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Sleep Crisis and Restful Health Recovery with Robert Sweetman
116 Plays3 years ago
Lack of deep, restful sleep is a major crisis among the military and verteran community which too often throws medication at the symptoms leading to a growin list of problems. My friend and fellow SEAL Team 7 veteran, Robert Sweetman, jumps on this episode to discuss the sleep inadequacy issue that affects so many, and shares a wealth of knowledge that anyone can use, along with his nonmedicated, empowering approach with the Sixty Two Romeo mission to improve veteran's mental health through sleep.
This is a very interesting and empowering episode not only for veterans, but for all people who suffer daily from a lack of sleep leading to grogginess and energy crashes that are too often covered up with caffeine by day and sleep medications by night.
Join us on this podcast, and get motivated to take back the rest you deserve with a more holistic understanding of why sleep issues persist and a natural trajectory toward recovery.
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Find more information about Robert's sleep program and technology at his websites:
And watch his Sixty Two Romeo program mini documentary here: https://vimeo.com/644132452
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction and Technical Issues
00:00:01
Speaker
What's up friends and fellow humans. Thanks for tuning in to the Guardian Grange podcast. Pardon any audio anomalies that may exist in this episode but I just got a new back book and only just realized that when I sat down to record this podcast that there's no USB ports. So, I'm just flying with the computer mic.
00:00:26
Speaker
and hopefully it records some decent audio.
Sleep Health with Robert Sweetman
00:00:28
Speaker
But regardless, the content of this episode is awesome so I know you're going to pull some good information from this one and I hope you enjoy.
00:00:39
Speaker
This episode is all about sleep health with my buddy in SEAL Team 7 veteran brother Robert Sweetman and his conscious company called Exist Tribe, which he started to help people improve their health by creating better sleeping habits.
00:00:56
Speaker
for more complete deep sleep without medications. This is interesting conversation that gets into the sleep science behind his innovative 62 Romeo program, which leverages their rest node, existential technology, along with some of the obstacles preventing people from getting proper restful sleep and our shared visions for the future.
00:01:24
Speaker
So before jumping right into our chat, I want to say thank you to Dr. Bronners for supporting this episode. And please help spread the word by sharing this podcast with your friends and family who might be interested in improving their sleep and following along with this exploratory podcast as we continue conversations about improving each other's health and the health of our environment with creative innovations to manifest more natural synergies in our everyday life.
00:01:55
Speaker
Alright, let's jump on in.
Guest's Personal Journey and Exist Tribe's Mission
00:01:57
Speaker
Yeah, how you doing, brother?
00:01:59
Speaker
I'm doing great. I really appreciate you taking some time to meet with me. I am really enjoying this chapter of my life because it's a lot of self exploration and spirituality, you know, coming out of the teams. I think all of us need a little bit of that. But for me, you know, I'm facing new challenges that I hadn't faced before and I'm finding new insights about myself kind of digging deep. And, you know, really,
00:02:28
Speaker
expressing myself in a way that I can help others and that that provides a lot of meaning for me too. So. Yeah, man, that's awesome. I think, you know, it's had a similar path. And I know a lot of a lot of a lot of our bros from our background have been going through similar stuff, you know, new challenges, insights, spirituality, like what kind of challenges have been coming up for you?
00:02:58
Speaker
Well, finding meaning in life, you know, I talked to my life coach about this recently. I feel like my existential crisis is in finding a path to heal others and the real purpose in that, right? So obviously,
00:03:20
Speaker
helping others sounds like a good thing, but at the end of the day, how much should I impact others' lives and how much should I let life just carry out on its own? I dig pretty deep into that and my natural inclination is to build this company, Exist Tribe, and help a ton of people and perhaps make it a big company. But is that my own desires being expressed or
00:03:49
Speaker
Is, am I really helping people? And by helping people, am I changing the path of their life? Do I have the right to do that? And so the easy answer is yes, I should help people. Yes, I should change lives and make the world a better place.
00:04:04
Speaker
But this existential crisis really goes, you know, boils down to the philosophy of, you know, part of life, I think is a bit of a simulation and very little is within our control. Right. So.
00:04:20
Speaker
I don't know i am i ponder on these these deep philosophical topics and the more i learn and the more i you know exposed to these different knowledge is i have to go back and reflect on the choices that i make each day.
00:04:37
Speaker
For sure. Yeah, it makes sense. And like, so if we're going into like part of life is a simulation, which, you know, there's a lot of talk and discussions around that. And part of, part of the issue that I feel is that language is so limited. So we're using words that kind of mean many things to describe something that's maybe a bit beyond that. Um,
00:05:04
Speaker
But when we get into like, let's just say, okay, there's a simulation, but then we're here in this reality to experience and to do things. And so like for me personally, I think that, um, I am here to be the best version of myself that I can and to help create a,
00:05:33
Speaker
environment that is, you know, not just a great environment for myself, but for those people around me. And that, you know, whether that's a simulation or what, in my mind, it
00:05:51
Speaker
It's the journey is important. You know what I mean? Like the destination is, I'm not so concerned about a fixed point. I'm focused on walking a path that is true. And that's kind of.
00:06:08
Speaker
It's really how I live my life. I just kind of go with the flow. I say that a lot, you know, I just flow like I have an intention. And I kind of just drift in that direction. And as life happens, then I
00:06:24
Speaker
you know, maneuver accordingly.
The Science and Benefits of Deep Sleep
00:06:28
Speaker
But yeah, let's talk about like what you're doing with Exist Tribe, what that's all about. Exist Tribe is all about helping people become better versions of themselves. So I love that you said that. And the way that we do that, the focus that we've really honed in on is sleep.
00:06:51
Speaker
And if you talk to Charlie Morley about lucid dreaming, it opens up a whole other perspective on what goes on in our subconscious. And perhaps in terms of lucid dreaming, like the engagement of the prefrontal cortex during the dream state. But to kind of put that maybe for another conversation, what we specifically focus on is the neurological function of sleep. How does light, sound, and temperature impact brain function?
00:07:20
Speaker
And what we really delved into over the last 18 months is behavioral and psychological aspects to sleep. And it turns out that all of these things are so important that when we put them together, like this 62 Romeo challenge that we recently did,
00:07:41
Speaker
that we're able to have a profound effect on folks' sleep. And if their sleep gets better, their relationships at home get better, their muscle recovery gets better, their psychological state gets better, everything gets better. And we know now that sleep or lack of sleep or the lack of good process during sleep is associated with every major health issue
00:08:06
Speaker
that we know about. Specifically, we can talk about amyloid beta buildup within the brain tissue and the function during deep sleep when that cerebrospinal fluid comes in, the brain actually can reduce in size by as much as 60%, allowing that fluid to get in there and rinse away those toxins that plaque buildup.
00:08:30
Speaker
And it takes that away and processes it in the body, right? Because the lymphatic system only comes up to the next. This process of pulling that out then washes the brain for lack of a better explanation.
00:08:43
Speaker
And then what's left over is a refreshed brain with new immune cells that come in there. But what we know is that if that doesn't occur and, you know, sleep does, you know, the processes of sleep do start to degrade as you get older past 60. We know that there's less deep sleep, which specifically is what we're talking about. So if
00:09:02
Speaker
you're not getting the right amount of deep sleep, then you can't wash away those plaques. And there's also like towel protein plaques that build up from TBI and stuff like that from blast exposure. But when this plaque builds up in the brain, we know that that's causing Alzheimer's. We know that's causing senility issues. And so there's that clear link.
00:09:24
Speaker
And it's debatable. There's a lot of sleep scientists that aren't quite, uh, convinced, but I think right now at this point in, in science, the, the evidence from my perspective is overwhelming that, you know, that plaque is causing senility or Alzheimer's. Uh, the removal of that pack plaque is a function in a process of deep sleep. One of the things that happens as well as muscle recovery and human growth hormone and all that other stuff. Um, and so.
00:09:52
Speaker
When we dig into this, that's what we're focusing on. How can we help people get better sleep? I was very nervous going into this study recently that we did that I don't know if what we're going to do, this challenge that we're going to offer people, is it really going to make a difference?
00:10:13
Speaker
And so the way that we measured that is through subjective measurement and objective measurement, right? So the subjective measurement would be something like a sleep journal. So people say, hey, I felt like I had good sleep. I thought I got this many hours of sleep. The objective measurement, we use a sleep measurement device for this particular study. We use something called a ballistic cardiogram. It was made by a cardiologist originally, but now we can use it for sleep. So basically, think of it like an earthquake sensor.
00:10:42
Speaker
And it's so sensitive that it can detect your breathing and your heart rate and all of these different things and the algorithm says oh well you got this amount of deep sleep and you can't fake it you can't like cheat the system or manipulate the data so at the end of this study.
00:11:00
Speaker
What we found is that we were able to increase deep sleep significantly. We were able to increase REM sleep or dream sleep significantly. And also probably for us, one of the more important things is the time to fall asleep or sleep latency. We reduce the time to fall asleep significantly. When I pitched this to Dr. Rachel Markwald, who's sort of in charge of sleep for the Navy, she's got a sleep lab over at Point Loma.
00:11:28
Speaker
She was taken back by the data. It's like, wow. Now we didn't have a control group and this wasn't an IRB approved study. That's the next step. But the results in the data were compelling. We have something that is really making a difference. And oh, by the way, there's no drugs. There's no supplements. This is all natural. So I feel like we're on the right path. And if my mission in life is to heal people through sleep, we're doing it. We're finally making a difference.
00:11:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, it's very powerful like even beyond like we're talking about data and science but even as we both know intuitively deep sleep has a massive impact that we've seen because we're doing such high performance tasks and getting very little sleep charging through
The 62 Romeo Challenge and Lifestyle Changes
00:12:17
Speaker
things and
00:12:19
Speaker
your willpower and motivation can drive through a lot of that stuff but it eventually starts taking tolls and adding costs, you know, to your physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health. It's really cool what you're doing, man. So, this is what you're talking about. Was that the 62 Romeo Challenge? Was that the study results that you're mentioning?
00:12:44
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. We called it 62R for six weeks to sleep restoration. And you know, we love our acronyms in the military. But when I was on a podcast with the Scuttlebutt show, Max Bloom called it 62 Romeo. That's the natural thing to call it, right? Over coms.
00:13:03
Speaker
And so that kind of stuck with it. So 62 Romeo is the name. It's a six-week program, which I'll tell you the secret right now, the secret behind the whole thing and the reason why we structured it over six weeks. It's not a heavy load on any one day, but across the six weeks, what we're doing is establishing new behaviors. And we know that it takes, like if you go to the gym at the first of the year, like a lot of us are gonna do, make our New Year's Eve commitments.
00:13:30
Speaker
We know that it takes you know three weeks to six weeks in that range to create new habits and what we're trying to do is not just create new habits within the person but a physiological response the body is getting used to that and now the body has its own routine has its own habit and that's when we start see lasting results.
00:13:51
Speaker
Yeah, that makes so much sense because I mean, we're essentially through the way we live our lives, created habits that are not in line with optimal sleep. Everything's based on productivity and making things happen. And sleep kind of is on the back burner. Who knows the whole, I'll sleep when I'm dead type mentality. But it's like anything, you go to the gym,
00:14:19
Speaker
The rest is where you're actually growing and recovering. You're breaking down, you're creating, you're doing, living.
00:14:27
Speaker
And I mean, for a long, long time with my wife, you know, I'm sure you're the same, like, I didn't really give sleep much thought, you know, it's like you get tired, and you crash out. And otherwise, it's just driving as hard as you can, or just, you know, doing whatever but sleep was sleep was just a an afterthought, you know, or if any, if anything, but I can tell you like for myself personally get coming out of
00:14:55
Speaker
the military, you know, just with the various times that we were doing what we did in the teams.
00:15:04
Speaker
our circadian rhythm was all out of whack and we're just not in sync. So I'd be up at like maybe two, three, you know, am and then not fall asleep and then wake up in the middle of the day and just all kinds of stuff that was in my mind creating like even foggy, foggy thoughts. Um, not as lucid ability to communicate or even find words. My memory I felt was,
00:15:30
Speaker
slipping short term and I definitely feel like through other healing modalities I did and just getting really good sleep that I'm blessed to have now really helps you know my thoughts are lubricated I like to call them slippery so everything's kind of moving and grooving in there but if I reflect back on to when I wasn't getting really
00:15:54
Speaker
good, deep sleep. I mean, I was just in a fog, you know, motivation was lower, get agitated more, quicker to anger. And yeah, I think as part of a healing journey for any human being, like your sleep is the most important
00:16:15
Speaker
one of the top most important things that you can be focused on that I don't feel gets a whole lot of attention in most circles. How did you arrive at, you know, sleep is where you wanted to focus?
00:16:35
Speaker
Well, so I want to get to that question, but I wanted to say a little bit about, you know, deep sleep and REM sleep. So deep sleep is really where
00:16:49
Speaker
we have memory consolidation, right? We have some memory consolidation that's happening as well as athletic learning, right? Whether it's martial arts or a particular instrument that you're trying to learn, you can work really hard on it, but then you have to sleep on it. And that's where all those things just come together and you have a solid memory formation. But there's also emotional memory
00:17:14
Speaker
And there's emotional things that need to be sorted out. And if we take a look at PTSD or PTS, as we like to call it, these really turn into these mind loops, these memories that are just on repeat.
00:17:30
Speaker
And we have these, especially if it's traumatic, we have these traumatic memories that are coming back and they can haunt us and they can cause all types of issues, you know, just in amygdala response and sympathetic nervous system engagement. And so.
00:17:46
Speaker
If we start to look at how does REM sleep or dream sleep work on that, well, if you're not getting enough REM sleep, then you're not able to sort out the memory consolidation as it pertains to these emotions, right? We have these emotions tied to these traumatic memories. And so when you get into this REM sleep, and it's interesting because there's studies showing that if you have poor sleep before a traumatic event,
00:18:15
Speaker
and perhaps more sleep after the traumatic event, you're more likely to suffer from these recurring thoughts of the trauma. And so, I believe that a lot of this and some of this is we don't have the technology to sort of prove it, like we can't quite see dreams yet when analyzing a patient within that state. But if you're able to get into your dream sleep and you're able to
00:18:43
Speaker
sort through these traumas and really start to allow them to occur in a safe space where there's no constraints, there's no constraints of consciousness in the physical world, these sort of linear tracks that were kept on while we're awake and we're conscious, then once those nightmares, once those thoughts are able to be sorted out, then no longer does that loop
00:19:10
Speaker
terrorize you throughout the day. And so sleep health is super important. And the irony is that a lot of the things that we do throughout the day cause us to have poor sleep, whether it's negative sleep thoughts, whether it's negative sleep behaviors, whether it's environmental stimuli that impacts the neurological function of sleep, which is where my research started.
Trauma Healing and Non-Drug Approaches to Sleep
00:19:37
Speaker
So I just wanted to kind of talk about that a little bit, but we can get back to the question that you asked. Can you rephrase that?
00:19:51
Speaker
Even before I go back to that one, I'm just noticing a real, from my perspective, a paradigm shift in the way that trauma is even looked at in healing modalities because a lot of it is attempted to be done in the awake state through
00:20:11
Speaker
therapies or medications or being basically busy in the mind. There are other modalities too of like meditation and plant medicines and different things that kind of take you out of that but there's conscious awareness there and so this is really getting to the
00:20:36
Speaker
the subconscious, the true real deep subconscious programming and doing work in that space which is really pretty unique which brings me to that question of like how did you get into this area of sleep as a focus for healing?
00:20:55
Speaker
Well, there was a traumatic event that happened in my life, and this is just my perspective. But one of my platoon mates from Alpha Platoon back at SEAL Team 7, Ryan Larkin, went down a dark path. And when I was sort of in his presence and observing sort of this spiral, what I noticed was that the Navy was prescribing him Ambien.
00:21:22
Speaker
We won't get into ptsd tbi and the psychological stuff and and sort of my beef with the command and how they were treating the psychology piece but just my observations were that you know the navy was issuing him ambien.
00:21:38
Speaker
Which they did for all of us and that became his way of going to sleep and when he didn't have ambient perhaps it was alcohol and myself I've been guilty of using night quilt to go to bed before I knew how damaging that could be right.
00:21:53
Speaker
And so we find these triggers to sedate ourselves into sleep, but it's sedative-induced sleep. And the problem with that is we're not able to get, depending on the sedative, you know, marijuana really impacts REM sleep, right? So depending on the sedative, we kind of use that crutch to trigger ourselves into sleep, but it's sedative-induced sleep and our body can't go through the processes. Some of the stuff I kind of touched on a little bit.
00:22:18
Speaker
when it can't go through this process is you're not getting full restorative sleep and so the net effect is when you wake up you feel like crap right you're not fully recovered psychologically or physically physiologically and so when you're not recovered and you feel like you're lagging well what do you do you turn to monster you turn the caffeine or stimulants or whatever or you just.
00:22:42
Speaker
dragging throughout the day. And so these behaviors turn into very damaging for your psychological state. And so what I observed was this sort of spiral. And this is just my perspective. Frank, his dad has a different perspective from his experience. And so I'm watching this whole thing unfold. And in a lot of this, I had to go back and unpack and kind of remember, you know, when someone commits suicide,
00:23:12
Speaker
Um, a lot of things happen. Like for me personally, I had a lot of emotions. I felt depressed. I went through a stage of grief and questioning like, how could this happen to someone that
00:23:25
Speaker
I felt like was a better seal than me, a more accomplished team guy. And so I'm looking at myself at the time I was a new guy when I was in the platoon with him. I'm like, well, geez, if this rock star can do that, then I'm probably next, right? And so when I came out of that fog, I took a look at everything that I remembered. And so I started going to doctors at Balboa and everybody I could talk to.
00:23:49
Speaker
Psychologists and neurologists were probably the most helpful even though pulmonary tends to get most of the sleep patients and the result of those conversations was like yeah.
00:24:02
Speaker
You know, mental health is very closely tied to sleep health, and these behaviors can cause you to go into this really damaged state. And so my best estimation of the whole Ryan Larkin suicide, and by the way, he was awake for five days before he did it, was that sleep was at the center of this. There were other comorbidities, right? The TBI, the PTSD.
00:24:26
Speaker
But my focus was on sleep. So I looked at, is this a problem in the SEAL
Military Sleep Issues and Education Initiatives
00:24:32
Speaker
teams? And yeah, it absolutely is. Is this a problem in the Navy? Yeah, it is. Is this a problem in the entire military? And when you look at the Rand report on sleep in the military by Dr. Wendy Troxel, who's awesome, it shows a very dark truth that the leadership doesn't have a choice but to kind of
00:24:54
Speaker
ignore in a way because it's not something that we have the tools to kind of address right now. We're built to be machines and warriors and go to war and do exactly what we're told. Sometimes we can be likened to a pawn on a chess set, right? So sleep is really, you know, kind of, it has to be a personal objective because no one else is going to do it for you, right? You have to kind of fight to get good sleep.
00:25:19
Speaker
So that's my motivation. I continued this passion and this motivation, and perhaps there was even a little bit of anger at his death, but I used this energy to drive towards understanding. And so I went to grad school, I wrote some papers on sleep, and I focused on building sleep technology. And I've been a bit obsessed with this for the last four years. And so now today, where we're at today,
00:25:47
Speaker
is really a culmination of all of my experiences leading up to this point. Yeah, man, that's, I mean, that's, that's a powerful story and you can really feel your passion behind it. And, you know, that's something that the system, not just in the, in the military, but in larger society really lacks is compassion and caring about what
00:26:17
Speaker
might be called like minutia or not so you know no one really cares what's going on in someone's dream dream world or sleep that are unconscious part of their life everything is being measured
00:26:32
Speaker
what they're doing in their waking lives. And it leaves a big void of unknown stuff. And like you were saying earlier, you can't, you know, see into dreams and use scientific instrumentation to write specific reports that really speaks to the heart and soul and a lot of a lot of this stuff. But you can definitely see, um,
00:27:00
Speaker
someone's or your own personal sleep health by some of those indicators you were talking about, you know, like with, uh, if you wake up and you're just groggy headed, I've definitely been in big portion of my life where like every day I woke up, I didn't enjoy waking up because I wanted, I felt didn't feel rested. Right? So that right there, the sign of inadequate sleep. Whereas now when I wake up, I'm just awake and like ready to go. You know, I don't, I don't,
00:27:29
Speaker
I don't wake up with an alarm clock. I don't, um, I don't have any regrets of waking up and like, Oh man, I wish I could have slept like a little bit more or something like that. I'm through my path. I've just fell into a groove where I'm getting really good sleep and I can just, just add another perspective of how valuable that sleep really is. And you know, on the, on the other,
00:27:58
Speaker
end of that pendulum like during I don't take any caffeine products, you know what I mean? I don't take any energetic boosters to get me through the day or to like increase my motivation. Like I kind of just me personally, I'm really focused on doing everything as natural as possible, you know, eating the right foods and I do work with certain
00:28:25
Speaker
plant medicines and I like to call them Earth Day sacraments because there's more than that when you get into the fungi and the animal stuff but at the end of the day, my journey has been really focusing on being as natural as possible and I really like that the medicine that you're working with is sleep itself and you're just using indicators and creating habits to
00:28:55
Speaker
use to help people become empowered within their own ability to have quality sleep. I mean that's something that is really groundbreaking in a way that
00:29:13
Speaker
Society kind of doesn't like to to promote because there's nothing that can really Be exploited there, you know when someone is empowered to sleep and they're using tools to get back into a natural rhythm that benefits them That's like that's true empowerment, you know, so I'm really I'm really excited to see how things develop into here like where this where this
00:29:39
Speaker
came from, how it's going. And so understanding all this, if you were to look at what you would consider, for lack of a better words, a win, what would you consider the ultimate win with the path that you're walking? What does that look like to you?
00:30:04
Speaker
Well, if you ask Guy McDermott, everything is medicine, right? So if what we are doing is medicine, then I would say the hugest win is in that we've proven that our medicine works. And, you know,
00:30:24
Speaker
We can't help but notice that this is a very pharmaceutical controlled space, right? And so we're going up against some of the big dogs. And so that's a huge barrier. And one of my mentors told me that it would cost $100 million in marketing to get the rest node. And then we have this subsequent 62 Romeo program that surrounds it.
00:30:49
Speaker
It would take a hundred million dollars in marketing to educate the public on what the heck is it that we're doing right and i agree with that the education is a huge piece of this and so our solution to that is to deal with folks one on one in groups of twenty or whatever and our education modality rather than spending a hundred million dollars is that we're going to offer the sixty two romeo program if you do the sixty two romeo program.
00:31:16
Speaker
afterwards, you're educated, right? And so that's how we're kind of approaching this. I think it's important to point out that, you know, from probably Aristotle time, the development of science, the scientific method in our using our intellect to dissect things in, you know, sort of a mathematical manner, is that we left behind
00:31:41
Speaker
the acknowledgement of consciousness. And I think you and I are probably in the same space here where we're acknowledging consciousness and we're exploring that. And so one of the cool things is while the rest node that we built, which is completely custom, we built it from the science that we found. And the 62 Romeo program, yes, they are scientific and we did let science guide our artistic hand, if you will. But
00:32:11
Speaker
One of the unique things about what we're doing that you probably won't find anywhere else is that we are acknowledging consciousness and the tools that we're using. We're always keeping that in mind and bridging that gap. And so that's a part of what we're doing. And I think that's why we're so successful at this point with this first pilot study is because we're doing what creates the greatest result, not what creates the greatest passive income.
00:32:38
Speaker
AKA the pharmaceutical business model, right? We're doing something that heals people and that they can walk away with lasting behaviors, lasting results. The goal is that they can take this and run with it for the rest of their lives and live a more fulfilling life.
00:32:57
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, that's, that's right on, man. And I feel that's like consciousness. We're definitely in that, in that space of consciousness, you know, I'm using utilizing our natural environment and doing purposeful work within that to help connect people back to just these natural rhythms and patterns that
00:33:27
Speaker
bring into consciousness things that are beyond the pragmatic scientific model, you know, like that's those are science is a useful tool, but it is a tool, you know, and so for a lot of society, like this science has been put on such a pedestal that it's become a religion in many instances and people have this, you know, saying of like, well, believing in the science, whereas
00:33:57
Speaker
that's not a very accurate way to use that tool because that tool is not built on belief, that tool is built on observation and you know, repetition and really drilling down analytically into why things work and being able to explain things from that perspective but consciousness is so much more than that. That's just one aspect of consciousness that
00:34:26
Speaker
this modern Western society have have kind of latched on to as like the end all be all of like what it means to exist in our minds. And it's really interesting, you know,
00:34:42
Speaker
the dollar signs that people attach to things like, oh, it's going to take $100 million of marketing to reach people which in one respect, sure, but what is that really representing? What does $100 million mean? To me, that $100 million is energy, right? And so, you're
00:35:04
Speaker
The work that you're doing essentially is worth $100 million regardless of whether you're paying marketers to spread your message in the traditional creative ways of reaching people who are otherwise disconnected from
00:35:21
Speaker
the true purpose of the mission, right? The marketing game is really trying to catch someone's attention and capture it in a brief moment of time and piquing interest to move through a pipeline to eventually get to a sale. And that's one way of working with energy and moving consciousness to a certain awareness. But I really like how
00:35:47
Speaker
you're choosing to go with it which is working with small intimate groups of people where there is actual compassion and care in a relationship there since humans need community and relationships to thrive and even live you know definitely to thrive that is something that really gets discounted because before most
00:36:13
Speaker
organizations or people get to that point, the money block comes up and it's like, oh, well, we need X amount of dollars before we can start working as opposed to like, hey, here's our intention. Here's what we have to work with. And let's just start sowing seeds at the smallest scale and growing organically and letting the results
00:36:38
Speaker
create a magnetic type of amplification where like people experience results, that positive energy permeates through the collective consciousness through people's relationships and networks and then that awareness builds in a way that you really cannot buy with marketing because what marketing cannot do is create trust, like true trust in a
00:37:07
Speaker
away with integrity, it mimics it, it can create illusions and perceptions of it and I'm not just here to trash talk marketing but it definitely is just like how the pharmaceuticals have become a crutch, you know?
00:37:25
Speaker
marketing is that same way. That's like the primary mode of communication within this economy is to market your stuff, to make a sale, to rinse and repeat, and to build something and go into that same pattern of behavior. And again, the whole premise of this is breaking patterns, creating new ones, or identifying broken patterns and healing those patterns with new ones and creating proper pathways. And even how you're going about it is
00:37:55
Speaker
breaking in another pattern and creating a new one which I think is really awesome. Me personally, I'm very against my own personal use of any pharmaceutical product unless I was in a situation where I had no other options. So, I'm not going to say that they should never be used but I definitely
00:38:25
Speaker
know from experience throughout my own life with other people and just what I observe around me that there is a massive over-reliance and over-prescription of medications and so how do you see and feel like the use of medications obviously we talked about Ambien which you know we know the effects of that.
Effects and Misuse of Sleep Aids
00:38:52
Speaker
but like other medications because there's a lot of stuff I think like Zoloft or this or just supplements like the little gummy bears of melatonin in them or whatever you know, even something like marijuana we chatted about like some people use that to fall asleep. So I was wondering like what are your thoughts on the different types of
00:39:16
Speaker
Medications because they're not all created equally, you know a pharmaceutical to a supplement to a plant have different energies and characteristics to them but They can there's a right and a wrong, you know There's a there's a best way of using a tool and there's a not so great way of using a tool and I would be interested if you had any
00:39:41
Speaker
clarifying thoughts on that. I do. So, you know, our bodies and our lives move sort of in cycles, just like the earth. And we have, you know, we ebb and we flow. And sometimes we have a hundred year storm within our body. Maybe we lost somebody, you know, to death or we go through divorce or something traumatic. And I think that there is a place for
00:40:08
Speaker
different types of medication. But in terms of long-term use, I'm not a proponent of using substances to try to elicit good sleep. I think you're going to have more negative effects in most cases than you will positive, especially just the psychological dependence, right?
00:40:28
Speaker
But when we look at the pharmaceutical emergence of sleep medicines, and by the way, some medicines are FDA approved for sleep, which is a whole other topic, right? And some of them are not FDA approved for sleep. However, you know,
00:40:47
Speaker
Medical doctors are able to use their own discretion in prescribing drugs so they may prescribe a drug that is not FDA approved for sleep so that the person can get better sleep that's the intention right but we went from a place where barbiturates were the primary sleep medication which can be very addictive.
00:41:04
Speaker
and can cause death, there's a number of issues. And then we went into benzos, right? And these benzodiazepine class of sleep medications. And you know, I think those were a big improvement.
00:41:20
Speaker
But then we went to these non-benzos, which is kind of what we have now, and they're less habit-forming. But at the end of the day, this is, I think, more of a business model than a healing solution for these pharmaceutical companies. And none of the data that I've seen shows that long-term use of these drugs helps in any way with sleep. In fact, I think a lot of the true data is being hidden from the FDA reports.
00:41:48
Speaker
So, you know, I'm not a big proponent of pharmaceuticals in any way. I don't take pharmaceuticals, but I am sort of like in the American Western medicine surgical sense. I am open to taking medications if there is an emergency or if there's something that requires those drugs. But yeah, the proliferation of those drugs in America, I mean, look at the opioid crisis, look at the dependence.
00:42:15
Speaker
don't even want to get into the greatest wealth transfer in history where I think we have more billionaires, specifically from the pharmaceutical companies over the last couple of years than we've ever seen. Crazy money floating around. We won't get into that, but so these sleep medicines, okay, if you're stuck on a sleep medicine, I would recommend that you consult with your physician and have a real talk about what is the purpose? What's the goal here?
00:42:43
Speaker
Right? Because we know that there's solutions, lasting solutions within your own body and your behavior that can solve these issues that you're trying to cover up with drugs. But then when we get into melatonin, you know, maybe more natural, which by the way, melatonin is produced in our brain by the pineal gland. A lot of people don't know that. You don't need to take a supplement unless you have a melatonin deficiency, something wrong in your brain.
00:43:10
Speaker
which can happen with aging, right? But we have melatonin, we have marijuana. Unfortunately, we have alcohol and, you know, like I mentioned before, NyQuil. So, just talking about marijuana, there's studies that show that it impacts the brain function of dream sleep.
00:43:31
Speaker
And so I don't recommend marijuana if it's going to be used because of, and I'm not giving any medical advice at all, but my personal opinion is that if it's going to be used to help you curb chaotic thoughts and help you get to sleep over a short period of time after a traumatic event, I completely understand.
00:43:55
Speaker
But long-term usage is not the solution. And there's a bit of a cult and a following in a sort of, you know, a lot of people are very pro marijuana and I'm not against marijuana at all. But we're specifically talking about the use as applied to achieving sleep. So, you know, alcohol damages your deep sleep, marijuana damages your dream sleep, melatonin.
00:44:17
Speaker
is essentially hormone therapy because if you're taking, by the way, that's completely unregulated. It doesn't matter what it says on the bottle. There's no one checking to see the actual dosage. A lot of people are taking 20 milligrams when truthfully, you probably only need like two or three micrograms, right? If you're supplementing, but our brain produces that the melatonin
00:44:38
Speaker
And so unless there's a problem with our brain, for example, jet lag, we have a circadian disruption there and perhaps our melatonin production is happening later than when we want to go to bed. Okay, I understand supplement with melatonin that makes sense. But then when we get into more, you know, earth, you know, plant based type of things like magnesium,
00:45:00
Speaker
There's a ton of stuff that we talk about in the 62 Romeo program. Even like kiwi, like eating the skin of the kiwi, there's some pretty compelling studies that show very good results from taking different types of magnesium. Dr. Andrew Huberman over at Stanford, Huberman Labs loves to talk about some of those supplements. I really enjoy his podcast.
00:45:28
Speaker
Still, what are we getting back to? How much of this supplementation is placebo? How much of it is it psychological? And what type of psychological connection are we associating with the act of taking this supplement? I need to take this supplement because this is the only way that I can go to sleep over time that becomes a fact in your brain. And the truth is, in most cases, in every single person is different and their sleep situation is different. But in most cases,
00:45:58
Speaker
You know, coming from my side of the house, we don't need the supplements. What we need is good behaviors, good thoughts and controlling the environmental stimuli that can impact our brain function.
Environmental Factors and Generational Wisdom in Sleep
00:46:10
Speaker
Things that that stuff is very difficult to control. You can't control noise pollution outside of your house in terms of how that how your brain is receiving that. Right. You put in earplugs. You can't hear it as much.
00:46:23
Speaker
Well, then yeah, now it's less of an issue. So I hope that's a good perspective for you on the drugs and supplements. Yeah, no, that's great. And yeah, it really gets into what I look at in a lot of
00:46:44
Speaker
Western medicine, you know, of, uh, chronic issues is just really masking symptoms instead of really getting to the root cause. And like you mentioned in there, like there's a, there's a business model at work that is in my mind, really at a, at a conflict of interest with true healing.
00:47:10
Speaker
And because you don't get that mailbox money if people are cured of something as opposed to symptom management treatments. And so it's definitely a battle going on in this socioeconomic environment where interest with a lot of money
00:47:39
Speaker
have a lot more representation because they can buy it. They can afford to do studies. They can afford to omit data from studies or to intentionally not fund certain studies that may
00:47:55
Speaker
highlight realities that point consciousness in the direction that is not where that business model wants their crop to go essentially, their crop of consciousness. So it's very
00:48:13
Speaker
It's very interesting you know when you start going down these these roads and it becomes even polarizing because certain people feel that they when they have their symptoms lessened or numbed out that they look to the
00:48:32
Speaker
Substance or to whatever methodology is used as well. That is what gives me a little bit more peace in my life and so I'm going to defend it and anything that that points to a possibility that those things may be in fact damaging or prolonging the issue is met with a certain amount of hostility and regression and That is a
00:49:03
Speaker
some interesting waters to navigate. So have you encountered any resistance in your pursuits and your journey of healing in this way? Have you encountered anyone or any groups who have just been, not that I'm asking for names or anything, but just has it happened where people are kind of trying to downplay or snuffle it out?
00:49:33
Speaker
No, no resistance. Everyone is coming to the table with open arms. When I did, you know, we know that the CDC is saying, you know, we're in a state of sleep epidemic, a third of the country, which should be about 110 million people, are short sleeping. Now it's debatable as to, you know, as a blanket statement, what is short sleeping, because the recommendations of seven to nine hours of sleep
00:49:57
Speaker
It can be different for each person, but it's a pretty big problem when you say a third of the country is short sleeping. Short sleeping leads to all types of problems. If you listen to Tara Youngblood, the CEO of Sleep Me, she talks about how
00:50:13
Speaker
You know she likes to sleep six hours okay so that's her chronotype that's how she functions but if you get less than six hours of sleep for two weeks almost you know everyone will be have the same cognitive performance as if they had a blood alcohol content of legal intoxication with alcohol.
00:50:34
Speaker
Right? So, I haven't received any sort of, you know, I do get the naysayers because the MDs don't have as much training on sleep. The PhDs specifically in neurology, if they focus on sleep, really are the ones that focus on sleep and they are a bit few and far between.
00:50:54
Speaker
But i do get different responses to some of our social media postings and stuff like that i think there's a lot of points that can be debated but across the board everyone wants help most people do not want to be on the drugs.
00:51:10
Speaker
In our own internal surveys, I think somewhere around 98 plus percent of the team guys are having significant sleep difficulties. There's definitely a very small percentage of guys that they get it. They have been dialed in since before they joined the military and they get great sleep. And those really are statistical anomaly. They're on the outside of the bell curve, but for most people,
00:51:38
Speaker
that go through the Navy SEAL training and come out the backside, they're going to suffer with sleep. You know, I just talked to John Makasil, somebody who I, Makasil, who I respect immensely. He does a lot of the mindfulness and meditation stuff. And he, you know, is telling me about his own sleep challenges. And it's just, all of us have these sleep challenges. And so while I don't think the rates are quite as high for the, you know, general military population,
00:52:07
Speaker
I think most military and according to the RAND report on sleep in the military, it's very bad. But I think most veterans are suffering. And so, you know, when I say, you know, I haven't received any sort of blockers or objections, the focus
00:52:25
Speaker
where we're at right now has really been on veterans. And so when I'm going to these people, like I said, most of them are struggling with sleep and I can offer them a solution that doesn't mean they have to be on the VA's sleep medication program for the rest of their life. They receive that with open arms. Now, will I receive the same love from the general population?
00:52:51
Speaker
we will see. I'm not 100% sure, but I have a positive outlook on that. I think that we're probably going to get the same response, but we won't know until we sort of a lot of this is evolving. We're growing very rapidly. And so I think 2022 is going to be a very revealing and positive year for us.
00:53:11
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with you, man. I think trauma management, trauma healing from traumas is just becoming more of a holistically thought about topic. And I feel like the world is ready to make some leaps and bounds in our near future because
00:53:39
Speaker
A lot of the old rigid ways of doing things and thinking about things have had their foundations cracked. And it's not that they're necessarily all inherently wrong or bad, but the lack of willingness in some circles to look at
00:54:06
Speaker
other ways of doing things, especially when it challenges a paradigm or something. Um, you know, it's like, Oh, where is that? Where's the evidence? Where's the studies? It's like, whoa, if you're doing something groundbreaking, like it's the leading edge. It's the tip of the spear. So the experience is one of your, is the most advantageous, um, feedback.
00:54:33
Speaker
loops that you can get, right? You're probing into unknown territory in a lot of areas and getting feedback and then that is leading to further development in studies and research and just overall knowledge that's expanding, you know, ways of being, ways of existing. I think that's a cool name, the Exist Tribe. Where did you come up with that name?
00:55:03
Speaker
Well, Exist Tribe is the name of our company and it is DBA, right? The actual name of our corporation is Existential Technologies. And it's a bit of a play on words because an existential crisis, if you look back to
00:55:24
Speaker
Adam Smith or Emmanuel Kant or whatever, you know, an existential crisis is very much the opposite of technology, right? And so when we say existential technologies, and I've had a few debates on this, we are
00:55:39
Speaker
saying that we acknowledge the industrial revolution and how technology is causing a negative impact on our lives and perhaps an existential crisis that we are not even aware that we're battling. And so existential technologies is all about
00:55:59
Speaker
If technology is the problem, to say it simply, then we're using technology to battle some of that problem. It is a bit confusing and hard to say, so we dropped the existential technologies. I've had to say that too many times over the phone with somebody and they're like, what?
00:56:20
Speaker
So we just changed it to exist tribe, but in adding exist tribe, in adding the word tribe, we specifically did that because what we're trying to do is provide a community, right? Because that is what humanity is all about, right?
00:56:37
Speaker
Right. And so I think it's important, you know, not to get into boring economics and stuff like that. But I do have a very strong position on how to build this company. It is a C corporation. It's not a nonprofit. Right. A lot of the nonprofits, you know, unfortunately end up with
00:56:58
Speaker
You know, I'm not even going to go down that road, but C corporations have a lot of mechanisms in place that can either be used for harm or they can be used for good. And so the way that we structured this and I, you know, use the Beister Foundation as sort of a sounding board and a guiding light into how to create a conscious capital corporation. The people that work with me in this company own the company.
00:57:24
Speaker
The investors that have put money into our company are all people that believe in what we're doing we used a crowdfunding platform called we funder and so everyone who has a skin in the game right are people that believe in the mission.
00:57:40
Speaker
Because the last thing that i want to do in this chapter my life is build a successful company and sit on top of an icy tower and collect all the revenue and just everybody else is peons no we're all in this together everyone should have an equal share and as we grow the whole point is to grow our impact is to grow our exposure and build a larger tribe and so in order to do that we have to take into account the reality of economics and how these things work because
00:58:09
Speaker
The new wealth, if we want wealth equality in 2021, 2022, we can't look to the government to issue us land like we did during the creation of the United States, right? It's all in equity within corporations. And if you are an executive and you have a significant share in a company, that can create great wealth for your family.
00:58:32
Speaker
And if you're an employee, perhaps at the lower rungs and you get a paycheck, the moment that you get fired, the company has a business or whatever, like that's done, that income stream is done. And you will always be on that hamster wheel, striving to make a paycheck, begging for a pay raise. So the real way to distribute wealth and wealth equality, right? And I know this is getting a lot of philosophical economics, but we must allow the people within the organization
00:59:02
Speaker
to have shares in the organization. They must have shares. Now, it doesn't have to be the same amount of shares. I think each position within a company deserves different amounts of shares. But this is a way to end wealth inequality by allowing the people who break their back to build a company to have shares in the company. And as the company grows, so does their wealth. And now we have sort of a distribution that's not top-heavy.
00:59:32
Speaker
Yeah, no, I agree. I'm 100% with you on that. I think that's a beautiful way of using the existing infrastructure to transform the whole paradigm.
00:59:50
Speaker
really what I'm what I've been working on because I obviously started this as a non-profit for its mission and part of the reason I did that is like you know what is an it's just another corporate structure that has a mission of doing work but at the end of the day it's just it's another corporation set up as a non-profit and the reason I personally did is just because
01:00:16
Speaker
In order to achieve the objectives that I see, there's just a lot of challenges in agriculture where the costs are of doing business and just land appreciation, all this stuff, which is really a product of one product of devaluing of the currency, is making it extremely difficult, especially when you're adding on top of different regulations and this and that.
01:00:46
Speaker
So, it's really cool to see creative ways of using the existing technology, for lack of a better word, the companies, the corporate technology that exists. But also, I really like the deeper meaning behind the name in existential technologies because, you know, English language is funny in that there's many words that mean the same thing and few words that mean many different things, you know, the same word that means many different things.
01:01:15
Speaker
that word technology, everyone's thinking of machinery, electronics, devices, but I like existential technologies because to me, it also means the inherent technologies we have within our biology and our own consciousness, the tools that we have
01:01:35
Speaker
that are soft and discounted and sleep is one. Sleep is a technology in many ways. You can master certain things in sleep especially when you get into lucid dreaming and all that stuff.
01:01:51
Speaker
I really dig the deeper meaning behind that name. And also how you've constructed the conscious capital company with community as a central theme because that's really, I mean, we're right on the same page with community is what it's all about. And if people are investing their time in labor,
01:02:11
Speaker
to a company to provide whatever service it is to that company. Society looks at it as like, well, it's an employer-employee relationship, but really,
01:02:22
Speaker
getting around all the language tricks that go on. People are investing their energy into the company whether that's someone greeting someone at a door, picking up a phone, moving stuff on shelves, anything. Whatever can go on in a company like the people who are
01:02:48
Speaker
actually the human capital of that organization under the current model. A lot of them just get thrown
01:02:58
Speaker
treated like disposable, you know, and I think that's actually pretty disgusting and so it's really cool to see new ways of viewing things because a lot of times what happens in consciousness in these patterns is people just say like hey, you know, this is just the way things are and so this is just how it is but nothing is just how it is like everything all of this stuff didn't exist, you know a couple hundred years ago and you get like thousands of years and things were completely different and so
01:03:28
Speaker
Nothing is ever just what it is, it's what we make it. My purpose and intention here is transformation, to identify problems and just create
01:03:46
Speaker
improvement you know like instead of moving in circles and doing one step forward one step back type things to kind of break those patterns and create an upward spiral of momentum and live in a
01:04:04
Speaker
Do you use a play that word live and live more abundantly but it's true like if you're if you're living in a scarce mindset where the the creator of a thing has to receive all the benefit and then that that benefit in terms of money and energy is stored somewhere like that to me it creates energy blockages and
01:04:30
Speaker
it leads to a lot of the issues that we're dealing with because you get into lack of purpose, creating anxiety and feelings of meaninglessness in people's lives and that can lead to really dark places which obviously we've both experienced friends who've
01:04:51
Speaker
committed suicide, you know, which is like the ultimate tragic kind of ending that can happen or punctuation. And I think that just living with more compassion and purpose for
01:05:12
Speaker
something greater in this experience than the material goods and things that we have, but to actually live from a place where the energy of just being and existing is
01:05:28
Speaker
a joy and brings peace not only within yourself but within others. My measure of success is I have a certain, I have a peace within myself and if I can extend that
01:05:47
Speaker
like a candle to another candle and through my interactions, other people can feel a peace within themselves or more peace. To me, that is that success to me. And I don't care like of any numbers or other metrics attached to it. Like if I can walk into a room or meet another human being and we have a true, honest connection,
01:06:17
Speaker
from the heart and we both feel good about whatever happens in the interaction going forward. And then that spreads to other people. That to me is transformative, uh, success. And I really feel that you're on the same path, you know, from working from a different angle. So I'm, I'm really excited to see where this goes, um, to see how it improves, um,
01:06:45
Speaker
And to potentially work together on some stuff because part of what we're doing at Guardian Grange is obviously helping to heal the Earth.
01:06:58
Speaker
in using that as a means to heal each other, you know, veterans and build community around that. So it's not just about veterans, it's really about human beings and tapping back into nature and using that to empower ourselves to find peace, you know, find peace and create peace and create abundance through food and giving. But to do it in a really a new model for
01:07:27
Speaker
for society, you know, it's not like completely reinventing the wheel. It's going, going back to what worked for most of humanity in a lot of ways with a deeper understanding of where things can take turns for, uh, not such, not such good things, you know, creating traumas and all that stuff. And so we have the benefit of, uh,
01:07:52
Speaker
a very wide awareness, you know, understanding where we are in time, the history we came from, the potentials of our future if we continue doing things without compassion and care and...
01:08:10
Speaker
a great potential for a beautiful reality in the future. Obviously, there's a lot of stuff to work through in human consciousness. But overall, I feel really good about the way things are going despite the struggles that are still going on. What are your thoughts?
01:08:35
Speaker
Well, Sadhguru would say that, you know, life is about suffering until it isn't. And it really is a profound thought because, you know, gosh, how much a life is just suffering? And some of it is brought on ourselves, I feel like, you know, some of us might even have an addiction to suffering.
01:08:59
Speaker
But life is all about suffering and we have to deal with those things. But I think what he meant by until it isn't is until we realize that sort of transcendence is the purpose of life. And what I mean by that is that if we are able to reach a point in our life where we acknowledge death and we acknowledge the futility of life and that a lot of it's suffering and that we can only control ourselves and
01:09:27
Speaker
then you can sort of transcend in, you know, not getting into the spiritual aspect, but transcend into the village elder, if you will. And that's, I think, a lot of what we're missing these days. Where are our village elders? Where are the people who have lived life and are now reflecting on things and giving us advice as young people? And I'm very quickly becoming not in that category, but of young people.
01:09:55
Speaker
But that, I believe, is where my sights are focused on, is how do I become the person that is wise and can offer guidance and help others, whether it's through this sleep program or just through relationships or just through my actions.
01:10:17
Speaker
I agree with everything you're saying as well. So I think this is a great chance to connect and I look forward to all the possibilities of confluence and collaboration with us.
01:10:32
Speaker
Yeah, man. I really like what you said about the elders because they have literally an ocean of experience that is unfortunately just kind of thrown away and neglected and looked at as like, you know, well, their time is kind of past in society in general. It's like the time has passed and we're focusing on like
01:11:02
Speaker
the right now because it's not even like they're not, it's not even so much of a focus on kids. I feel like children and elderly are the most neglected and the people who are within our, you know, what you would call like a productive adult age within this economic system are given the most
01:11:29
Speaker
weight and looked at with the most idle tree, which I don't think idle tree should be in the equation, but you see it all over the place where people are just really idolizing certain people who are living in their prime.
01:11:48
Speaker
who may not be the best places to seek advice whereas if you listen to someone who has lived a complete life and they're on their way into a transition beyond this life, it's like that's a lot of...
01:12:08
Speaker
There's a lot of wisdom that's not being respected. There's a certain amount of respect your elders that should be there. And the same with the children coming on the other end of that spectrum where it's like that is life coming in that really doesn't deserve the weight of a lot of trauma that's being put on.
01:12:31
Speaker
them by society and unlike a lot of these argumentations and these aggressive energies that are coming up where everyone's trying to be right. It's like the child comes in and there's a sponge for energy on this earth with limitless potential and
01:12:54
Speaker
there's this chaoticness which maybe it has a lot to do with lack of sleep. You know, I think a lack of sleep is a bigger problem than we're even defining here. But I really think like with everything that has gone on, we have this gift of
01:13:20
Speaker
reflective awareness, you know, things got paused, things got stopped for better or worse. There's been a bit more breathing room and we have the ability to move forward in a way that is not going to continue to make the same mistakes.
01:13:43
Speaker
that a more unconscious society would have made, right? Because we've had the benefit of sitting in a stillness, some level of stillness despite the chaos that exists. So I really like what your path of and your focus of being that wise elder who has the ability to give and
01:14:09
Speaker
I think that's a beautiful reality that we can move to and are going to where
01:14:16
Speaker
the younger generations of whatever time that we're in actually have the respect and the interest to listen to that experience because that's how real conscious evolution happens. If that wisdom is being passed on from generation to generation, a lot of improvements can happen and a lot of mistakes don't need to be made but if we suffer this state of
01:14:42
Speaker
amnesia where knowledge is not getting passed down efficiently from generation to generation and the same patterns of behaviors keep playing out.
01:14:54
Speaker
It's just, it's something I reflect on a lot. And, uh, I feel that consciousness has stagnated for quite some time, despite the industrialized advancements in technology and all that stuff. Um, I feel that the growth of consciousness has been stunted. And I think we're at a point in time where
01:15:20
Speaker
there's going to be some growth spurts and already has been, you know, I know from some of the communities I'm in just seeing, seeing the, the stuff just even you and you and I conversing right now. I know like back when we were in the teams, I don't, I mean, I've always been philosophical, but where we're at and what we're talking about right now, I don't think is what we would have been talking about back then, you know, no way. Yeah, exactly. So it's pretty cool to see just within our own lives that the, the,
01:15:49
Speaker
evolutionary progress that we've made. And like with that, what is for someone listening right now who's struggling with sleep, what is the just one piece of the single best advice that you could give to that person who's just struggling with sleep in their lives right now?
01:16:18
Speaker
I would say, you know, that's a very deep question because people have different, uh, sleep issues, right? It's a huge bucket to throw everybody's problems into. But I would say if I were to just make one statement, it would be to forgive yourself and allow yourself to sleep, uh, getting rid of those negative sleep thoughts and replacing those with positive sleep thoughts. Yeah. That, uh,
01:16:47
Speaker
easier, easier said than done for sure. But I, I agree with that, that statement of forgiveness. Um, people are very hard on themselves, you know, and that, that creates those, those pre-sleep thought patterns that make it very difficult to sleep. I know a lot of people struggle with that, especially coming from our background struggle with, with, uh, getting into that relaxed state that allows deep sleep. Um,
01:17:20
Speaker
Yeah, forgiveness is powerful, man. It's really powerful and it's one of those things like a lot of people can look at that and be like, oh, that's such a trite thing to say like forgiveness, but it really is true, you know, because it's a letting go of emotional weight and baggage if it's done truly and it really has
01:17:47
Speaker
tremendous benefit, man. I 100% agree with you there but like you said, everyone has different reasons and issues but I think that was a solid answer, solid answer. And part of that, part of getting to that state is being
01:18:06
Speaker
living a more reflective life, you know, not just living in ways that are completely reactionary and busy mindedness, you know, a lot of people they they work at whatever they're doing, you know, drink like we used to drink like fishes, you know, crazy amounts. And then just we're always keeping ourselves busy.
01:18:31
Speaker
so we don't deal with the things that need to be forgiven which is another obstacle that is, you know, possibly paradoxical because it's like, you know, people want to heal from something and so the tools that we're given are to numb out and to run away instead of feeling through it and I like the saying that
01:18:56
Speaker
healing comes from feeling. You've got to feel the heal. And so it's a very
01:19:09
Speaker
just powerful state of calm that you can get into through forgiveness. So thanks for that piece of advice. And now where can folks learn more information about like this 62 Romeo program and connect with the exist tribe and how can we best help you out in your mission?
01:19:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think the best place to go is restnode.org, R-E-S-T-N-O-D-E dot O-R-G. And there you can kind of see this thing that we built. And then there's another page on there about 62 Romeo. We're creating another webpage focused just on the 62 Romeo, but that's not live yet.
01:19:57
Speaker
Um, so that's just kind of a, you know, we also have exist tribe.org. Um, so either one of those is fine. Uh, you can kind of dig in and, and see what it is that we're doing. Um, we're actually going to open up, uh, to the public here pretty soon with the 62 Romeo as a sleep coach program. Uh, and we're building on a team of sleep coaches because.
01:20:21
Speaker
we're going to be able to do, um, larger classes and support more people and really start to chip away at this sleep epidemic. Um, it's occurring in every first world country right now. So pretty excited about that. Yeah. No, that's exciting, man. Um, I'm excited to learn more, you know, dive in deeper. I really like what you get going on and it just fits into, um,
01:20:52
Speaker
fits right in with everything that that I'm doing, you know or working for and I feel that a lot that's that Society is moving towards in this this holistic way of living more healthfully, you know instead of like just living in a way That
01:21:15
Speaker
is somewhat oblivious to best practices to maintain health and we just kind of fall into a state of where it's like, okay, now I'm unhealthy so now I'm going to go start looking into how to be healthy again or how to solve this problem and I think it's a very... It's a reaction that's creating a very proactive way of living healthily and I think that's awesome and the community aspect is
01:21:45
Speaker
so needed in like these times that are just like there's certain just uh energies just trying to keep everyone divided not only from each other by different identities but within themselves and you know it's it's uh
01:22:06
Speaker
unfortunate, but it's caused by a lot of tensions that are hopefully going to be solved through that focus on people's personal deep inner work that can permeate out to others in their lives. And this point in time that we're going through
01:22:31
Speaker
gets a lot better in my mind. So I'm honored to have this chat with you and see where you're at. And it's a beautiful work that you're doing, bro. Thank you. Likewise. I appreciate that. Um, and I just realized I'm looking at our website, the rest know.org. Um, the, the marketing team has posted the, uh,
01:22:56
Speaker
the 62 Romeo documentary on there. It's only 16 minutes long, but I think it's really impactful if people want to watch that. So it looks like we have a lot of good content on restno.org. So check that out.
01:23:12
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah, definitely check out refsno.org and I'm excited to chat in the future. Do a little recap and keep checking back in. It's what it's all about. It's kind of supporting the good causes with this platform here to really connect on a human level with some cool stuff that's going on and you're definitely doing some really cool stuff out there. So thanks for the chat.
01:23:41
Speaker
I appreciate it. You too. Have a wonderful day, Mark, and I'll catch you soon, man. All right, bro. Have a good one. Take care. Thanks for tuning into this episode of the Guardian Grange podcast, and thank you for your support and sharing this episode with your friends and family. Guardian Grange is a registered nonprofit 501c3, so if you'd like to support this podcast and our work to facilitate veteran healing through regenerative agriculture,
01:24:11
Speaker
Environmental Restoration and Community Building with a tax-deductible donation, please visit our website at guardiangrange.org. For more information, that's www.guardiange.org, where you can send a one-time or recurring donation
01:24:37
Speaker
If this is the first episode you've listened to, I invite you to listen to the very first episode titled, The Vision, Veteran Healing Through Nature and Community with Mark Matts, Matthyl Delaflor, where I get into my background as a Navy SEAL and why I'm on this lifelong mission to protect natural resources, strengthen communities, and uplift veterans with a renewed sense of purpose.
01:25:06
Speaker
in addition to our focus of facilitating individual and community healing through working in nature. We're also sowing the seeds to build what I call a family-oriented, community-focused, decentralized network for a soil-based economy. Our intention is to help create healing spaces for veterans
01:25:28
Speaker
and to serve as local community centers for projects that build deep-rooted relationships and inspire a stronger sense of community for generations to come.
01:25:39
Speaker
I invite you to follow along with these podcasts by subscribing and sharing this content to help expand our reach. And I want to give a heartfelt thank you to every single person who has shared, donated, or provided feedback or encouragement. And none of this could be possible without a community participation. So please feel free to jump in and connect with us on social media.
01:26:05
Speaker
which you can find at our website, guardiangrange.org or simply just search guardiangrange and we should pop up. Thank you for showing up and participating in this journey as we work to help transform the world into a more beautiful, healthy and friendly place, one community at a time. Peace.