Indigenous Wisdom for Living a Healthy Life in Modern Times

Jason Prall

Hey, thanks for having me. Always good to see ya. 

Nathan Crane

Yeah, you too, man. Love the work you do. Love reconnecting. I learn something new from you every time we connect. ’cause you’ve learned so much from so many amazing people. So I, you know, I’m excited to dig right into this. When you were filming for “The Human Longevity” film series like, what was it that helped you determine where you went, who you were gonna interview? Like what was the criteria you were looking for in people for the series that would, you know really be a great, I dunno what you say, a great platform 

Jason Prall

Case study, right? 

Nathan Crane

Case study whatever it may be for human longevity. Yeah. 

Jason Prall

Yeah, yeah. So it’s a good question because you know there’s been a lot of work done on human longevity, right? People have studied elderly people in their 90s and 100. People study in labs and we’ve got a lot of different ways to study longevity. For us, I wanted to take a little bit of a different perspective on some of the longevity work that’s been done, right? Because I think there’s a couple key pieces that I think have been missed along the way that I really wanted to tap into. And this really came from my experience as a practitioner working with people in the US and what I was typically seeing that was causing health issues. And, that got me thinking, well if we’re doing things wrong in our lifestyle and our various habits today, how are they doing it, you know, in 1920? In 1930? You know, so I need to go speak with these people that are in their 80s, 90s, 100s. And to be honest, even 60s and 70s. 

If I can ask them about their parents, right, and how their parents were raised and how they were raised. And so that was really the, how I approached this. And so, we just needed to find people in their 80s, 90s, 100s. And what I wanted to do is, there’s been great work done around the blue zones, right. So if you’re familiar with these, these are areas around the world that have been researched by National Geographic that have a really high population density of people that make it to 100. Like it’s actually outside of statistical norms. And so they’ve been sort of labeled as blue zones because of that. 

And so I thought, okay, well, if I’m gonna go find 80, 90, 100 year olds that are healthy and I can actually have an interview and speak with, you know, have decent memory and these types of things, why don’t I go there? And the beauty, the beautiful part about that is that there’s areas around the world so you have, you take different genetics, you take different lifestyles, you take different diets you take, so everything’s sort of different. And, that allows you to sort of parse through some of the commonalities and also cut through some of the nonsense when it comes to this food is a longevity food and that food is not, right? 

So when you start seeing that, then you go, okay well maybe it’s not about the food maybe about, maybe it’s about the context. And so this was really what I wanted to get into. And so we went to Sardinia, Italy, Icaria, Greece, Okinawa, just off the coast of Japan and the Nicoya Peninsula in Costa Rica. And so we started there and we basically hunted down these 100 year-olds, which is not easy to do when you don’t speak the language, but, you know the beautiful part is many of them are in small villages. And so you can go to these areas and kind of just ask around. “Hey, do you know any people that are in their 80s and 90s and older?” And so, there’s still that small town feel. And that’s really how we approached our work. 

Nathan Crane

So what were some of the, you know, commonalities? You started going around and interviewing people, 80s, 90s, and 100s, different parts of the world which I thought was really smart because it’s not like, oh you have to live here in this part of the world to live long and healthier. 

Jason Prall

Exactly. 

Nathan Crane

Or you have to do this one thing. It’s like, you know if you can find commonalities among different groups of people, different nationalities, different cultures but there are similar commonalities that gives you a really great framework for understanding what all of these people have in common, right. So what were some of those commonalities you initially started seeing like really quickly? 

Jason Prall

Yeah, so there’s, I will say that there’s frameworks and mentalities and general principles that are followed in each of the regions. What people almost always ask about is the diets, right? Like what did they eat? And it’s funny because they ate all different things. So before I answer your question I wanna go to the other side and tell you that these people ate bread in some locations, like lots of bread. Cheeses, tomatoes, lots of beans, rice, chicken, fish, beef, pork, eggs, like, soy. They ate darn near anything and everything in various regions. So I just wanna sort of get that out of the way because that’s really interesting. But again, it’s contextual. So I think before I really answer more of that I just wanna leave that there for ya.

There were really important factors though when it comes to these various regions and we literally sat down and interviewed many of these people, right. So I really wanted to get a sense for not what they’re doing today, necessarily. That was of course important, we wanted to dive into that, but more importantly, what was life like back in 1934, Icaria, Greece in little villages? What, how did you get around? What was, you know, did you have electricity in 1950 Sardinia? You know, and the answer’s no in a lot of these places. So they, so I wanna paint a picture. They didn’t, most of these people grew up without refrigeration. 

They were not born in a hospital. There wasn’t even vaccines and things like that. So that’s interesting just to note. They didn’t have, again, refrigeration they didn’t have freezers. They weren’t able to transport foods long distances. They had to walk 30, 40 kilometers sometimes to go to the nearest little pantry store, you know. So, it was a very different village life. So if we can just conceptualize that. Without electricity you don’t have lights. So they didn’t have light bulbs. They had little, you know, lanterns. So they lived according to the natural rhythms of the day and the seasons. So that’s important to note, first of all. They lived rhythmically with the day and with the seasons. That means they slept really well. 

They got up early in the morning with the sun, they worked outside. So they were very busy physically. And in fact, that was one of my favorite quotes that I remember hearing from a gentleman in, I believe it was in Icaria, Greece. He said, you know, when I was young, and this is a 98 year old, by the way who’s fully coherent and just hilarious. He said, “You know when I was young the mind was still and the body was busy.” The problem now I see is the mind is busy and the body is still.” I thought, wow, that is so brilliant. You know, as concise as it’s explained so much. So one of the commonalities is that they moved a lot. They didn’t work out like we do. They don’t even really understand recreation, at least you, when they were younger. They didn’t have time to play sports unless they were kids. They didn’t go to gym, they didn’t run for fun. 

Everything was functional. So they were moving functionally all the time. And they did so throughout their life. So this means a lot of walking, you know some riding bikes, you know, working in the gardens, moving things around in the farms, like so this is just what they did, all the time. So there’s a lot of movement. They, I mentioned the rhythmic part of the day. They ate breakfast, lunch and dinner. They didn’t eat multiple meals and snack all the time. They ate sufficient amounts when they had it. To be honest some of them, sometimes they actually had to had to fast because there wasn’t food around in abundance. But they would eat just enough because you don’t wanna overeat because that means you’ve gotta then produce more. So if you’re eating too much that means you’re just working more. 

So there’s a real, amazing balance between the amount that they ate and the amount that they worked. Let’s see what else. They embraced the simple life. So they, and they appreciated the simple life. So we are so blessed with convenience in the modern world and that just wasn’t their luxury. So they actually really appreciated things, right? when I turn on the faucet for water, I don’t really appreciate that. You know, as much as I would say, I’d like to ’cause I do have awareness that is a pretty amazing luxury. Just doesn’t cross my mind. But they appreciated everything. So they had a different mentality about their day. They, everything was organic when it comes to food, right? They don’t even, most of these regions didn’t have monoculture, monocrop farm. So there was no reason to add any chemical fertilizer. 

So the amount of chemicals and metals and various toxins in the environment were drastically reduced. So they had a much more bio-diverse soil. Their foods, of course, weren’t polluted with these toxins polluting their microbiome directly. So, that was there. They had a sense of connection. So this is really important because when I say connection I don’t just mean person to person, human to human. They had a connection to the earth. They had a connection to their food, directly. They were growing it, they were producing it, they were harvesting it. They had a connection to the animals. 

If they use those as food or if they use those to haul things around they had connection to those living creatures. They had a connection to God or the universe, you know and it wasn’t always a religious context. Actually in Okinawa, they take a different framework sometimes that isn’t necessarily religious. But they had a connection to the greater source. So there was connection to earth and source and humans and their food sources. So, there’s a really, really strong sense of connection. I think right now, one of the biggest challenges we face is a deep sense of disconnection within our own family. 

Within, you know our social network, right? Since we’re so online, we just, we’re not as connected in the real way as I think they were and they seem to be, even throughout their lives. And this is a big one too, as they got older, they were still part of the society. You know, as a 70 and 80 and 90 year old they weren’t cast aside, you know, fending for themselves, working with some government system to support them. And they weren’t reliant on themselves to be perfectly physically fit in order to get by. Although some of them were. 97 year old woman I was talking to, she was picking, she was climbing trees to pick oranges, in Okinawa. 

So, I mean, they’re very, very capable. But they had a support network as they got older. So I think that’s really, really important to be able to be around younger people when they get older. So that was there. They were outside so much, so much more than we are. And that’s really, really important for a circadian rhythm function. The light’s ability to guide your biological clock, right, that’s how we operate is through the light, right? 

Which is why you get jet lag whenever you move you know, five, six time zones different than yours. And also the sun itself is able to interact with the skin and eyes and produce hormones and do all kinds of amazing things. Not only vitamin D, the thyroid hormones and cortisol and very, very key aspects to our health. So being outside in natural light just in and of itself is super valuable. Of course being amongst nature and seeing the trees and breathing the air, and; there’s something calming about just being in touch with the earth, right. In Okinawa, they call it shinrin-yoku, right? So they have even names for these things. And of course, in neuroscience we’re studying these things now that even this background behind me, looking at a fake background or picture, a photo of trees or flowers actually induces chemical changes in the brain. So there’s really important little things. But when you talk about, you know making it to a hundred, you know, I always say, you know you don’t become a centenarian. 

It takes a hundred years to become a centenarian, right? And that’s, of course it does. But that shows you that it’s literally all the little things along the way that add up to healthy life. And one key aspect I just wanna touch on here just cause I think it’s really, really important is the most important aspect to longevity in my opinion, is what happens between conception and seven years old, something to that effect. So those are the formative years that our microbiome develops, our mitochondria start to interact with the world. We have emotional traumas and these family dynamics that take shape. So there was a really, really critical aspect to that. And so, there’s fundamental differences between how they were raised, how they were birthed, you know, the breastfeeding. Sometimes they would breastfeed three, four, five, six seven years, right, which is drastically different. And I’m not suggesting that that’s plausible or even desirable per-se in our modern environment. But these were the differences and these differences between their world and our world seem to be pretty consistent throughout all the cultures that we talked to. 

Nathan Crane

Man, I just have to say for a second there you just like unloaded a manual for a healthy, happy life. I hope people are taking notes. If not get the transcript, you know, go back listen to this again, because literally what I find really fascinating about everything you just shared is the first common principle there that I think we can take away from, you know all of these people that you interviewed that live long, healthy, happy lives. One is living closer to nature, right. 

Jason Prall

Yep. 

Nathan Crane

As you said, even a fake background there or bringing more plants into your house, you know. There was a NASA study that was done, you know cleaning the air in your house, if you can do one plant per 100 square feet will help to clean the VLCs and the toxic chemicals that are in your house. So a plant for per 100 square feet. We have like 20 something, we have more than that. We have like a plant for every 50 square feet now ’cause my wife’s on this, you know, kind of, she got real excited about it bringing nature indoors ’cause she grew up in Mexico off the grid as a child, growing their own food, she grew up the same way. No TV-

Jason Prall

Wow. 

Nathan Crane

No electricity, no internet just. And she had like the most wonderful childhood you could ever imagine. You know, like go outside and pick mangoes from the fruit tree and they didn’t know anything else. They didn’t know, you know television and phones and Facebook. Now my kids are growing up and you know, they’re, you know learning games on the iPad and, you know using the computer. At five years old, 10 years old kids have phones, at seven years old now. It’s one thing I’m not giving my kids yet. I’m gonna hold out as long as I possibly can, is a phone and a social media account. We know that, you know, these kids are more depressed now than ever and are killing themselves in higher rates than ever. 

A lot has to do with this fake status of social media disconnection, right? As you said, like we’re lacking connection. They had so much connection back then. Connection to earth, connection to source, connection to the food, where their food comes from. They grow it, they eat it, they’re connected to it. Their hands and feet in the soil. Connected to their neighbors and their children, all this connection. And today we have all this fake connection. You have these Instagrams and TikToks and Facebooks and people are judging. 

You know, kids are judging other kids. So they want, you know, make-overs and they want implants. At 12 years old, you know a girl is already wanting implants because of the societal norm and the pressure from her peers, you know. It’s really sad what’s happening and there are solutions to all of that. Bring more nature inside, spend more time outside in nature, right? 

Jason Prall

Yep, and 

Nathan Crane

Learn to grow our own food. Yeah, we’ll go-

Jason Prall

Sorry. I just wanna jump in there because you actually reminded me of a story. That, when I was in Costa Rica, I was speaking with this tour guide. And he was in his 30s so he was, he’s relatively young. And which, that 30 year old age was actually perfect because when he grew up was still kind of the last vestige of the old way of doing things. 

Nathan Crane

Mm. 

Jason Prall

And so he’s actually seeing the transition and he’s become a part of that transition much, like much like we all have right, 

Nathan Crane

Yeah. 

Jason Prall

With technology. We, I didn’t have a cell phone in high school and yet it, it runs my life, right. So we’ve all kind of done this, right? So it’s really not about shaming or even criticizing our modern culture or where we’re all at. It’s just, it’s just important to at least look at these things and realize where we’re at. One of the things he was telling me is he, you know he gets a lot of Americans, Canadians, Europeans come down and takes them on these various tours. And he noted that he thought was very fascinating was these kids, these American kids particularly. When they had, they, he said they couldn’t move. He said I didn’t understand. They couldn’t get in and out of the truck or in and out of the kayak very well. 

He said it was very interesting to him because down there they’ve got six, seven year olds if younger than that, that are climbing trees, grabbing coconuts and whatever it might be up there and just playing. Their ability to sort of primal move, right, to move their body in ways that we’ve lost in the Western world really shocked him. So that was just a really easy contrast for him to see simply just the way a child moves. And so, again, these are things that we don’t typically look to when it comes to cancer, longevity, Alzheimer’s, dementia whatever these things are. We’re talking about is sort of these progressive disease states. But, the way that the body is structured, the way it moves the way it sits, balances, et cetera is fundamental to the nervous system, right? This is kinda the essence of chiropractic care and other modalities that are more physically based. They’re tremendous. When you can adjust the body, the fascia and the physical structure and get it into balance, the nervous system calms down. So everybody’s talking about adrenal exhaustion, adrenal fatigue, blah, blah, blah all these adrenal things. And yes, that’s true. 

We do have this over overstressed kind of environments that we’re all in overstimulated environments. But again, this argues for going back outside. Going back outside reduces stimulation. We are all overstimulated. I am overstimulated nonstop, right? But going back outside helps reset that. Getting my feet on the ground helps reset that. And me learning to move my body in a more primal way, even as an adult, there’s plenty of primal movement type of programs out there. Osteopaths use these. They are really big fans of these. Getting the body to be able to move correctly, right? Yoga, Qigong. Nathan I know you’re a big Qigong. 

Qigong is a movement practice on the subtle level and on the gross level. But these are the types of things that we can start to bring back in to counteract our modern environment, right? So this is how I wanted to go about our film series was it’s one thing to look at the commonalities of all these people and understand their world, but I will never go back. And in society won’t go back to living like they did in 1942 Costa Rica, in a small village. We’re just not gonna do it. It’s not possible, right. And nor would we necessarily want to. So the question I had was not what how did they live then or even, how do they live today? How can I take that information, bring it into the modern world and adapt my modern world and adapt my habits in order to replicate or bring in as much of that wisdom as I can. 

So that to me is the most important thing is find out the nuggets. And then what do I got to do to bring that into this crazy weird modern world that I live in without chucking the whole modern world aside saying this thing sucks, right? So there’s a lot of things that we can do. And this is where breathwork. None of the people in Okinawa, in Icaria, none of them, they didn’t do any breathwork. This wasn’t a thing. They didn’t do any pranayama. They didn’t do, this wasn’t a thing that they did. And yet we know breathwork’s helpful. They didn’t meditate, they didn’t do yoga, they didn’t exercise. So it’s not to say that because they didn’t do these things we shouldn’t do them. 

No, in fact, it actually argues more for that. So how can I use breathwork to offset this chaotic world? How can I use certain lighting technologies to help change the way I light my house? How can I use maybe glasses, these blue blocker glasses, right? So there’s modern methods and ways and techniques that we can use. And so I think it’s just, it’s really important to say and I’m just glad you reminded me of that story ’cause I had such fond memories talking to Javier about these things that he was noticing. What was so different from their culture and ours, because again, he was younger. And so he had a very, very keen eye to this world. 

Nathan Crane

Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up. You know, it’s really interesting because living in this modern world utilizing all of this great technology we have to do programs like this, get them out to the world, help hundreds of thousands of people learn more about health and healing and longevity and reversing, preventing cancer so on and so forth. Like the technology allows us. You know having a vehicle, drive to a gym that’s 10 miles away and exercise and, you know stay fit and healthy and being able to go, you know, be in a city and have our children go to school but be able to drive outside to community farm, like all these different things we can do while interacting as part of this experiment we live in as the modern society. 

It’s like we have to do everything we can to shield ourselves from the dangers of this as well. So there’s this huge side of pros and positivity of all of it. And then there’s this huge side of things that are literally killing us every second. EMFs and pollution in the water and air, and chemicals in our food and the high stress and exposure to too much lights and not enough. You know, balancing our circadian rhythm and so on and so forth. So it’s like you have to do everything you possibly can, not out of fear but out of proactivity, out of, not of reactivity, but out of choosing to want to live a healthier, longer life. 

And if we do that, yes, I agree we can live in modern society while still being healthy and living a fulfilled life especially if we’re have good connections and relationships and doing meaningful work in the world. My dream actually is to what you said, you know we’ll never go back to 1949 Costa Rica. I don’t know what 1949 Costa Rica was like but I can imagine, you know, it was probably very, you know off the grid and people living more in harmony with the land and growing their own food and building their houses by hand. That’s actually my dream. 

Jason Prall

I’m kind of with you. 

Nathan Crane

So 

Jason Prall

There is 

Nathan Crane

So, my goal is to actually live that way and then inspire others who want to live that way as well. Will the whole world live that way, probably not but, I think we can find a way for people who do wanna live that way and actually we’re gonna go visit an intentional community. And as you know, I did a whole documentary series on sustainability called “The Search For Sustainability,” where I toured the country visiting, you know eco villages, intentional communities and so forth and we’re gonna go visit one in April but just to learn and be a part of it. 

But I think we can find a way of like, okay if people wanna live that way, very totally in harmony with nature, how do we do that? If we wanna live kind of in middle, like very close to nature, but still part of society, how do we do that? And we still want, you know, people wanna be a part of modern society and all the technology and the gadgets and so forth, but still live long healthy lives, how do we do that? And I love that you’re, you know, really addressing all of that because how these people live we can learn from their lifestyle choices and implement them today in all three of these categories, right? 

Jason Prall

Absolutely. And I think, you know, you kind of touched on something that I think is so critical which is that there are countless stories out there. I know them personally and you hear them all the time that, especially from people that are over the age of 100. When you really break it down, it comes, I think the most important aspect to maintain or to develop or to foster throughout your life is an amazing mental, emotional and belief system. So if your mental, if your, if you maintain a positive mindset, a healthy emotional balance, which doesn’t mean you don’t feel the sads and the downs but you actually move through them instead of getting stuck on them or avoiding them and your belief system is such that it fosters health, that is the most powerful thing that you can do. It’s almost unbelievable, actually. 

There’s people that have lived a really horrendous lifestyle when it comes to their habits and yet because their mentality is so amazingly positive, their emotional states are so fluid and balanced and they rest in this sort of well-being state. I mean, look again, going to Qigong. Qigong is kind of in this mentality, it’s developing this wellbeing in your system. And so, that I think is it’s not to be understated. And so, I don’t wanna put an overemphasis on the things because you can do everything right. And if your belief system is that it’s so hard to heal and this is so much work and I’ll never get there. And there are these mental and emotional blocks that are there, even if they’re subconscious and you can’t even recognize them then to be honest, some of the things aren’t gonna move the needle like you think that they should, or they would. And this is why, there’s a lot of reasons, but you can look around you and say, “Well here, she’s not doing, they live such a horrible lifestyle. 

Why don’t they have any of the problems, right?” So I really wanna highlight this. A lot of this does come from the things that happen in our childhood. The emotional mental frameworks that we ended up developing, these character structures, these personalities that we develop as a means to survive, really, they actually determine your nervous system, the state of your nervous system which really guides the function of everything. It’s gonna at a baseline level operate in such a way that’s gonna undermine healthy function. You know, and we look into traditional Chinese medicine and we get into Ayurveda. We actually see that emotions can be held in various parts of the body. And they’re systems that can be affected due to anger or due to sadness, or what have you. 

And so, again, it’s not that these things are bad but when they’re not addressed and when they get, when we were stuck in it, essentially. Again, a lot of this is subconscious but that is gonna be a huge, huge driver of health. And so I think it’s just important to at least recognize that because it’s often understated and you see cancers that literally vanish. Like it’s hard to really understand that from the Western medical standpoint but in medical Qigong, in plant medicine ceremonies, shamanism, other areas that we don’t really understand super well from the Western medical perspective, these things heal in a matter of an instant. So these are hard to explain. But there’s something there keeping it in place that is not only on the physical level. 

So I think it’s, I just wanna stress the idea of this non-physical aspect of healing and health that is so critical. And again, going back to the longevity communities, this is what we saw. We saw these people that were in such amazing states of mind. They were happy, they were happy-go-lucky. They weren’t obsessed with how long they were living or when they were gonna die. It was all in God’s hands. You know, it was this fluidity with life that they were able to move through. And so that really struck me was their amazing demeanor. They were so comical. They were so fun and they were so welcoming. So that was probably the biggest thing that I noticed between what I see in our cultures, the way I am personally and what I saw in these amazing beings is that they were the type of people that I wanted to become, right. And so, and I don’t think that all of them became that. 

They actually were raised that way, that’s how they were when they were young. That’s what you got, I got the impression it was that this is how they were throughout life. So it’s really important that, and again this is actually something that you can develop. This is actually something you can work toward. I’m working towards it all the time. Working on my childhood traumas and these developmental things that happened with me, to me, for me. I’m working with those to develop more wellbeing in my system so that my nervous system can actually be in a balanced state, can rest in the parasympathetic, which is where all the healing happens, right, is in this parasympathetic state. So, I think it’s really important to note that. 

Nathan Crane

Yeah, thank you for mentioning that. You know, I’m reminded of the interview I did with Kelly Turner who’s a part of the symposium. We encourage everyone, make sure to go listen to that interview because she has read and analyzed over 1,500 cases of what are called radical remission. People healed chronic diseases like cancer either when conventional medicine has failed them or completely outside of conventional medicine altogether. And over these 1,500 cases, she found 10 commonalities very similar to a lot of things you have found, pretty much almost identical in a lot of ways to what you’ve been sharing and what you found through The Human Longevity Project. 

But what’s really fascinating and is a 100% in alignment with everything you just said is seven of those 10 things. So 70% of those things people did on a regular basis, and these are all scientifically backed, evidence-based as well are mental, emotional, spiritual things. 

Jason Prall

Yep. 

Nathan Crane

30% were physical things, like diet and nutrition, herbs and exercise. Doesn’t mean these are not important, it just means that 70% of healing and longevity and health and vitality actually lies in the unseen realm. And, you know, we’re learning, you know our ancient ancestors, you mentioned Qigong, you know I study and have worked with master Mingtong Gu, a Qigong master. I’ve studied yoga for many years and Buddhism and Zen, and, you name it. And you know, our ancient ancestors and indigenous cultures have known these things for thousands of years. It’s just our modern science is finally understanding it from a scientific level which is also helpful to our left analytical brain, right? But not to, you know, exercise. 

Like one of the things people forget about especially in dealing with a cancer diagnosis is I’m actually, I’ve done a massive amount of research recently specifically on what types of exercise? How much exercise? What’s the right amount? What are we supposed to do specifically for my next book about healing cancer. And what’s really fascinating in the recommended amounts and types of exercise that we should be doing, specifically at any age for preventing or reversing cancer. 

Almost nobody I’ve met is, I mean, there is should say very, very few percent of people I’ve met, interviewed, talked to and just who I see on a day-to-day basis do even half the amount of the recommended exercise that’s needed. And unfortunately, these are people still dealing with chronic diseases today. People who are doing a lot more exercise, who are doing you know, up to 60 minutes a day, both high intensity, low intensity cardiovascular training you know, even weight training. It’s highly recommended making your muscles strong, you know. And as you’re saying back in the day if you will, you know, centuries ago people were walking everywhere and biking and squatting and climbing trees and doing all kinds of things that require the use of their muscles and strength and, you know, adaptation of the body. 

And so, again, I just I don’t wanna underemphasize the importance of exercise and nutrition and diet but 70% of it lies between the ears, right? It’s in and around us, our mind, our emotions, our spirituality. And I know you’ve been doing a lot of work with your next project around indigenous cultures. And, you know, you’re doing a whole series on exploring the ancient methods of indigenous cultures who live, you know healthy and happy and close to the earth. What are some of the things you’ve already learned and what are some of the things you’re hoping to learn as you continue the series? 

Jason Prall

Yeah, and I wanna, I wanna mention something about exercise that you sparked there. Cause when I was really seeing a lot of clients as a practitioner with, you know, I was working with autoimmune cases and cancers and all the sort of functional medicine type stuff, that was the sort of method I was practicing. One of the things I noticed was that the people that I worked with that exercise frequently, they were athletes or military perhaps, or whatever it was, they for whatever reason, their blood work was always better. Like everything, their microbiome, their blood work, like they could live a really crappy lifestyle and it’s like, exercise could actually make up for such a huge portion of that. 

Nathan Crane

It’s true. 

Jason Prall

So it’s almost like they got crappy sleep, they didn’t eat very good diets. They do all this stuff and, but they exercised regularly and it’s like, it’s almost like it didn’t make a difference. I don’t want to say that’s the case but it was always shocking to me when I was looking at labs and I’m like, how is it so good? Meanwhile this person over here is doing all the other things, right but they don’t exercise frequently and their labs are a mess. And so I just wanted to hammer that, exercise is so, so critical. I think what your book sounds amazing because it can make such a huge difference. And also on that point when your nervous system is not recovered then exercise can actually be very detrimental. In other words, it pushes you over the top. 

So good exercise goes hand in hand with good rest and good sleep, right. And I know you agree with that. And so it’s just something to really, really look at is how much sleep am I getting when that happens too. So, but again, they got great sleep in the blue zones in the people we spoke with. When it comes to this new film series that we’re working on we’re working with a variety of different traditions, right? We went to the Himalayas in Nepal to work with the Buddhist and bone healers up there. We worked with one of the foremost masters Ayurveda, Dr. Vasant Lad.

We went to India to work with him and we’ve been to Peru to work with the shaman there. And we’re scheduled to go to Columbia to work with a different kind of shaman. And then we’re also, it got canceled, We were scheduled to go to New Zealand to work with the Maori there and just learn about the way that they think about health ’cause this is a big curiosity for me. You know, I’ve a natural inkling to go work with these people. So I’ve done some, you know, ceremonies and been involved in the search shamanic world. and Ayurveda always attracted me. So I’ve got a little bit of experience in Neva, just drawning me in. And so then I thought, what if I went deeper with that and and looked at a variety of traditions would I find the same types of things, you know what would I find? Of course the practices are very different around the globe, but it turns out that you do find a lot of the same things and they don’t think about health like we do. So it’s almost like you have to throw away everything you think you know about health and come in like a child completely blank mind, right? 

Like in and of itself is a common philosophy in a lot of these practices, the child’s mind, the beginner’s mind. And that’s, how with that genuine curiosity you actually can learn. But that was really what I was curious about. And you find that they think about health in a drastically different way. One of the things that they focus on is essentially the, the connection with the natural world, the rhythms of the day, right? Ayurveda’s all about the rhythms. The times of day, the cycles, the food cycles, the seasonal cycles, everything’s in cycles and they really operate. And they use that as a framework for how they guide their whole philosophy about health. Same thing in the jungle when you’re working with shamans, right? 

They’re always in tune with the natural world. They may call them plant spirits and animal spirits and these types of things but they think about them in a different way. And they’re always, they have such a keen eye with the natural world that they’re always learning from it. And this is what allows them to figure out which plants to use for which ailments, how to treat certain issues, the real cause of your cancer. Might it be something emotional? Oh, and they have a really good way of figuring that out. And it all stems from not only operating in the physical world. Sure, the physical world, we have to pay attention to these things. But beyond that, what are the thoughts? What are the emotions? What’s the psycho-spiritual context? What’s your spirit and your soul involvement in all of this. And a lot of the shamanic cultures, they believe that there’s, the soul can split. That you have a soul, first of all and second of all, the soul is multi-dimensional, it may not all be here. That when you experienced traumas, perhaps it’s a birth trauma, perhaps it’s in childhood, you may have fallen off the bed, there’s a million different things. And your soul actually kinda bounces out or gets fractured. and it sort of gets lost, so to speak, in a different dimension, a different realm, so to speak. 

And so we lose parts of ourself on that level. And so one of our practices is actually to call back in the soul. And so there’s very interesting practice and it’s easy to deny these things. It’s easy to dismiss them because they’re not scientific. and we can’t validate them the way that we understand science. However, when you go work with these people, and when you again, you go in with the beginner’s mind without this you know, having discernments critical, always bring discernment. 

But with that discernment comes an open-mind, right? So that’s really what I went in with. And as I studied more and more, you just start to find these things that don’t make sense when it comes to how we think about them in the Western world. And It doesn’t mean, you know, there’s a lot of times where I didn’t have answers. I couldn’t explain what was happening to me or to somebody else or what I witnessed or, but they happened and they continue to happen. 

And so again, sometimes when we work with those traditions there’s a little bit of a language barrier. And I don’t mean actual speaking language I mean, how they think about things and speak. And again, they say plant spirit, chamomile has a spirit. Well, I might say, okay chamomile has a certain scent and a certain flavor and it does certain things to my neurochemistry. So, we can think about them in a different way but vanilla’s different than chamomile and they have a different spirit. Tobacco has its own spirit and Coca. And so there’s these different ways that they think about these things and they apply them differently. 

But nonetheless, they, it’s like they peruse magic. It’s like they’re working on a different realm, a different level of reality that is not one that you can traditionally see, or that we’re not trained to see in our Western world. And so same thing with these traditions, right. Again, I’ll bring up, Qigong, Ayurveda and the Vedic philosophies. They’re working on the subtle level so often, right, the subtle body or the. So it’s a different realm. They talk about Qi, right? So it’s like where the Qi goes, the energy flows. Well, how does that make sense in a Western model? It doesn’t right? So it’s like, so we’re talking about blood. Well, Qi guides the energy, energy guides the blood, right. And actually, I might be wrong with that, you might be able to correct me. But there’s something to that degree, right. So they’re working on different levels. Correct me if I’m wrong, maybe help me out with that, Nathan. 

Nathan Crane

Yeah. That’s more understood in TCM, traditional Chinese medicine or acupuncture, right is a yes, no, you’re right. Qi guides the blood and then blood guides the energy. But really, you know, in Qigong I guess it depends who you talk to because Qigong, from the, from what I’ve studied was the million to Qigong, Qi, the basic understanding is just energy. Qi is energy. It’s life force, energy 

Jason Prall

Life force energy. 

Nathan Crane

Today, we call it energy. There you know, here we call energy, there, they call it Qi You know, gong is the, the practice of or the cultivation of, so it’s like the cultivation of life force energy. Or another translation could be like the mastery of life force energy. And what you said, where energy goes, or where what’d you say 

Jason Prall

Where Qi goes 

Nathan Crane

Where Qi goes, energy flows or where thoughts go energy flows. Yes, it’s true. Energy is everything, right? Everything is energy. Our thoughts, our emotions, our intentions our physical body, even the non-physical that we can see we, everything is energy. And so anyway, I’ll let you keep 

Jason Prall

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And it actually reminds me there was a time, you know, they speak about the Dantian or the lower Dantian, right? And this is something I didn’t have a concept for. I was doing Qigong and I was putting my hands in the lower Dantian and I didn’t know what the heck I was doing, right. And, I was following instructions and I’m placing my awareness in my sort of lower belly area and I’m trying to sort of build the Qi and all these things. And I’m like, okay, I just don’t feel it. 

And then at one time, one point I felt the Qi. And I’m like, oh my God, there’s my Dantian, there’s my lower Dantian. And I felt it. And we talk about chakras in various Vedic and Ayurvedic traditions. This, I felt it. So, forget the philosophies, forget the teachings, forget the anything, I felt it. And so this is what’s interesting. And so the question that I asked myself at the time was has this always been there and I just didn’t have the subtle awareness to be able to feel it or did something happen and I build something up? And my conclusion was both, right? So in other words, I was able to help move energy there and create and foster the energy and really my skills and the ability to move the energy there and my awareness and focus it. And my ability to feel the very, very subtle thing that at first became, first it was undetectable, then it became subtle and then it became more gross. And I’m like, oh, there it is. Whoa, Whoa. All of a sudden, it’s not an illusion. It’s like, it all makes sense. 

Nathan Crane

Yeah. 

Jason Prall

And then, so these are the things that I noticed as I practiced, as I worked with these things. Same thing with me with various meditation practice, Buddhist meditation practices. I started to feel things. I could actually feel vibration of somebody’s voice. I’d never been able to feel that in this way. it was almost like I was standing at a concert next to a huge loudspeaker, and it was booming the base but this was just like somebody speaking across the room and it was shaking my whole being. So these were things that I was experiencing that then turned me on to this idea that there’s a lot that I don’t know. And there’s a lot happening on the non-physical level that I can become aware of that is affecting my physical body, right? So this is what I think, this is where, and here’s the important thing. 

This is where we’re going, right? The Western world is going there we’re just going there in a different way. We’re starting to understand how light is affecting us. So what you can see, there’s all kinds of technologies out there using infrared and UV and blue and green and all these things that we’re now finding out. So what is that, what are we talking about? We’re just talking about frequency. I’m talking about electromagnetic frequencies affecting our physical being, right? Red light, infrared light affects the mitochondria, we know that now. It affects the water in our body. We know how UV light affects us. We have all these porphyrins and proteins in our skin that absorbed these UV lights and transduce it and turn it into other frequencies of light that then can conduct electrical energy throughout the body. We’re learning these things. And all we’re talking about is visible and actually non-visible light. UV and infrared is invisible to the human eye, and yet it affects us, right? And so this is what’s interesting as we’re moving that way, sound frequencies that it affect us. 

Well, they’ve known this forever in Ayurveda and Chinese medicine and everything. They, this is why they do these chants. This is why they do these practices and these prayers. And even in the Abrahamic traditions, they do these prayers and these chants, they sing. And so, it’s fascinating when you start to take a historical look at all these traditions. In shamanism they do the same thing. They have Icaros. They sing these songs during these iowaska ceremonies that are affecting the energy of the person. So you just start to realize, wow, it’s actually we’re not that separate one from the Western science getting into quantum technology and basic physics and how it’s affecting the body and what the shamans do and what the TCM practice practitioners do, and the Vedics do. And it’s like, we’re actually right there together, working on the same problems. And we’re just doing it in a little bit different way and finally coming together to sort of build that bridge of understanding.

Nathan Crane

I think that’s, you know, the perfect place to end this is where you just said, that’s the future of medicine. Like, that’s exactly it, that’s the future of where we’re going is this non-physical world, understanding, connecting to, cultivating all the beauty and benefits and healing capacity and deeper connections of this non-physical world that, you know, many, some people see many people don’t see. I do wanna mention this ’cause she keeps coming to mind. as you’ve been talking about this. I interviewed Bobbi Vogel as part of the symposium. I encourage people to go listen to that interview. She’s an incredible medical intuitive that is working. 

Jason Prall

I love them. 

Nathan Crane

Yeah. Yeah and so she sees energy. She sees the biofield, she sees your energy field. She can see, she’s working with this child with cancer and the girl has a brain tumor right here. And the tumor made her go blind. She lost her vision. Well, Bobbi can see the energy. She saw that she actually had a hole in her energy field right here. So she started doing, she’s guided by, you know, invisible beings and, you know, I dunno how extreme this is for some people tuning in. It might be, you know, beyond your comfort level but this is what’s happening today. 

And she’s not the only one. There are lots, thousands of people that are tuning into these higher human capacities. But she started doing this work, this invisible, energetic work and within a short period of time the young girl got her vision back. She went from having to learn to read braille to actually being able to read a book again. So, you know, what you’re talking about here is incredible. And yes, our science is catching up and learning more about it. And I also agree it’s the future of where we’re going is that 70% of we’re focusing on healing our mind, our emotions, our childhood traumas and learning to be happier and more connected and have good relationships and practice meditation and breathwork. 

And you know, all these different aspects of what it means to be healthy and happy. You know, we can truly change our lives and the future of our children, who I’m certainly concerned about and thinking about all the time. What kind of world you know, are they gonna grow up in at 20, 30, 40, 50 years? And by implementing these things that we’re talking about, you know, I think we have a bright future ahead certainly if we make some serious changes now and moving forward. 

Jason Prall

Yeah, I just wanna leave people with one last thought here that is that your body is electrical, right? It’s moving, it’s using electrical current to do all its things, right? We have thyroids, we have microbiomes, we have all these things fundamentally, it’s really an electrical machine, so to speak. And it’s a very, very intelligent one. So anything that’s gonna affect that electrical nature of your body will impact your health. 

So this is the chemistry that we put into the body, right, and all the things that we do there and how we move and all the metabolic activity that’s happening there. But, to this point, it’s the thoughts, it’s the emotions, it’s the beliefs. So this is the thing I think is so critical for everybody that has something that they’re working through. Look at your beliefs, look at your thoughts and look at your emotions. What are these things doing on a regular basis? Analyze those, look at those. Help, get somebody else to help you look at those because it’s hard for us to see ourselves sometimes. 

Nathan Crane

True. 

Jason Prall

And so if you can get a better grip on that then you can start to realize where are those coming from, what’s impacting those, then you can start to change us. And that’s the most important thing. Because those thoughts, those emotions, those beliefs are the invisible aspect that is affecting our physical body. So to bring that back around, it’s where I keep going to because when I was at health practitioner I kept getting stuck with some patients and clients and I couldn’t get them beyond a certain point. 

And it finally hit me, oh my God, there’s this trauma. There’s these things in their psyche in their psycho spiritual world that is affecting them, that I can’t get to on this physical level, changing their habits and working with supplements and these things. So it’s such a huge part and I think if you can get down to that piece, you’re really, really on your way to living a happier and healthier life.

Nathan Crane

Jason, I can’t wait for your next project to come out. You know, we’ll definitely let our community know about it when it is. I can’t wait for your book to come out as well. I know that’s gonna be exciting. Hopefully you can start traveling and filming again. But I love the work you do, man. I love, you know, the wisdom you bring, the context you bring, and I do wanna encourage people, you can go watch “The Human Longevity” film at humanlongevityfilm.com. You can watch the first episode for free. They have the whole nine part docu-series there. Go check that out, humanlongevityfilm.com. Jason brother, thank you so much, man. I appreciate you. 

Jason Prall 

Thanks for having me on and keep me posted with all your work as well. 

Nathan Crane

Absolutely. And I wanna thank all of you for tuning in here to the Global Cancer Symposium. Please share this with your friends, family, anybody who needs to hear this life-changing information. Make sure to visit humanlongevityfilm.com. You can watch episode one, join their newsletter. Keep up to date with all the great work that Jason and his team are doing over there. Also take a look at healthandhealingclub.com. You can join our global membership dedicated to helping you get and stay healthy. Again, I’m Nathan Crane. I wish you ultimate health and happiness. Take care.