Latest / Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann / #117 Ephraim Herschmann / Breath Work Experiences

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#117 Ephraim Herschmann / Breath Work Experiences · Come Together with Ephraim Herschmann

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All right, we are live. Cheers.
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Got my double espresso second video podcast like this kind of
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vibe over here going. I'm working now on a microphone,
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maybe a stand to put my phone and start upgrading quality of
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the podcast. Really, really interesting.
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I have a couple of things I wanted to talk about.
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Number one is why I'm doing a solo episode.
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And generally speaking, what's been going on.
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I know the podcast has been a little bit slower than it has
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been, you know, in the last year, I would say.
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And that's pretty much because again, I've, I've talked about
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this, but I'm shifting my focus on getting guests that are more
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outside my circle. I'm not going to say more or
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less reputable, but more outside my circle, more outside the
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immediate group of people that I'm part of.
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And to really expand and to really grow and to really turn
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this into something that is bigger, more fun and just
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really, really, really great. So I've got a lot of people that
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I'm reaching out to. I'm doing a lot of more cold
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reaching out and you know, making our way got a couple of
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calls, got a couple introductions, got to keep on
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following up. Things have been a little crazy,
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you know, not complaining. It's all it's all amazing things
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to be what to be dealing with, but a lot of a lot of hands on
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participation required in my life at this point.
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So I'm totally cool with it. I love it, but it just, it just,
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I have, I have to work on balancing better and now that
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I'm not focusing on necessarily putting out fresh content every
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single day or a bunch of times a week, rather than focusing on
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who I'm talking to and what that's going to be like.
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It's, I think we'll be seeing a little bit of a slower pace for
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now until I could really work a lot of people into the pipeline
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and then, you know, knock a bunch out.
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So yeah, there's, there's I guess two or three main things I
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wanted to talk about today. I wanted to start bringing up.
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It's fun to do video. I don't usually do it.
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I got my kid this ball. And I know if you grew up with
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this or if it's like an early 90s, mid 90s, early 2000s thing
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to grow up with, but these are all like science balls.
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Reminds me of atoms. I feel like lying around.
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It's good to be hanging out in this.
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It's good to hang out in the house with a lot of creativity
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and a lot of things around to spark your, your creativity.
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You know, I forgot, you know, there was something about the,
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you know, having a little bit of a not necessarily messy because
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I think order is good, but something to having a lot of
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stuff around your house apparently is very good for your
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creativity because it just keeps your brain firing and creating
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associations between things that don't necessarily associate with
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one another. So I had, I went to my first
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breath work class. I've done breath different
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variations of breath work. I've done breath work to kind of
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find stillness and comfort, to be able to slow down what's
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going on in my life and to take that pace of responding to so
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many things that were calling me at one time and pulling me in
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all different directions that I needed to just settle down.
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And breath work had definitely helped with that.
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And then I learned and then I came across Huberman's 10 and 20
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minute non sleep, deep rest, respiratory breathing, an STR I
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think is what it's called. And that was amazing too.
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And that's also to kind of help re ground you, recenter you.
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And when you feel like your life is just all over the place and
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it's hard to keep track of everything and you feel like
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your head is just in a million different directions at one time
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that I from my experience, you can do as many times in the day
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as you want. You can do as many times in a
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row as you want. You can do it almost wherever
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you are pretty much, and it's an incredible tool.
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But this type of breathing that I did was a little bit more
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about this was this was a little bit more psychedelic, a type of
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breath work exercise. And by that I mean, most of the
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breath work that I've done in the past had been a strong, had
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had a stronger emphasis on breathing in through your nose
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and breathing out through your mouth.
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Deep inhales, deep exhales. So, you know, and just kind of
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resetting yourself and letting the clean, new fresh air soak
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into your, I guess brain and into your body and into your
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lungs and just breathe out all the bad air and breathe out all
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the stale air. But this this type of exercise
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was different. This was mouth breathing
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specifically. So the way that the teacher had
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explained it was by breathing in through your gut and again
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through your chest and then out and do that for about 45 minutes
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to an hour straight. And I don't understand exactly
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how it works. I'm actually going to try to get
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some breath work professionals on the podcast and see if
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someone could explain that to me.
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But my very, very limited understanding is that it has to
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do with actually depleting yourself of oxygen to a certain
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extent. And as a consequence, your
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fingers get a little crampy and they kind of tend to curl.
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You get pins and needles, you get a lot of very similar of
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this similar sensations to the type of sensations you get when
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you're taking psychedelics. And there is really a very
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tangible kind of like moment of take off, I guess you'd call it,
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where you're, you're in one place and then you end up in
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another. And this is actually, so I want,
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I wanted to kind of walk through the whole experience and kind of
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explain what happened and the benefits and what I was able to
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see and what I was able to kind of draw back into.
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And I think it's really, I think it's really important.
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I think it's really cool. And I, it's definitely, you
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know, two thoughts coming out of the class.
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Number one was that was incredible.
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I got to do that again. And #2 was, this is definitely,
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absolutely not for everyone. And you know, I, I think it's
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true. I think it's not for everyone.
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So it's, it was on this ranch in, in, in Florida, in South
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Florida, big backyard, big, you know, you walk on the back and
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it's calm, it's quiet. It's a little warm, a little
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muggy. And in the backyard of this
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place there's a huge kind of gazebo, I guess gazebo type
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structure. And but I mean, it's way bigger
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than any gazebo. There's I mean, there's probably
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room for 50 people to walk around and fit in pretty
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comfortably. I'd say that the ceiling, you
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know, kind of it was triangular, right?
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I guess had it was pointed kind of like a TB and that was
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probably 1520 feet in the air, maybe even more, maybe 25 feet.
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It was really tall and there were beautiful speakers and
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lights along the walls and everything was wood and and then
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there were sheets or mattresses rather on the floor.
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And and so you know, there was there's two parts to the class.
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Number one was kind of having honest open interactions with
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your walls down. And I think that that initial
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purpose, at least my experience of it, was to kind of prepare
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yourself mentally, prepare myself rather mentally for what
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was about to happen. So group of 20 people say 20
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guys and walk around, get loose in the place, come familiar with
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the place, which I think is also important physically.
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And then that kind of translates over into our head is to kind of
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feel comfortable with the space that we're in and to kind of
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actually walk around, get to place ourselves, understand
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where we are, understand what what what you know, the the
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setting and what the floor feels like.
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I was, I was, I personally went barefoot, actually, I took off
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my shoes and and then it was basically look around, don't
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speak, just make eye contact and show people that you're, that
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you're friendly and that you're not an enemy.
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And so you're walking around and you're looking at people and
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you're kind of giving them head nods or smiles.
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If they smile at you or you can tell it's someone's eyes,
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whether they're looking like they want to, you know, smile
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and talk or whether they feel like they're just in their head
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and want to do their own thing. And then he made a stop and look
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at a person that would the instructor rather made a stop.
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Look at a person next to us and speak honestly, you know, you
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switch off who's speaking. One happy childhood memory that
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you have and one burden of responsibility that's weighing
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on you. And I immediately, you know, I
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mean, So what I've learned, especially over the course of
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the many years of creative writing that I've been doing and
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the course of the, you know, lyrics and poetry and, and even
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the psychedelics that I've done, one thing that I've noticed and
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one thing that I've learned about is that a lot of times
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it's really fun to, and it's really healthy and important,
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especially to, especially to understand yourself and create
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and to be creative, to kind of learn how to follow a train of
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thought rather than think it's weird and try to pull back from
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it. See where it goes, see why
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you're thinking, what you're thinking, articulate maybe what
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it could be, even if you're not 100% sure, right.
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So for example, my happy memory that came up was a memory of and
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I was probably my son's age around that age because I, I
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know because this I have a picture and the jacket that I'm
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wearing, the picture I still have and my son actually still
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wears. It's like this little bomber
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jacket. It's very cute.
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And so I have, I don't think I have memories of that age,
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right? And So what I'm fascinated by is
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A, why I think I have this memory, B, where is this memory
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coming from? And C, what made me think of it
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now, right. And I didn't even know going
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into this breath work. There are people that go in.
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I know a bunch of people that have gone in with a particular
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intention. They're trying to understand
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themselves better. They're trying to work through,
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you know, an addiction that they have.
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They're working through a relationship problem that
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they're having either with themselves or with people around
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the people that are important to them.
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And I didn't have any goal. My goal was kind of just to
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recalibrate and kind of just check under the hood and see
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what was going on and see what I was, you know, what's what's
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going on in my mind. Because I haven't been writing
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as much recently as I typically do.
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Again, pretty much because of a shortage of time and because my
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head hasn't been in the space to really be blunt and honest to
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myself and really right in that raw way that I like to.
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So I didn't really know what I was going there for.
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I just knew that I wanted to try it and I knew that it was that I
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was a proponent of it because I knew that, you know, I've heard
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enough. I've heard enough stories and
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experiences about what was about, about what it's been like
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that I wanted, I knew that I wanted to try it myself.
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So I didn't have a particular goal, but I was also open to
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kind of seeing anything and experiencing anything, which I
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think is actually probably a better way to go into a lot of
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these things. I think it's also good to have
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an agenda. I think it's, I think both
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mindsets are really important and I think that it's important
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to kind of dive into both intentionality and
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unintentionality and kind of just or meandering is the other
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way to put it and kind of see where it is that you end up and
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explore and see, you know, why am I ending up here?
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So I don't really know what it was that I was going to be
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experiencing or even focusing on thinking about it.
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So when the guy asked me about a happy childhood memory, I
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thought back at this picture and this experience that I've had.
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And I, I, I had, I'm going to try to do the best job I can
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about articulating this. I've had.
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And I had a vision, probably predicated on the picture that
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I'm used to seeing because it's a picture of my grandmother's
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house that I see quite a bit every couple of years,
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certainly. And so, but I kind of feel like
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I remember the experience of being on the horse and buggy and
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and then I remember this feeling of warmth and love and safeness.
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And this was already, and I'd already said this out loud
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without even meaning to. This was just my train of
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thought rambling, I guess, my auditory version of what I do
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when I write. And I was explaining to the guy,
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you know, that I was talking to, who I'd not talked to about
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anything in the past. You know, he's essentially a
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stranger. I've seen him around once or
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twice, but a couple of times in my life, but he and I have never
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really spoken. And I'm talking to him.
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I'm trying to figure out why I'm talking to him, why I'm feeling
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this. I'm like, I don't even know if
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this is a real memory or there's just a picture, but I just, I'm
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just connecting very strongly at the moment to this particular
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memory that I have. And this feeling, this feeling
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is not a familiar feeling to anything that I have had in my
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conscious memory that I can remember.
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But what I did realize was I felt that very primal,
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protective, loving feeling of fatherhood while holding my son
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recently. And I felt coming from him that
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love and security and safety in me.
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And I believe could be wrong. I don't know.
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I don't really know how this stuff works.
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I don't think anyone really knows how this stuff works, but
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I believe that by me having that experience with my 2 1/2 year
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old or two two my 2 year old son, that I was able to
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recognize a feeling or an experience that I haven't had
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since I was about that age as well.
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You know, the best way that I could describe it is when you go
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to a concert or you're going to a live event and their music's
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playing and the music hits a peak and there's a climax to the
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music and you're with the whole crowd.
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And then there's just something that like engulfs you and you
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don't know what how to put that experience into words
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necessarily. And you don't.
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And most people don't know how to describe that experience.
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But most people know that experience and then they know
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that they want it again and they but they won't be even familiar
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enough to even tell you what it is or how they achieve it until
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they're in that place again at another point in their lives.
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And the feeling I think was so primal of, you know, being a
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father and loving and protecting my son, that I think that it
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probably had triggered an associative memory in my head,
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an association in my head of the last time that I was in one of
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those type of scenarios, being so young and essentially
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unconscious, pretty much, right? Being so young and life was so
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simple and being feeling so safe and protected and loving of my
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father. I felt the same way.
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I, I, I felt that that experience from my son.
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And I think I was able to share in that.
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And I know that all of this kind of sounds much, but I think that
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it's got to be true. Meaning these are discernible,
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tangible emotions and experiences that may be the
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projections of my own bias and cognitive structures, right?
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But I don't know, I mean, they, they, they, they seem real.
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They seem relevant. They are refreshing to me.
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They recharge my batteries. They give me a deeper
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understanding into myself and into how to be a father and how
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to, and what I was like as a son.
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And that stuff is real. And that stuff is as crucial or
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important as almost anything else in the parenting journey,
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you know, which is the ability to relate, the ability to recall
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what it's like to be in your kids shoes and the ability to
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understand that. So that was already just, you
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know, already just so I'm walking around, you're outdoors.
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It's evening. It's about 8:00 PM.
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You know, the sun's set or setting, and you're lowering
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your guards. You're an unfamiliar new place,
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but that place that's already designed to kind of feel like it
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is returning you to your roots. And after a couple more
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conversations, a little bit more sharing, you sit down, you start
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doing the breathing and there is music blasting, blasting.
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And the music, obviously, especially in conjunction with
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your breathing and with your thoughts, helps create a picture
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and a narrative. I don't know why what I
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experienced, I experienced. I mean, I do know.
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So I'm, so I think I'm already setting the stage in my own
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head, checking under the hood. What seems to be coming to my
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mind is this experience of parenthood and fatherhood.
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And that's something that really has been on my mind a lot
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recently of obviously being a father to a three month old and
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a 2 1/2 year old. There's, you know, so much my
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life evolves around that. But I somehow got, you know.
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So I start breathing, we start doing the breathing and.
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And you feel that you're slipping from being in this
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world and being in your present cognitive conscious, responsive
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to the stimulus around you. You feel that slipping away one
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breath at a time. And every breath that you take,
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you're get you, you're kind of pulling yourself into another
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little world, another little dimension of what's whatever is
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going on in your head, I guess. And I mean, you know, it's so
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funny because I spent so much of my life denying the potential
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authenticity of these experiences.
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But then once I experienced it, I have a very difficult time
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pushing back or fighting it because it is so real and so
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true that I don't even know what it means.
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I don't know what the consequences are.
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I just know that it felt and seemed unimagine, just as true
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as any other aspect of life that I'm part of.
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And I was deeply connected at the, you know, and you know, the
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first experience that I had, I was deeply connected with my
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grandfather, my mom's father's soul, which sounds crazy to even
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say. But once you're already kind of
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like pulling away from the world of what's immediately present to
21:26
your senses around you, I don't know what's going to happen.
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I don't know where I'm going to go and I don't, I didn't know
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what was pulling me to 1, One Direction or the next.
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So I am connected. So I feel my grandfather's soul
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around me. And my grandfather and I were
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very close. My grandfather was actually
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probably the the most old school father figure and like quote UN
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quote proper father figure in my life.
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My father and I are very close. My father doesn't never really
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loved the notion, excuse me, the traditional notion of being a
22:08
dad because his I think that his father was pretty tough on him
22:11
growing up and he wanted and it felt it made I think his
22:15
childhood a little harder. He wanted to do right by his
22:17
kids and kind of abandoned that kind of sense of strict
22:20
authoritarian father fatherhood and the consequence of that and
22:26
was amazing because I'm me and I love me and I love my life and
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I've got happy relationships with myself and my family and my
22:35
siblings and my kids and I I I owe that all to but but, and
22:46
rather, I think that there was a different type of fatherhood
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that my grandfather embodied and encompassed, and that was put
22:56
your head down, get to work. Life is tough, life is pain.
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To be fair, the man was a is a Holocaust survivor was a
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Holocaust survivor. Rather, he passed away a couple
23:04
years ago and he spent World War 2IN Soviet labor camps.
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And I'm actually going to, I have his book and I have to
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reread it for the first time in or maybe even read it all the
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way through for the first time in my life.
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But now that I kind of know more about my family and now I know
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more about that part of the world, I want to kind of start,
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I want to do more homework on that.
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But he was old school, Eastern European, a teacher, professor,
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valued education, valued hard work, valued family more than
23:38
anything. So he loved hard work and he let
23:40
and he thought money was really, really obviously crucial.
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But he always had his values straight in the sense that he
23:49
knew that money did not replace relationships or family or
23:53
exceed them. And my grandfather would get
24:00
angry as his method for getting for, to, to to be heard.
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It's actually really funny because everyone has their own
24:10
methods of ways to figure out how to get attention, how to be
24:15
validated, right? Some people try to be funny,
24:17
some people try to be condescending, some people get
24:18
angry, some people laugh a lot. Some people are intellectual,
24:24
some people are emotionally eloquent.
24:26
You know, some people turn to spiritual and, and metaphysical
24:32
kind of stuff to, you know, kind of create this world that they
24:37
could feel that, you know, that they not to, to, I guess, find
24:39
themselves and, and find the world that they're comfortable
24:41
in. My grandfather, who was very,
24:45
very grounded in a very, very harsh and real and tough world.
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And I, I, I, and I knew all this stuff.
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It's so funny. I knew all these things, but I
24:56
never put them all together as like a formative or as a
25:00
sequential series of events or story or narrative that embodied
25:04
my grandfather's life. I never really thought of things
25:07
like that until I'm in this. So I'm in this and I'm actually
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being brought back to while I'm breathing, while I'm doing this
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breathing. And it takes a couple of minutes
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of the breath again. You breathe in through your gut,
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through your chest and out of your mouth again.
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And you just keep on doing that. And there's music blasting.
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And then he's letting a certain kind of like scent, I forgot
25:27
what you're called, but an incense or whatever.
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And I'm brought back to my grandfather.
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And it's so funny because I don't see images as much as I
25:40
feel his feelings of feeling lost and scared in New York when
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he first came to New York after after leaving the refugee camps
25:51
in I think it was it was one of the stands Kazakhstan maybe I
25:57
have to check. I have to check the book.
25:58
But after leaving Eastern Europe, when he came to New York
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and he came with nothing. He came with no money.
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He came in and speak any English.
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He put himself through school. He went to what was at the time
26:12
what I guess what still is a huge Jewish institution called
26:15
Yeshiva University in the in Washington Heights in New York.
26:20
And he had told me stories that my life and I didn't really know
26:24
what he was in trying to tell me when he was telling me this.
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He used to tell me these stories about these rabbis that would
26:30
that who you know, he'd say your job as a rabbi is to lead.
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Your job as a rabbi is to create leaders.
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Your job as a rabbi is to look at the downtrodden and to help
26:40
them out. And he's like, I never got any
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of that. I never got an ounce of that.
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And all the people that were supposed to all these great men.
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And he'd tell me about these great rabbi, you know, rabbis
26:50
names. And he would say, and that guy
26:54
didn't, didn't say 2 words to me.
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And I asked that guy for help and he just wasn't able to.
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He just said, I'm sorry, I can't do anything for you.
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And and so my Saba and so at the time I thought my grandfather
27:04
was telling me a Saba, that's the Hebrew word for grandfather
27:07
was telling me about why he disdains formal, bureaucratic, I
27:18
guess you could call it Judaism and structure and the, and the,
27:20
and the and the and the structures of Orthodox Judaism.
27:24
And even though he was always Orthodox and he always believed
27:26
in God despite what he went through, and, you know, I
27:28
couldn't blame him one way or the other after what he went
27:31
after, what him and his family went through, I couldn't blame
27:33
him one way or the other for being religious, you know,
27:35
anyway, but he wasn't mad at God.
27:40
He was mad at man. He was mad at, he was mad at the
27:43
rejection of the world around him.
27:46
And he was scared and he was lost and he didn't know how to
27:50
get heard. And the only way for him to be
27:55
heard was to get angry. And when he would use an angry
28:00
tone or when he would use angry rhetoric, then that was that.
28:05
That was a effective way for him to get attention from anyone.
28:09
He was talking to his friends, his family, the rabbi in his
28:13
community, his grandkids, whoever it was.
28:17
And then there was always a line where he would, he would try to
28:21
where he would use anger to be heard.
28:24
But if the anger can turned into him hurting someone, then he
28:28
would pull back completely and he would just like tug back, you
28:31
know? Oh no, I did my goal with anger.
28:34
The expression of anger is not to hurt other people around me.
28:38
It's to protect myself and to let myself be hurt.
28:41
And I had this intense understanding of that and it
28:52
gave me in that moment in particular.
28:54
And these and time does not feel like it's happening the same
28:58
time, the same way. Obviously, when you're in that
29:00
state as when it's just regular, like me talking to Mike into a
29:04
camera right now, you know, time feels different.
29:08
And so I'm soaking in this and I'm understanding and I'm like,
29:13
this was his. This was my grandfather's
29:17
fatherhood journey. This was his journey through
29:20
life. And, and so and, and I, and one
29:24
of the things that I think that I was able to relate to and I
29:27
think one of the things that I found under the hood, under my
29:31
own hood, was that I too AM and was scared.
29:39
I'm a lot less scared now than I used to be about life, but
29:43
especially as a kid, I was scared.
29:45
And especially as a kid, I was rejected.
29:47
And especially as a kid, I was definitely not heard and I was
29:56
able to connect with him and his soul in that same sense.
30:01
I don't know what soul means, whether that means that like the
30:04
conscious energy of his of, of who my grandfather was was with
30:08
me, or whether that soul is the soul of his experience, that
30:12
that rooted itself in my consciousness and in my brain
30:16
and in my in the back of my head and in my experiences.
30:20
But it almost felt like we were both like, like, I felt like he
30:24
never had really that opportunity to figure that and
30:27
sort that stuff out. And I was kind of doing it with
30:30
him and for him together. I thought that was, you know,
30:35
so, so that was the first part of this experience, this
30:41
breathwork experience that was truly, truly profound and
30:47
completely spontaneous, completely sporadic.
30:52
I also had a very, very weird, I mean, it wasn't weird now that
30:57
you know, but at the time it was weird when I was thinking about
30:59
it, the music kind of moved to Middle Eastern prior type of
31:03
music. It almost sounded Arabic
31:05
actually. And and I and I found myself in
31:12
a prison. So, and again, it was
31:15
interesting because the way that a lot of this was happening in
31:18
my head was first there would be like the music would change, a
31:21
setting would appear in my head and the setting was white sand.
31:24
I was just in a white world of desert and sand.
31:28
And then and then a, a prison cell appeared and it was made of
31:34
white Middle Eastern Mediterranean style brick and or
31:41
stone rather. And I'm in this prison cell by
31:45
myself, and there's no guard and there's no lock on the door.
31:51
And I'm sitting in the cell, I'm sitting on the floor, and I know
31:57
that there's something outside because I know I'm in the
31:58
desert. I don't know where I am.
32:00
I don't know which desert I'm in.
32:02
And I don't know what prison cell I'm in.
32:04
I don't know where I am. But I just know that I'm free to
32:06
go if I want, but I don't know that I want to go.
32:10
You know, I don't know that I'm ready to leave this cell and see
32:15
what's outside of it and what's now.
32:19
I'm going to just like pull aside for a second from that
32:21
narrative and just explain that one of the interesting things
32:26
about breathwork versus psychedelics is that
32:28
psychedelics completely will hijack your system.
32:32
And you don't have a choice as to whether or not you're
32:34
tripping and whether you like it or not.
32:36
Once you take those mushrooms or once you take the psilocybin or
32:40
once you take the MDMA or the LSD, there's no other, there's
32:43
no going back. There's no, there's no, oh,
32:47
nevermind. I don't feel like doing this
32:48
anymore when you're doing breath work, because a lot of this is
32:52
based on your performing your own voluntary performance by
32:57
doing that breath, by doing the breathing exercise, you kind of
33:02
have to keep a little bit of consciousness tucked away to
33:06
make sure that you're breathing right.
33:08
And, and then as and then, and then, but, and so the more that
33:16
you breathe correctly, the more vivid the journey is or the
33:21
experience is. And, but the more vivid and the
33:25
experience is, the less likely it is that you're going to be
33:30
focusing on your own breathing because you're soaking on the
33:32
experience. So I thought so at that point,
33:36
while I'm in this cell, I'm trying, I'm, I'm, I'm pushing
33:39
them and I'm like, and one of the big things that I've
33:41
recently started asking myself a lot when I'm feeling scared is
33:44
why are you scared? What are you afraid of?
33:46
There's nothing I what, what can't you handle?
33:49
I've talked about this a little bit.
33:50
When it came to having my second kid, one of the first things
33:53
that I was afraid of was, I know how to handle this.
33:55
But I'm like, wait a minute, I do know how to handle this.
33:57
OK, so I had a boy and I have a girl.
33:59
OK, So obviously there's going to be something, there's going
34:01
to be some things that are different.
34:02
But I know what it's like to wake up every day.
34:03
I know what it's like to change a diaper.
34:04
I know what it's like to put to to put food on the table and to
34:08
be able and, and what it cost to, you know, be able to afford
34:10
a kid right now. And I think I'm OK and I know
34:14
I've done this all before. So it's not anything new, which
34:16
is the question of putting the effort in again.
34:19
But there's nothing to be afraid of.
34:20
There's nothing that I can't handle, you know, And so I was
34:25
trying to go into this whole experience with that same
34:27
perspective, which is I know I'm just in my head.
34:31
I know I'm just checking under the roof.
34:33
So go wherever you go, follow that line of that, follow that
34:37
line of thinking, follow that images, follow those images.
34:39
Rather follow that scene and see where it takes you.
34:42
So I'm going down, but because I already have this natural desire
34:50
to kind of pull away my breathing, my breathing started
34:56
to slow down. So I had to pick it up.
34:58
And I never did find out what was on the outside of that
35:03
prison cell. Yeah, I'm going to have to go
35:05
back and check it out. But yeah, I mean, and then and
35:09
then and then there were other experiences and other thoughts
35:12
that were kind of coming, coming and going along the way, like
35:15
the certainty and the experience that just physical life is not
35:19
all that there is that. And it it felt particularly
35:23
weird because at this point my hands are are are to my side.
35:27
I put my hands on my stomach and like just touching my skin felt
35:30
like the weirdest thing in the entire world.
35:32
It just felt like a totally foreign, it didn't feel like it
35:36
was even my own body and my own skin and that was that was an
35:44
amazing, amazing experience. It's not always pleasant.
35:48
There are physical, again, physical symptoms that occur
35:52
like your body feeling like it's clamping, getting clamping.
35:57
I kind of clamping up pins and needles.
36:01
It took me, you know, I felt a little nauseous, not nauseous,
36:03
but a little dizzy at the end. And it takes about 20-30 minutes
36:08
to kind of just like, come down and get your brain back to, you
36:13
know, to recenter yourself and kind of get back to itself.
36:16
But, you know, this whole thing actually made me think.
36:19
So I'm reading a book. I'm hopefully doing an interview
36:22
with the author. This book is called The Great
36:26
The Last Great Dream and how bohemians created became hippies
36:30
and created the 60s right down my aisle.
36:34
I know but one particular line from that that the that the
36:39
author captured. I don't want to say the author's
36:40
name yet because I want to 1st get him on the podcast and we
36:44
can talk about it. But but he quotes Aldous Huxley
36:49
in the book. Aldous Huxley is famous for
36:52
writing Brave New World. The Doors of Perception was in
36:56
English. I think he was a writer that had
37:01
moved to San Francisco. And at the time there's actually
37:05
quite a there, there was quite a quite, quite a few people that
37:08
were moving like intellectuals and writers and and creatives
37:12
and humanitarians, I guess people that are part of the arts
37:16
that are moving to San Francisco.
37:18
And so he wrote a great line after he took his first
37:21
psychedelic dose, but I felt this really applied to breath
37:23
work as well. And he wrote the survival need,
37:26
the survival needs of evolution. He came to understand had
37:30
imposed A reduct, A reducing valve on the brain's sensory
37:33
intake. The drug loosened the valve.
37:36
So in other words, what that quote means is in order for us
37:42
to survive, we need to be able to focus on.
37:46
We have to, we have to ignore a lot of what we perceive and we
37:53
have to be able to focus on one thing at a time.
37:58
That is billions of years of evolution speaking with
38:03
psychedelics, that intrinsic need, which is almost like
38:10
combative to like only zone, zone in on one particular thing
38:14
and to kind of, and, and again, as it, as it says, the reducing
38:20
valve for the brain of the brain sensory intake.
38:24
We have a valve in our brain and we could only take in X amount
38:28
of sensory of sensory stimulus around us.
38:34
Psychedelics allow us to explore a lot more than that.
38:38
And just following that particular line of thinking and
38:44
line of thought I could, I would definitely make the argument
38:49
that if we'd evolved to own to, to have a reduced ability to
38:55
process our senses, then we're definitely missing a ton.
39:01
Then we're definitely missing a a ton of what else is going on
39:06
in the world, What else is going out in going out in the
39:08
universe. And I'm really excited to check
39:12
it all out. I'm really, I'm really excited
39:14
to see it. I wanted to kind of end out end
39:17
off this video episode on a on another note.
39:23
It's not, I guess, such a happy note, but I think it's a little
39:25
more meaningful, a little bit more thought provoking and
39:27
thoughtful. And that is that there's a
39:29
Jewish holiday coming up called Teshaba of which is actually
39:34
Hebrew for the 9th day of of is the Hebrew month, So the 9th of
39:39
of 9th of the month. And it is a, it's basically a
39:46
Jewish version of or a religious version of Memorial Day.
39:51
Of all the terrible things that have happened to the Jewish
39:55
people throughout history. You're all commemorated on one
39:58
day. It's a fast day.
39:59
You, you fast for 25 hours. No eating, no drinking, no
40:04
brushing your teeth, nothing going into your mouth.
40:06
A lot of people don't speak a lot of people, they call it a,
40:09
a, a word fast, a tiny D board, a fast of actual speech and like
40:14
to make sure that we're just kind of focused on like
40:16
ourselves and, and our lives and our thoughts and not focused on,
40:20
on what's going on around us, Which I guess is also part of
40:22
the same kind of the same kind of conversation that we've been
40:27
having until now. But one the, I guess the thought
40:33
that I will leave you with is that an enormous aspect of
40:39
Tishab of the 9th of, of, as part of the observance is to
40:47
look inwards at not just what the world has done to us has not
40:57
what the world has done to Jewish people throughout
40:59
history, but what have the Jewish people done to ourselves
41:03
to 'cause that to happen, you know, what do we do?
41:08
And sometimes the answer is nothing.
41:11
And sometimes the answer is, well, we could have been a
41:12
little bit more accommodating. We could have been a little bit
41:16
more thoughtful. We could have been a little bit
41:17
more kind to one another. We could have been a little bit
41:20
more focused on our emotional and mental needs as opposed to
41:25
our physical needs, you know, and not necessarily what's
41:30
everyone's problem and why is as well such a bad place, but
41:33
what's our problem? And how could we get better?
41:36
And how could we not only be better, but make the world a
41:38
better place? How could we make our world a
41:40
better place? How can the consequences of our
41:43
actions have a widespread rippling effect on the rest of
41:46
the world around us? And I think and you know, and
41:52
there's a Jewish concept that the reason, one of the reasons
41:54
why we still have these fast so today is because we haven't
41:58
address the root of the issue. And if we had addressed the root
42:00
of the issue, then we wouldn't need to commemorate anymore.
42:04
And one of the hardest issues I think that are to really come to
42:09
terms with is our, is our own flaws.
42:11
One of the biggest issues is our own fears, our own insecurities.
42:17
To even discover it about ourselves is hard and scary.
42:22
And there's particular practices that don't take place in the 9
42:25
days leading up to the 9th of Ave. to Shab Ave.
42:31
And some of those practices are no, not listening to music, not
42:35
going to the movies, not eating meat and not indulging in food
42:41
that you love, not really drinking, not drinking wine for
42:43
sure. And a lot of this stuff is
42:45
because what is, what is that what, what are you trying to
42:48
focus on? Are you trying to focus on the
42:49
externals? What's going to distract you
42:51
from yourself? You're going to try to focus
42:52
internally on what can make you better.
42:56
And I think that's that's something pretty happy we're
43:00
pretty comfortable leaving you with.
43:03
So thanks for listening more, more episodes coming out this
43:07
week. Got our first Australian guest,
43:09
I hope coming up in a couple of days.
43:11
And I'm really excited to see what's coming up next.
43:14
So thank you all and love you all.
43:17
Bye.