil and in this case we add essential oils of lemongrass, bergamot, clary, sage and lavender into the blood system through the lungs. And so. And it happens in less than 10 seconds for most people, they can actually feel the calming effect.

Yeah.

And so it's really interesting that you're pairing this with breath work because the lungs are, you know, like we can go what, days without water, we can go weeks without food. And some people have years minutes without breathing. And so when you're putting the, this medicine into your lungs, it's literally getting into your body in the fastest way. And the bioavailability of having this vaporized CBD oil getting to your lungs and getting to your blood system is a lot higher than an oil based tincture.

As an example, it's the absolute highest. I mean, when I did the research for the breath program, it was like save vape was at the top and then right below that was putting it under your tongue for I think one to five minutes. And then it was eating it in food. But honestly, like the research on the gummies is that you're getting hardly any of absorption whatsoever.

Maybe sometimes 4% if you're lucky.

So you're spending all this money on cbd, but you're not actually getting the.

CBD or you're getting the sugar, you're getting the Candy. So if you really look at the back of the label, this has been really fascinating for me. So if you take a capsule of any supplement, it's usually about 500 milligrams. You take a gummy and you're going to see that the amount of grams of sugar are probably around 15 grams. That would mean 30 capsules of sugar. And so you're also, they're telling you they're putting 10 milligrams of CBD and you're lucky to get 0.04. So you're taking 30 capsules of sugar and you're getting like less than, like less than the amount you can put in your pinky fingernail of cbd.

And so why is there a range of milligrams where people can actually quote, feel it? Because the number one question we get with Wellness Force is like, what is it actually for? When will I actually feel it as regards to cbd? I know for vape, I feel it right away. Like I just did two polls with you here and like I'm relaxed.

Well, it's a really beautiful question because if you take a capsule and, or if you take CBD and you're not in tune, you're not sitting, you're not like actually noticing the difference, then with a capsule that can be 20 in a water soluble version can be five to 20 minutes later, you start to feel the effects in an oil based tincture can be up to an hour or an hour and a half. You're back at life. You're not sitting down in meditative state going, how am I different now? You know, you're back at life and you might be in your car and there's no way it's. Because it's extremely subtle. I feel that people should understand that CBD is not like thc, its cousin where you're going to feel the effects of a euphoric or high.

Yeah.

And so you're going to be driving the car. If you're high, you're like, I'm high. I know this CBD is extremely subtle and it's working in your organs, working in your nervous system. It's actually calming down. I feel like it's like an internal massage. And so if you're not, if you're just out in life at the, at this shopping market or driving, you might not notice the effects.

Sure.

But if you're somebody that has a severe ailment or a disease or something like that, you can tend to notice the effects a little bit more drastic because you might be Typically in pain or in discomfort.

Yeah.

Or you. The shakes or whatever it is you're thinking. So you can notice a little bit for. But for people that are healthy like you, it can be very subtle, unless it's a vape where it happens within 60 seconds, and you're like, oh, I noticed it.

It's right away. And I think there's a lot of great research and great press about the safe vape. And then, of course, there's these other huge, massive cartridges where they're filled with all this propylene glycol and all this honestly crap. Right. This technology has completely been vetted out from any of those harmful things. I think there's five different ways that this is the safest product on the market, which we'll get into. But what drew me to this is I was creat this breathe program over the past year and a half, and I was like, okay, I wonder what would happen. This is in Thailand a year ago. I wonder what would happen if I combine CBD drops with breath work. And I didn't really notice anything because the drops take, like, 20 to 30 minutes. And by that time, like, most catharsis journeys are over. So I started to just think about, you know, mutual friend of ours, Matt Stein. And then I was asking other people, like, where do I get something organic that's super healthy in a vape tech? So that I can see what would happen if we did it with breathing. And this is like six to eight months ago. And so I went back and forth, and I was looking over the whole market, and, like, nobody had anything. Like, no one had any organic CBD that was vape, and that was safe. And so I finally found you. And right when I tried it, I knew right away. I was like, okay, I haven't even done breath work, and I'm already relaxed. So combining these two elements of the vagal nerve that's wired on the back of the diaphragm, doing this inhalation and exhalation in a rhythmic way. It already down cycles our nervous system to be more parasympathetic, combined with that quick inhalation at the hold portion on the breathwork. I have felt dramatic improvements in my breathwork practice. I mean, not just my ability to calm myself, but even, like, my creative flow. For a couple hours afterwards, I'm calling up people I haven't called before. I'm just, like, more full of love, you know? What do you think? I know the physiology and the biology, but what do you think is actually going on? Like, have you seen these two things melded before?

I mean, I feel like it's. No, I've never seen it melded before. And to pick up where you started is that it wasn't easy to develop this vaporizer cartridge. It took over a year in product development. Most people I've been in the industry seven years, they spend a week or two in product development to give a little bit of a comparison. And then second to answer your question is, you know, are people combining these two? No. But you saw a few articles a couple of years ago of people doing yoga classes with edibles to get. When they were getting high. Yeah. Enable, like people to drop in and get into their body more. And if you're coming from, you know, on laptop or traffic and you're coming into yoga class, I think that cannabis on the THC side can be upgrade. So I was.

I sure.

I thought, like, that's a great idea. I think they'll do well.

Not everybody can get high, though.

No. And what you're talking about, nor do they want to, you know, and so what you're talking about is something for anybody and everyday use that doesn't have side effects, that is extremely healthy. And every part of your body is being opened up thanks to breathwork. And so when you're combining two things, there's like a one plus one scenario that starts to happen that equals three. And that's what we also found with some of our combinations of our formulations, is that CBD is amazing. But if you don't have the other cannabinoids, cbg, cbn, cbc, some of these whole plant extracts. Yeah, excuse me, with it, you're not getting the entourage effect. And I believe what you're talking about is very similar to breathwork and cbd. Breathwork's amazing. But you start adding in these other pieces of also and heightening it. Breath work and sound, healing, breath work and cbd, they're very similar. Your body is going to be absorbing more of goodness, like in this case, cbd, because you're bringing all this oxygen into your system. You're opening up your system.

It's fascinating to me because I would think that we are probably the most stressed out as a culture we've ever been. Like, yes, life was harder 100 years ago in certain ways, but we also had longer periods of sunshine exposure and just working and being physical and connecting with one another. Like, we didn't have technology. We weren't as divided. And so I think what we're experiencing now as a collective is this constant Drip of sympathetic activation. Like, all day long. We're just kind of stressed out a little bit all day long. And it's just rocking people's bodies. It's making people mentally sick. It's making people feel like they just can't take a deep breath, which is why we created the program. It's why we partner with you, which I'm super excited to announce on this podcast. Like, the bio CBD product is the one. Like, this is what we're going to use for the program. It's already been filmed. By the time this podcast comes out, you guys can click the show notes and actually enroll in the program. But why I like this so much is because it was a feeling I got. Like, I tried a lot of other ones, but the feeling is the biggest report card. Like, beyond just the different. What did you call it? The synergistic effect.

Entourage Effect.

The Entourage effect. There is something about the way that I feel, and I wonder. I'm curious how you think this is the combination of the essential oils with the cbd. Why did you choose to do it that way? Is that part of what I'm feeling?

For sure. I mean, the original intention was to have multiple formulations for people that want to take some CBD and they're on their way to work or with their morning coffee, and they want a little bit more focus. This one is for calming because we, like you're saying, see so much that here in the Western world, we've been fed something that we bought into that says more is better. More, you know, bigger house, faster cars, more work, more impact. You name it, we'll find it somewhere. And that has a toll on our nervous system. Our nervous system actually saying, hey, what about more breath? What about more rest? And these are the things that start to get squeezed out when we are trying to do more. And so. And this blend is the Peace blend. I am Peace blend. And it's designed specifically to actually allow our nervous system to relax and rest and rejuvenate and heal from the inside out.

Yeah. And I feel it right now. It's been like, I think, three pulls on this. And the way that we've done it in the program is that we actually do this after the breath retention. So it's just on the inhale, you'd pull in 75%. And then the last 25%, after you do the breath hold, you pull in the cbd. But we don't hold it for too long, because in the research that I found, it wasn't how long you hold it in where you get the benefits. Just pulling it in and breathing it out normally seemed to be like what the research showed. And also anecdotally what proved the most flow states, creativity and just fun for me. Is that what you found as well? Like it's not about how hard you pull it in and about how long you hold it, whether you're doing it with breathwork or not. What's your sense on the holding time?

Well, personally, my theory is that we are just scratching the surface on the studies. For the longest time, for 100 and some years, we haven't been able to study CBD any part of the cannabis plant. Now with the farm bill, we're finally able to actually study it. There's actually effort and energy and resources going into having these clinical trials. So if we just rely on those clinical trials and we say that they're the law in the sense that's what's right, then I believe we're getting back into the old way of doing things. So my theory, my own personal take, is that let's take medicine back into our own hands and let our bodies be the doctor. And this is a huge part of what I believe this CBD has a potential to do, which is it works for me, but it works differently for me than it does for you.

Yeah.

And so everybody's gonna be a little bit different. And so I really want to just like hone in on that because in no way is CB going to work for everybody. In fact, I have a friend that's allergic to it and she didn't know she was allergic to it. And she's a body worker, so she was putting on her hands and using his massage oil and then she. Exactly. And so it's not for everybody. And nothing is really like, can we be so in tune with our bodies just as a statement and a way of doing life that when we take in a 3 second inhale, we feel better than a 5 second inhale. Yet the next person needs 5 seconds. And when we hold it in for 5 versus 10, can we be in tune enough to actually be our best doctor in our own medicine?

I love that because I think this concept of healing thyself, it was, I think last year at Paleo conference, it was their whole theme, heal thyself. Like what do we need to become, what do we need to gather as far as intelligence and how can we actually be as a human to heal ourselves? I would love to hear your take on this. I feel like the antidote to stress in this World is taking a deep emotional inventory of what's actually important. Because so many of us are saying we have to do all these things. And that's actually adding to the constant drip of stress. Like, what does that look like for you? Emotional inventory? And how do you see a real emotional inventory working out for stress reduction?

We can go down a deep rabbit hole in this one. And I love this conversation because for most of my life, I wasn't really tied to my emotions. It was easier to just go out and do. Just show up every day and go do something and then actually be in doing this internal inventory. How do I actually feel today? And so that's one piece. And imagine that I'll use myself as an example. So imagine that I'm coming out of college and I'm feeling this stress of getting a job, right? And so I wake up every day, it's like, I gotta prove myself. I got student loans to pay back. My friends are all. They got, their families got jobs, they got them jobs, right? All these different things. And if, let's say I wake up from that place of this emotional stress, like something inside of me is not feeling right, and then I go create something from that state, I could actually be supporting the issue of, you know, global warming or of the crisis we have within the medical system if I'm creating from that place of fear versus, like, actually being calm. And so when you talk about this emotional game, it's really fascinating to me to actually stop, pause and look at it and find out. I like to say, what is our how? Which I never looked at how I am showing up every single day or every moment in that sense, because there's so much, you know, we look at our planet, we're now at a place where it's. There's a lot of signs saying we're going in the wrong direction and it's not very far out before it's going to look really, really bad. And if we continue this way, so how do we show up in the face of that problem? Do we create? Like, do we go to war at it, or do we have spaciousness and allow for creativity? You know, to me, creativity, if you look at an artist, musicians, if they don't really have spaciousness to create music, then, you know, I think it shows in what they create. So as entrepreneurs and. Or as parents or whoever we are in the world, can we be in an emotional calm state and thank you, cbd, for helping support that? It isn't the whole answer.

It's just part of, yeah, and so it's so powerful. I'm hearing you say this because I'm just realizing it's. We can hear a message so many times. Like, you can hear something 30 times. It's great to take six deep breaths. It's great to have CBD as your ally. But until you actually do it, my friend, it really doesn't matter. Like, knowing doesn't matter. Knowing and doing are two separate things. The bridge in the middle is awareness and connected conversation. It's this continued drop of, like, hey, this is good for you. This is the experience you'll get. That's why you're in this podcast. So what I'm feeling from this is like the ultimate reminder. It's almost like a permission slip to be calm. And I think so many of us feel guilty. Like, you were at the beach right when you stopped working for a while. And what was that phrase that your mentor said to you?

Don't move until life moves you.

Don't move until life moves you. Like, not everybody has that luxury. So they might take emotional inventory, and they would say, I don't have time to spend at the beach with.

Sounds probably very privileged.

It sounds like that. What could you say to somebody who maybe is just beginning to take that emotional inventory? Like, they're on the path to wellness. They're here with us, so, you know, they're interested. I mean, we're all in this together. So what's the beginning look like for them if they have so many responsibilities that they feel like they're just overwhelming, overwhelmed?

I love this quote or the saying of how you do anything is how you do everything.

Yeah.

And so can we take moments at a time? Because that's where it starts. You know, Are we going from work to the dinner table to the relationship and then to bed and still on the computer the whole time? Or can we carve out these little beach moments where we can actually sit until life picks us up and moves us? And when we get picked up and moved, can we look at why? What's actually moving us? What's actually driving? I can tell you for myself, I'll call myself out. For much of my life, I've been driven by needing to prove myself and make money. And as I started to just tap into, like, that isn't sustainable and that's not healthy. That's gonna be a short life for me, and it's actually not fulfilling. I'm trying to prove something to other people. When I started to look at that, then I started to pause going, I'm not going to do that again. I'm not going to keep taking these steps. And so when we can take this emotional inventory or this body inventory, ultimately we're trying to get back to our body. Our body is the subconscious mind. Our body doesn't lie. If we can listen to our body and slow down, then there's a lot of knowledge there.

Yeah.

It doesn't need to be reading a book or from somebody else telling us we are the ones that can actually listen and say, for me, in this moment, this is the best decision and be able to listen and act from that place is authenticity. Wow.

Thank you for sharing that. Because I'm feeling in my own life, it's either the lack of creating because I'm the creator. I'm the creator of my reality, just like all of us are. So if I don't take the time to pause and create my reality, then my reality is created by everyone else around me and I'm working for somebody else's dream. Which is why, you know, five plus years ago, I got the gift of being fired from corporate America, which led me here to you. You know, but the entrepreneurial journey and like, going down that path of pausing, listening, listening to the truth and then taking action from that truth, it can be so devastatingly scary. It can be so lonely.

It's the scariest thing.

It can be so lonely.

Right. This what we're talking about, like, in theory, might sound easy, but it's actually one of the scariest things. And we get into. Somehow we get into survival mode when we think of, like, in our work, we're talking about entrepreneurship, and everybody, for the most part, is working that's probably listening to this. That are up to something. Right. In life. And if you start to, like, question their way of being and how they're showing up, it can actually feel super traumatic because it's scary because that's potentially their survival. And when you're up against survival and we're not feeling safe, then all of a sudden, all logic starts to go out the window.

Yeah.

And if we don't pause enough to actually allow for some other new creative energy or new flow to show up, then we're just going to keep running and we're going to be kind of illogical because we're in survival and this is perpetuating the problem potentially.

One of the modules in the Breathe program is about the default mode network. And we all kind of fall into this category of being a slave to the amygdala and literally being hijacked by Our own brain. This is where mental health issues come from, is people under that constant drip of stress not pausing to take that inventory and never actually allowing themselves to just take a full breath. I mean, if you're watching this or listening to this, take a full breath with us right now. Take six more while you listen. Because, man, it's so powerful. I mean, breath is the only autonomic, the only automatic lever that we can adjust. Something breathes us and we breathe ourselves. And so when I look at all the complementary things that can bring us down to that calm state, I guess why I'm so happy I found this is because I didn't even know it existed. You know, it kind of came to me in a way. And I just had this idea when I was in Thailand, like, is it really possible? And it was that spark of curiosity. I think it was from something else. I think it was from either the collective field or source or whatever you want to call it. Maybe my own imagination. But my own imagination is connected to all things. So your genesis for Bio cbd, did that come for you, like, in a moment? Were you at the beach when it came? Like, what was the moment when you got the download when you actually were like, ah, this is what I'm going to do?

Well, I remember laying in bed when it hit me that my whole life was leading up to this moment or to this experience. But there's multiple touch points. There was the fact that I grew up on a farm and I lived off the land, and I was always into health. Not really into health. Like, I didn't consciously know, but my family was into health. And it was like feeding me that piece from my entrepreneurship. From little Lance showing up in my life to the Crohn's and Colitis foundation and the volunteer work. Like, that was years before I got into cbd. I never knew that it was going to lead this way. And so, yeah, no, I don't know if that really answers your question, but.

Sounds like it was a culmination of things.

Yeah, absolutely. Like, and listening for the signs. You know, ultimately, I do a lot of that now. I didn't so much before, but there are kind of signs, whether it's the body telling me something, hey, you're working too much. Slow down. Try something different. And. Or my mind questioning something like this doesn't feel fulfilling. Let's look at something different. Or my heart, which is another big piece, is like, are you really. Could you really do this for the rest of your life? Could you really do this if nobody Paid you?

Yeah. That's a challenging question for many people talking about emotional inventory. Would you still be doing the thing if you weren't making any dollars for it? I mean, that's a deep one, because I would say there's probably a huge segment of people watching and listening that their responsibilities are so real. You know, their rent, their children, the food on the table. Like, all that stuff is real. And it's a process of change that's like turning a battleship. Like, I'm not saying that you should quit your job and you should let everything go just so you can have time to take an emotional inventory. There's a progressive and strategic way to live mindfully and to take a continuous inventory. Using breathwork, using cbd, using float tanks, meditation. Like, there's so many rich tools that we have. But why do you think people don't do it? Because they might know it, but what inspires them to take the action?

Well, I mean, I think we. And most people are probably listening to this, are probably doing it. And, like, a sailboat's hitting a destination, it can't sail directly towards it. Yeah, we're doing this. Like, for me, I have to bump up against the edges. I have to go and figure out, can I work 80 hours a week and can I push really hard in entrepreneurship and can I go do that to realize that's not what I want? And then can I swing so far the other way to take time off after I sold the app companies? And, like, that's actually not what I want either. Where's my edge for my middle path, for my flow state, for my. The way the dao talks about the way my Wu Wei. Where is my spot that only me, that I can't learn in a book that I can only be in attune with my sweet spot? And when I'm in my sweet spot, it's like floating. It's like flow. And so everybody, I believe, is kind of doing that at some point. Life brings us, like, down moments where we have to write to ourselves. The other place.

Yeah, it's like a sledgehammer.

Yeah, exactly. But can we be awake and slow and patient and conscious enough to actually just do it on a constant basis? And I believe that's part of the answer. Is that really what we're talking about? And CBD is one of those things when in breath, work is one of those things. At the end of the day, what are the tools that we're putting in our life just as much as the tools we're putting, like, A laptop business for me, when I'm showing up every day or I have a team or have responsibility, am I giving myself as much or close to as much of breath, work and time in nature, feet in the ground, grounding. I mean, there's hundreds if not thousands, if not millions of ways to actually come back to center. And CBD is one of those. Breathwork's another. These just happen to be two of the most powerful and our personal favorites.

Yeah. And also too, I think some people. I want to go into this a little bit because there is some naysayers about the vape I mentioned before, like the big box. This is much different. The temper on this is much safer. It's a lower temperature. It emulsifies it. There's no, like, big, huge smoke point. In some of the research that I read, the only trouble and the issues was from companies that weren't vetted, they didn't care and have quality standards. They used these big boxes and huge tips when they would smoke. And this is for people that recreationally would just vape all day long. This is more of like a therapeutic dosage. Can you share the safety of this compared to those things we might have heard about last year?

Yeah. So if you look at the history, kind of the vaporizing has started, started with cannabis and nicotine. And typically the people that would go that way would want flavor. So you get this watermelon, raspberry, lime, and essentially this is like a soda pop, I guess, in a Coke, where there's so much additives and so much sugar into it and very little active ingredient. Even if you look at the nicotine vaporizers or in any store, there's 5% nicotine, nicotine, and then the rest is fillers. And so the same with any kind of like most cannabis, hemp, CBD vaporizers out there. It's a lot of fillers. It's all they. All the companies knew. It's all the manufacturers knew how to make. And so that's why it took us a year to figure out a way to actually have no fillers. None of this stuff that we thought at that time, we didn't know that it would be harmful. Like we know now. Yeah, we just knew. It's just part of how we do anything. Anything for us internally, for my company, is that no fillers, no bs, no anything that's actually potentially be harmful anyway, even if the studies aren't out there, because a lot of people like, oh, there's no study that vegetable glycerin vaporized is unhealthy for me. I'm like, why would you do it?

Yeah.

You know, and so that's a big piece of it. And the other thing is that you always really gotta look at the company behind everything. The products. What are their motives? Are they. What are their values? Because there are. Well, in the case of the harmful, the deaths that happened this last year, in the case of the. The harm that some of the vaporizers were coming, if you actually follow the stories, we're finding that it was a synthetic version of cannabis and it's called spice and they were vaporizing it and the companies were actually got a warning letter, but they formed a different company and they actually kept on selling and it was all linking back there. And so again, I keep going back. This is how you do anything, is how you do everything. Can we look at the companies and the people behind every product? And this goes to. Not just in CBD we're talking about, but in everything.

It's fascinating to me because it's such the wild, wild west, James, the whole CBD world. And I get this sense, like, even if people wanted to put the USDA sticker on a CBD or hump product, no matter how organic and perfect it was, we're not there yet. Like, the government's not willing to put that sticker on there. Why is that?

They're getting there. But again, like, you know, you can have an organic product that cuts corners in other ways.

Yeah.

And so we really want to just do that but say something there. But like, if you look at you wellness force, your living example, you're on video, you're showing who you are. Right. There can be plenty of people that want to teach breath work, but their lifestyle is like running a million miles an hour too. And they're like, they're doing things that are unhealthy. So again, getting back to what's behind the people that are putting them out is really important. And so this organic piece, even if you get the greatest little badges all over this thing, triple tested, amazing technology and organic, even though it shows it on there, don't take the label for everything anymore.

Oh, interesting.

Because you can get. Get non GMO stickers and money can buy organic certifications.

Talk to me about that a little bit. I haven't heard of that before. For cbd specifically in hemp.

Well, no, not. Well, it's getting there. But with other products.

Yeah, like with food. And we see the term natural, like natural foods. It's got like pictures of like little happy cows Running around. If you go to the farm, they're standing in their own shit. That's the reality. But when I think about hemp and really what we're seeing, this is like a return to the ancient ways. And I guess this is why it's so exciting, man, is because whether it has the sticker on it or not, like, back for thousands of years, breath was used as a tool by shamans. I mean, there's breathwork dating back all the way to, like, before Christ was on the planet, supposedly, and starting with the pranayama breathing in India. And I think about if we were to look at the research for cannabis or specifically even just, you know, hence as a plant. How far back does that go?

Well documented. Three to four thousand. Four to five thousand years.

Four to five thousand years.

If you look at Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, they have documented the cannabis plant and the medicinal benefits even back then. And the oldest study that we have, in the oldest documented study we have.

Of medicine, okay, so they've been using it for 45,000 years. There is some ancient wisdom in that. And on this show, we always talk about intelligence, you know, and everyone knows at this point, intelligence is not how smart you are. It doesn't matter if you know something. What matters is like, can I gather it, can I apply it, try it on, test it, iterate? And then lastly, man, what people feel from you, or what I hope people feel from me, is an embodiment of certain practices that we've really put in the work for. And it can't be faked the whole term fake it till you make it. In my opinion. I think that's what adds to the stress epidemic is people just trying to fake all the time. People trying to fake that they can handle all these responsibilities at their job. I just have a sense that specifically combining breath with full spectrum hemp. This is full spectrum, right?

Correct.

Full spectrum hemp. I can see this exploding all throughout 2020 and 2021, because not everybody can go and drink plant medicine, and not everybody can go and pay a lot of money for ketamine infusions, and not everybody can afford to do a membership at a float tank. And like, this actually is very cost effective. You can do it at your home. But I have to say, like, the way that this is dispersed and the way that you have put so much your heart and soul into this, do you see this being threatened at all? Do you see this tool, this safape under fire? Do you think it's controversial?

I mean, I See the entire industry being threatened when, you know, we're heading back to ancient ways. Breathwork. I don't know that, you know, breath work's not going to be threatened because it's our breath. You can't take it.

You can't stop me from breathing.

Right. But you know, anything that is making a difference and making money has always been under threat. Yeah, I mean this 100 years ago, that's why it's was illegal was that it was threatening the, you know, there's people that have studied it threatening the paper industry, hemp. And so the, the people that own the paper industry shut it down in order to preserve their paper paper industry. But anyway, so yes, it's always at, it's always at threat. The banking issues have still been a problem. Even the farm bill passed. FDA still hasn't fully given like the, you know, as you're talking about USDA organic. Not every organic certification is allowing for hemp cbd. We're starting to see some at the state levels, but not on a national level. So until we actually Facebook, Google, Amazon, they don't know how to operate it. So it's confusing. There are certain, you know, the state level police officers don't know the difference between legal, nationwide legal hemp CBD and marijuana based cbd. And so it is confusing. It is new, it is early. And yet, especially at this time, before it's fully regulated in some way, we really have to understand who's behind them. Because a sticker saying that it's organic for us, we triple test it three times to make sure it meets organic standards.

So it was organic certified. You don't even need USDA to give you a sticker. You know, it's certified to your levels.

Yeah. For companies that are in touch with the supplier and in touch with the farmers. Right. And so on and so forth. Like you can have organic eggs, but they could be stuck inside of the smallest cage or you can have pasture raised. And there's a big difference, you know, where they're running free. And so, you know, just really looking behind the scenes is something we should be doing as a culture to change the movement of just taking somebody else's advice and taking their sticker or taking what the doctor said and taking and just, oh, that's the only thing I need to be doing and shutting down, but being open and looking behind the scenes and seeing what's there.

How do you actually test, I was visualizing as you were talking, how do you actually test for impurities? Do you put it in Water. What's that process look like for you to actually test the safety and the validity of everything?

I wish I knew. Yes, we send it to labs, third party labs that this is. All they do is test for cannabinoids for heavy metals, pesticides, microbials, residual solvents in the cannabinoid profile.

And how do you know? Obviously we all know about full spectrum hemp, but there's many cannabinoids and we talk about this in the BREATHE program. Like the cannabinoids is actually part of the homeostasis in the body. So it's an integral part of all the natural feedback systems of how we can just live in the middle, which is that perfect swinging pendulum point where we're relaxed and we're focused. But how do you know what's. As far as the cannabinoid types? How do you know what's in here? Is that also through the lab?

Yeah, we test it. So the oil, you know, if you can imagine the, the hemp plant growing up with just soil, a seed, water and the sun. Right. Very natural environment. And then when it's extracted and we take the oils from the plant, it's going to have its own unique intelligence. And the most pure way we can extract it is the best. So we use CO2 extraction. And then once that oil is in an oil, we send it into lab and we say, what is it? And every single crop, every single plant is different.

It's almost like wine.

Yeah.

Every year wine is different. Every year the hemp plant came from.

You can literally see like if it was a drought year and, or a wet year, if it's a hot year. So it's just like wine. And so you get the lab results back and you say, okay, look, this time we're dealing with this unique flavor where there's 4% of this other cannabinoid called CBC, which is also an anti inflammatory, a neuroprotectant. And so we're getting. So when I see, when I look at my farmers and the suppliers that work with the farmers to see what the type of oil I look for, what I want to put in our products and it's. Well, oftentimes for other companies, they'll choose the cheapest one. You can put an isolate based CBD in there for a fraction of what it is, like 1/10 the cost of the oil we put into our products because it's gotten so cheap to just isolate CBD versus get that full spectrum, broad spectrum other cannabinoids in there. It's Very expensive to keep it that way.

You can do just. I mean in my opinion, 1 to 5, maybe not even 5, just nice 3 second pulls to feel an instant report card of calm and centeredness that can last a long time. So looking at costs, like we're all going to pay for stress either now or later. Like there's a really big interest rate when it comes to stress.

Stress.

And I felt this for a long time in my life too where I was 280 pounds. And I wish I knew about hemp and I wish I knew about breath work and I wish I knew about all these things. What do you say to people that might be a little adverse to exploring CBD or hemp in general? Maybe they're scared from past media or just their parents or whoever the paper mill owner was in the early 1900s. If people feel a tug as to wanting to do it, but maybe they're scared, what can you do to assuage their fears?

I mean I would just. What's coming up for me is just to look at what else you're putting in your body because at the end of the day what we're talking about is a plant and we're talking about something as natural as. And there is documented study of this, written study for thousands of years ago that this has been around and has medicinal benefits in ayurvedic medicine. And so I would say look at what else you're putting in your body because most likely here in the United States there's a lot of pharmaceutical drugs that are just given out like candy. Prescriptions is a real problem. If you look underneath the hood of the prescription and are you looking to see what ingredients are in there? Because most pharmaceutical drugs come from the Amazon. They find tree bark down there that has pain relieving properties and then they go into the tree bark and they find the one molecule that is causing those pain relieving properties. And then they go into a lab and they study it for 10 years and then they come out with some pharmaceuticals patent and then they mass produce that one molecule and then the results aren't as high as the original tree bark in supporting people with pain, which has the entourage full plant everything into it and that's as natural as it can be. But it might feel weird to some people to go down and grab a piece of tree bark, condense it in boiling water and actually make a tea out of it and feel pain relief.

Yeah.

And rather take a pharmaceutical that's isolated and allowed. And so I don't know there's just a. For me, it's not, you know, that I'm the type of person that wants to not interfere with God and be in touch with nature as much as possible and to keep things as natural as much as possible and keep synthetics out of my body as much as possible, because my body is a natural process. So can I keep as much natural ingredients in my body as possible possible.

Plus, I feel like once somebody's gone through enough pain, they stop giving a shit about what other people think and they're just looking for the solutions for healing. And when I look at, you know, inviting somebody over to my house to have tree bark tea, I wouldn't care. I'd have them over, you know, it wouldn't be a big deal. But I think a lot of people in certain states that are listening, like, they might not want to go do ayurvedic therapies and drink teas and things like this. This is for the analytical and the logical purpose person. It's also for the spiritual and the esoteric person. Because whether you want to study the biology or the physiology of the interaction with the vagus nerve and down regulating stress, we can go there. But we can also just say, why don't you sit still for five minutes, do some cyclical breathing and do one to five pulls of some safe vape hemp, like they're equally as powerful. Yet what is it, James? What is it in our mind where we always have to have evidence and report cards and everything for it? Is it because of the snake oil salesman? Or is it because we're in a world where everything has to be proven instead of fake felt?

It's a complex. I believe that's a complex answer. There's a lot to it. We're, in a way, it might be a lot, it might be biology, where it might be wired for this, which is, again, if we don't feel safe, then we're wired to try to find a safe environment. And so if we're not feeling safe in our bodies, if we're not feeling safe in our homes or our needs aren't being met, rent's not going to be paid, then we're not being logical, we're in our animal brains. And so we're gonna go try to find solutions. And, you know, there's a lot of wisdom in coming back to the present moment, which I don't know very many people that can deny that a nice inhale is not. Is like an inner massage and a calming thing. And if so, if we can do that more then it doesn't. It can be. That's simple.

There's a phrase on my arm that people listening have heard before. It's, it's. And it means if I can breathe, I can choose in Italian. Because if I can just remind myself with my girlfriend or you or just business, if I can just remind myself to take a deep breath, just to take a deep breath, it's so powerful because I can respond from a place of being in my body, not exiting my body. My body knows what, what it wants. It knows how to talk to my heart and soul. But I think what happens to most of us, man is we just forget to breathe. You know, we just forget to actually breathe. It's a skill, it's a cultivation, it's a reminder.

Yeah.

How do you feel about in your own life, breath work has impacted you personally?

Oh, forgetting to breathe is so, such a good thing. So with breath work, with remembering to breathe, I realize that there's more things than just my mind mind that I need to listen to. Our gut we're saying is so important. Right. It's another brain.

Yeah.

And so how can we listen to our gut if we're always allowing our mind to operate and we're always in fight or flight or freeze. And so anyways, with breath work for me, I studied it for an entire year and then it became a part of my life and I do it every day.

Where'd you study?

With my teacher out of Europe. His name's Anthony. In Ibiza. Yeah. It's the alchemy of breath. It's a beautiful program and did a year long course and really it was a practitioner course. But I wasn't looking to teach, I was just looking to deepen my practice, understanding breath work. And so I use it every day to help calm my nervous system, allow, like you said, my nervous system get into a parasympathetic nervous state versus sympathetic and always on this fight, flight or freeze. And so breathwork is extremely important because it allows me to slow down and listen to other parts of my body that may be talking. I will tell you that even now, even living in Kauai, even, even with a lot less stress than I used to have, I still have stress. And if I don't pause, I can't listen to the little subtle discomfort that's coming from my right shoulder. And if I keep it up, it's going to lead to disease. Right. And so if I'm constantly doing something but I'm not slowing down enough to actually see Those actions. This is where I think we start to. The body starts to like little signs and then they get louder and then they get louder and like you said, then it's like a full on slap.

Yeah.

Are we willing to actually listen earlier? And breath work allows for that for me. Allows me to actually take us take an inventory internally with the mind shutting down and letting the body just speak through the breath to really see what's going on.

Have you ever had a journey that felt similar to something psychedelic?

Oh, yeah, for sure. I mean, it's one of the, you know, the seeker in me loves those journeys. You know, the seeker in me that like loves peak experiences, actions, sports and so on and so forth. Like loves going for that and. And yet it doesn't. It's not needed for me now. Yeah. In order to actually have what that gets me. But more of a sustained state because that was like a peak and now it's just a more of a sustained state of like, just inner calmness.

Oh, man. I just flashed back. I was sitting in Jamie Wheel's house in Austin two years ago and he's like, we're just chasing a never ending tale where people are going from like ceremony to ceremony to burning man to chase these peak experiences. But after the peak experience comes through the laundry, you gotta just come back here to the 3D, my friends. Like, it's dangerous because, you know, and I love Aubrey Marcus and I love on it and I think they've done incredibly great things for our industry, for wellness and just for development as a human. But I think if people just didn't take the time to really listen to the entire podcast or to our entire conversation, they might think, oh yeah, I'll just have this safe vape CBD and everything will be fine. Or if they hear a little snippet or if they hear Aubrey talking about a journey, it's like, oh, yeah, I'll go drink ayahuasca and I'll be fine. It's like it takes a long progression to actually be able to use these tools and integrate them into your life. How has that unfolded for you?

It's like trying to solve everything with one answer. It doesn't work for me. For me. I need cbd. I need breath work, I need some meditation. I need, I need to be showing up in the world, making an impact. I need time and connection with human beings relationship. I need to eat well, I need to sleep good. I need to take the right supplements. I need to exercise well. And then inside of each one of those Are all different types of other points that add into a holistic whole system. I need to be emotionally balanced, I need to be mentally balanced, I need to be spiritually guided. I need all these things for me. And everybody has their kind of sweet spot. But to me it's not just one thing. It's not ayahuasca. Drink a cup and you're going to be fine. It's like how do you integrate that into your life? And that quote, they say, you know, before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. Water. And it's just how we are going to do life when we start adding these pieces. And so I just really want to take a second to acknowledge what you're doing is ultimately breathwork is to me the greatest tool that we can see right now that's free. Free that you can do anywhere, anytime that you are. There's nobody to tell you how you feel, you know how you feel. And it's extremely powerful the way that you're teaching it. We're not just talking about a couple deep breaths. We're talking about actually charging the system. Yes. Filling the system with oxygen and allowing the body and the system to do its own healing. And in that situation, state again, it's free. It only takes a few minutes. You can go longer and do hour long breath works which I like. But ultimately this is what we need to be doing I believe as a society and from that state creativity comes, healing comes, and so on and so forth. And if we give ourselves that gift on a regular basis, I believe we're going to see our entire lives change. We're going to make different decisions. Our how our come from is going to be completely different.

Wow, I just got like a chill in my body when you said that. It's exciting because we don't have to be a slave to our mind anymore like I saw firsthand and I'm sure you have. I don't know if in your immediate family, but God, so many people, James, are suffering and I understand part of life is to suffer because some suffering, it yields really great fruit but not the amount of suffering that we're seeing now, you know, and the breath work being completely free which if you want right now you can go to wellnessforce.comm21 and it's a completely free breathwork week where you get guided. The bio CBD is on that as well. So we're really excited about this partnership because man, when I looked at the entire industry and really what I felt a call from my own Experience in Thailand, it was like, it has to come out now. Like, have you ever felt something so strongly, not just business, but just in life and you guys watching or listening, you know, you gotta do it. There's no way you can't do it. And if you try to not do it, you'll stay awake at night and say, I still have to do this. That's what this Breathe program has been for me. It's been such a joy just to hang out with you a little bit in Kauai and just get like the tip of the iceberg scratch here on the science and the efficacy and the real healing potential of this bio CBD man. And we covered a lot of ground. Like, what did we miss when we look at the efficacy of the safeape, pulling it in? And what can you share possibly that we missed about what this really represents for healing and for transformation in the world?

I just love this piece of like, I call that a full body. Yes. Where you're just. You cannot not do it.

I have to do it.

Right. It's the choiceless choice. If we allow ourselves spaciousness, stillness, you know, little moments of either cbd, breath work, whatever it is throughout the day, I believe we're going to find more and more of those. I'm on a mission and I cannot not do this. And I think that's extremely important. And then as far as CBD and I've really covered a lot of ground and I look behind the company, company, make sure there's third party testing. Make sure all the ingredients you can pronounce, make sure there are no fillers, no BS whatsoever in them. Make sure it's from organically grown practices and farmers. Gosh, in vaporizer, make sure it's pesticide free, microbial free, heavy metal free. And I said microbials. And make sure the cannabinoids don't have thc. That's a piece we didn't talk about.

Yeah, we did not talk about that.

Careful. Like walking into a CBD vaporizer and, and maybe dispensary or in certain companies end up being what we call hot, which is over a limit, which you're actually gonna get high doing this kind of breath work with what you're talking about and deep holds and whatnot. It's a whole different scenario.

I don't want people absorbing THC and doing breath work because honestly, like with breath, you're getting high in your own supply anyways. Like you're going to feel that, that catharsis especially kind of hit it like.

The Runner's high is the same thing. Your body's producing cannabinoids. It's in mother's breast milk. You can produce your own cannabinoids. And so breathwork is doing that. You're adding with the vaporizer, we're talk milligram or two. It's the smallest amount you can get and you're putting in your system and just supplementing your body's healing practice. So be very careful what you're putting in there. We've been talking about. But that includes the psychoactive component called thc.

Yeah, so this is completely great for anyone that is a night shift worker or somebody who deals with stress or a student or professor. Like there's no thc. This is non psychoactive. Nobody's trying to get you high. We're trying to get you high from your own breath and from the cooling and healing power of, of these full spectrum hemp products. But James, we, you and I especially share this belief about physical, spiritual and emotional health. Like wellness. It's, I think in a way it's what brought me out to Kauai and it's probably why you stay here and why you live here. But if you had to describe the nexus, if you were to put yourself in the middle of the physical, spiritual, emotional, I believe that's where wellness lives. It's right there. How would you describe that though? What's your definition of wellness?

That's a great question. Okay, so I'm standing in the middle and I'm in, to me it's, I'm in balance, I'm in flow. I am like not leaning too far forward or leaning too far back in opposition to something or trying to grasp something. Literally. I've been like, I have this vision of me standing up straight with my heart open and, and like leaning just a little bit forward, but the breeze is like meeting me. And so anyways, I like finding myself like where I'm able to lean into life and meet it, but I'm not toppled over and I'm not hiding from life. And so if all three of these areas are in balance, then I can actually stand in that place. But if I'm overactive in my mind and my mental capacities and I'm not taking my emotional peace and I'm not connected to my spiritual peace, then I'm going to be all wobbly, I'm going to be leaning to the side, my arm's going to hurt, my back's going to be sore. You know, my posture is going to show up in my Body, really. We can track everything back to the body. And so I'm not perfect. I work on a laptop quite a bit hours. I still carry tension in my shoulders, but I'm aware of it and I'm noticing it and I'm making daily efforts to try to like, improve that. And so being aware of that center spot and our relationship to these other areas of life is wellness.

That's beautiful. And I just had this feeling to remind everyone, like, awareness is a skill that you practice when you least want to do it. It's the same thing with, like, reminding ourselves to take a deep breath or to use this powerful tool. James, just thank you for what you do in the world, man. Thank you for being you. I didn't know what you had been through and it was cool to learn about your journey from the farm and how that's translated obviously to you using plants to help other people heal. So just deep bow to you, man. Like hands together for what you're creating in the world. And I know people are feeling inspired by this because there's so much confusion out there about hemp and cbd. And I feel like we really got to the truth in this conversation. Breathwork IO is the program. So it's live right now. Breathwork IO, this is going to be in the module for combining the endocannabinoid system with our breath Work work. It's so powerful. Sign up for this program. It's the first program we've ever built and I put my heart and soul into it over the past year and a half and it took a long time to find your company, man. So thank you for producing this.

What a pleasure to be on the show. Thank you for what you. What you stand for. And I just, I'm like envisioning right now, I can just say it, like, people taking this course and there's this whole biohacking movement that's happening. Right. And a lot of times sometimes it means a lot of expensive equipment.

Yeah.

But again, like, we're talking about the breath something free. It's something you can do. It's a relationship with yourself. And what we're talking about with the CBD piece, we're talking about like maybe a quarter or 50 cents per time. Like, this is the great. As far as biohacking goes, it can be one of the greatest experiences of your life for the least amount of output.

It's the lowest hanging fruit. It really is. I would much rather someone invest in this program then go buy a photobiomodulation lamp or special Sunglasses and all this stuff. And those aren't bad. It's just that if you're limited in your financial bandwidth right now, I promise you, from my heart to yours and from James heart to yours, this is a beautiful investment. For less than 100 bucks, you guys, for less than a night out with your spouse or hanging out with somebody, you can have a 21 day program that can transform the way that you use your mind and body and heart together.

So take the, take the demo that you're giving away. Right? The free.

That's right, yeah.

Free week. And then share it. Because this is ultimately how we're going to change the way that health care is done is by having our own experience, being aware of how it changed in our body and then sharing it with others so that we can actually. Marketing can be the biggest evil on the planet. That's why we're talking about these badges. And I'm not into like the greatest marketing anymore. McDonald's has the greatest marketing yet. It's one of the worst products there is. And so how can we. Through word of mouth. To me, it's decentralized collective marketing that's going to change the world. Decentralized collective intelligence where we have a relationship here we're sharing back and forth. I learned a lot on this podcast. I hope the listeners did and they will share something here. Versus taking the old way is broadcast media where we just listen to somebody telling us what it is.

Talking heads.

So let's change the system by decentralized collective intelligence and decentralized collective marketing and sharing with others what working for us. And that's how I think we're going to change the future. So thank you Josh for bringing this forward.

Mic drop. Remember wellnessforce.com M21 to get the free guide, which is you can get a discounted link. There's a special pack here for Bio CBD Also, if you just want to get into the Breathwork and the hemp products right now, go for it. Breathwork IO James, thanks for coming on the show.

Sa.