Experiencing Joy and the Road to Healing

Introduction to Ravi Mehta 0:00

Welcome, to another edition of Mycotoxins and Chronic Illness. Today is going to be a real treat. We're going to talk about I think there are many paths towards healing, and especially when you've had chronic illness, you can often get lost in thinking that it's going to have to be through, just physical modalities. And today, it's really a pleasure to be, speaking with Ravi Mehta, the gentleman who is spin start off engineer, inventor, entrepreneur, author and musician. But what brings him to us today is that he has had the experience of having to go through chronic illness and health and his experience there.

I find very intriguing because it has led him to, I think a very creative and exciting way that we can all begin to pursue our own health. So, probably we you just give us a little background on who you are and what happened to you. How did you how did you get forced to enter this wonderful journey of healing? Yeah. So I'm, you know, as you mentioned, I'm an engineer and a by education. Grew up in a family business where we've been building infrastructure in the US for over 40 years now. Infrastructure being like roads, highways, bridges, airports, rail systems, things like that.

And, you know, had this I was kind of got trained in the systems thinking approach, you know, from early childhood because it's coming. My dad started and I used to I said, run. And, you know, as I also was super excited about technology, you know, I end up getting into the startup world and doing a bunch of startups, starting with virtual reality and training simulation systems to gaming. And just, you know, all the things that kind of determine human behavior, essentially, you know, so that was kind of my passion.

But it was also had this, like, deep creative energy, you know, that I was always excited by I loved music, I loved art, I loved film, I loved fashion, I love any form of art. And, over time, I found that I myself had this kind of creative, artistic, energy within myself to express. So I ended up, becoming an artist as well. So, a exhibit up at City Hall in Orlando. I was the city's featured artist back in, gosh, in 20. You know, it's 2008, 2008 somewhere around there. I, I'm a pianist as well as I do, these live piano sound bath concerts where I'll play the piano for an hour and people lay down and meditate to these, kind of piano meditation concerts.

You know, they drop into their flow state, so to speak. You know, I wrote, graphic novel and Nikola Tesla called The Inventor, which is kind of my expression of, an inventor engineer kind of creative mind trying to bring their ideas into the world despite all odds and all, you know, hurdles. And it's really the story of how anybody who has an idea whether it's something business related, something mechanical, or the invention related, something creative or artistic, or even bringing a child into the world.

Creative Background and Early Career 3:34

How they could do that and that journey and all the all the things they have to go through to get there, and the mindset and persistence and perseverance that it takes to do it. So. So that book, was a graphic novel, so 152 pages of art and that, and that becoming a bestseller lost it, picked it up and and it was the first kind of large graphic novel autobiography of Nikola Tesla and his battle with Thomas Edison and how how he changed the world with the power of his mind, imagination. And, so that was kind of fun.

And yeah, and then a 2012, rolled around, we were actually looking to make a movie out of that, adapted to film, and I was working with, big studio on that. And right before we, we're ready. Center production deal. That studio, merged with another large studio, and everybody in the studio got fired. And people on the film side, so I didn't get to sign that deal soon enough, which just fine. I would have eventually got it done. Just would take a couple more months, to recycle that. But, but two weeks later, I got Lyme disease and got super sick, and, that's when I got to drop 30 pounds within a month.

Head blindness, bouts, cramps, anxiety. You know, had all sorts of muscle spasms. Just full on nervous system disorder. I couldn't sleep for more than 30 minutes at a time without my adrenals kicking in me and a fight or flight and waking me up every 30 minutes on the clock. I had gosh, that that was that was a physical stuff. And then all of a sudden the neurological stuff would kick in and excited panic attacks, depression, all the things I've never experienced before. And it happened pretty quickly.

It wasn't something that built up over time, and it was something that I would, I could definitely tell something was off of my body. It was, very much like I fell off a cliff. And, you know, because some people that have Lyme, it's something that they have chronic and just kind of builds up over time and they just identify with it as just, you know, kind of part of their sickness. But this was night and day for me. So, I spent, you know, three months going back and forth between, gosh, hospitals.

This is in LA. So it wasn't even in New York or where you would think you get was in Los Angeles, where I was living at the time. And I don't remember tick bite. Apparently 80% of patients don't remember tick bites. Not do have one. Right? So I don't remember how I got it or where I got it, but, I spent a lot of time going back and forth between specialists and doing lots of tests, a lot of blood work, a lot of different types of tests, and nothing really showed up significant. Three months to go back and forth between Cedars-Sinai hospital and, and, various doctors offices and specialists and, at the end, the final conclusion of the final person that saw me, was that, we think you have anxiety here.

Was prescribed some Prozac. Yeah. That is unfortunately a very common story in this staff. Yeah. And I can imagine I mean, I can imagine that's their catchall bucket excuse. If they can't figure it out, then it's got to be mental. And, this is how you keep you in the system. So, you know, and that's that wasn't that person's fall. That's just that's just how the machine this is what we did. We did that to people with multiple sclerosis 40, 50 years ago. So it's what we do if we don't understand, if we can't make a clear diagnosis.

Psychology is our answer, our fallback. Yeah. As a catch all bucket, so to speak. Yeah. Right. So so I at least I was aware enough that I knew that wasn't the issue and I didn't take the prescription, but, I didn't know what was. And this is, no idea what it was, but meanwhile, it's getting worse and worse, and it really wasn't until. So at that point, I was like, I don't think I'm going to survive 2012. So my last act on this planet was going to be to release this graphic novel that I thought was going to make a movie off of at least get it out there and get it published at Comic-Con.

And I had, yeah, I convinced a publisher at Comic-Con to let me, you know, release it through them, you know, at least do a book signing at Comic-Con, Comic-Con in San Diego, run, you know, early July every year, a big convention for comic books. And it's all things entertainment, movies, comics, music. It's about 120,000 people that show up there. So I, I went there to my book signing and had three days of book signings, and this is the first day I was too sick. The second day I was too nervous about all that stimulation of just crushed me.

And then the third day, my sister showed up and dragged me out of my hotel room and took me there. Said, you're going to regret this. You know, if you don't do this, I'm like, okay, so I went there and there's this long line of people waiting for me, a sign of a book like, wow, people actually cared about this book. So I was in there doing the book signing, and in about 20 minutes my body feels normal for the first time. You know, people are like expressing their gratitude or thanks for putting this piece of work or this art piece of art into the world.

And, I was like, wow, this is what it felt like to be healthy. It's been seven months at that point. This is July, and this started in January of 2012. And, about 40 minutes into the book signing, I felt high. I felt like I just went skydiving, had this adrenaline rush. Everything was vibrant. People looked beautiful again, life looked amazing. I was thinking myself like, wow, I really want to live. And maybe I could figure out what's happening here and hack this mystery illness to kind of get me, you know, dig myself out of this.

So give me hope. So that was the first thing that gave me hope and wow. And then that set me kind of in my mindset, sent me on this journey, this four year journey where I moved back to the to Florida. My family was spent the next three and a half to four years visiting, probably close to 40 or maybe more than 40 alternative health practitioners, scientists, technologists, anyone on the fringe, to learn how they looked at the mind body consciousness, how they treated you know what, what tools they use, what agents they used, you know, to diagnose and heal.

So I ended up getting certified in a lot of different, modalities, from Harry Reid, to kinesiology to non apathy to a bunch of things that people never heard of. Yeah. So a lot of cool technology devices, you know, from, voice profiling, to go to what microphones, you know, are other balance, scanning, you know, to see what I, you know, what little. Yeah, yeah. 90 movements, just little splotches in your eyes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, obviously eastern medicine and every bit of you

Lyme Disease and Medical Misdiagnosis 10:04

look at the tongue a lot, and we look at the face a lot. To see what wrinkles. You know, one wrinkle can tell you your liver is off, you know. So. So I mean, there are so many different expressions, that contain our entire system in it. Whether it's your fingernails or your tongue, your eyes, your sound, your voice, your blood, that there's so many ways to diagnose what's going on or what's out of balance that we hardly tap into that understanding of that holistic science. And I have zero expense, a bunch of different versions of it, which is kind of that.

No, that is something I just want to reinforce. Is that the plethora of of possibility for diagnosis and for healing that, that and I just urge people to always remember to not give up hope because just because we haven't found the answer doesn't mean that it's not there. It's just there's like you said, there are so many ways to dance with the body and understand it. So, I mean, just keep going. But I just want to really reinforce that because hope, from what you said in the beginning, hope is the key to triggering healing.

You know, there's there's there's, a very big universal truth in that statement because it was hope that opened me up to the potential of me healing myself. And, so what happened was every time I tried something and if it didn't work, I would actually look for something else to inspire hope in me, to keep me going. And that would keep my life force, my prana, my itchy up, and my you know, my energy up my interest up, my curiosity, to keep me going until something finally clicked. So it was just a matter of time, and I just needed the engine to keep myself going, motivated.

And hope was that engine. That was that motivational engine that kept me going long enough to, to until stuff start falling into place. And that's just if that was just a matter of time, you know, just like when you start a business or for running a startup. Yeah. The biggest factor is timing. And, I mean, you could get capital, you could get if you have the right idea, not the right team. But if you're if the timing is off, then none of that matters. And, if you have enough, runway until the timing does click, that's when people make, you know, the big wins. So.

So that was, you know, translated perfectly into that. So my big win was, you know, healing myself. And I just had to be around long enough for that discovery to come up. And we see this in science all the time. Right. You know, you can't do solve certain things. And then all of a sudden someone events some new technology or some new medication or some new, some new, you know, tool or diagnostic that allows you to do it. And that's, it's just a matter of time. So, so, yeah, so as I, as I started doing all these things and, you know, practicing these different modalities, kind of becoming a health practitioner myself, using these tools, modalities to experiment on myself.

One of the things that really struck a chord with me, I was talking to a friend who, wrote a book on how action adventure athletes called The Rise of Superman, if name student Caller, and wrote a book on how action adventure athletes do these superhuman things. They defy that. They break world records, and they do all this by tapping in a flow or getting in a flow state. Yeah. And, so we were talking on the phone once and we're kind of sharing each other's line journeys and, he and then we started talking about flow.

And the one thing he told me that really struck a chord was that, yeah. You know, when we did this research with athletes, we found that novel to use it as a trigger, a flow. And that really struck a chord with me because it was pretty much aligned with everything that's happening with me. Every time I try something new, I start to feel better. I was incrementally recovering, but then when the novelty were off, office went off my toe. So then I try something new again. Once again, I had hope. I kept re inspiring hope in myself.

Like consciously, you know, not accidentally and like the first time I accidentally when I was doing the book sign. But then I was like, hey, hope is my engine. So let me keep finding hope in things, possibilities and things. And then, every time I try something new again, I get better. And then when, when the when the, when the novelty rafted plateau. So realized that novelty was a was a part of this healing process. So I really got deep into how flow states work. Start experimenting a lot with it.

I tried all sorts of different things. And I discovered as the flow states, these peak performance moments where you get up here and you're up here for a minute, and then you come down, or an hour or however long you are wasn't really was looking for it because I kept dropping down to this very low baseline. And what I was really interested is getting my fundamental baseline of my state of flow, so to speak, versus my flow state, my, my persistent state of flow. And, so I discovered a whole lot, a whole bunch of other things and parameters around what gets her baseline up, which really gave me a much larger framework in understanding what flow even is.

I mean, we know, like some of the mechanics, you know, what neurotransmitters get triggered, you know, you know, whether it's dopamine, epinephrine, or epinephrine, your anatomy, you know, the things that create focus and what creates the mechanical parts, you know, the results of being in a flow state. But where does it even come from? Like, you know, we know how to trigger, you know, how you can shift in a perceptual state and hyper present, you know, we know, you know, the challenge of skill ratio.

If, you know, if you're if you have a slightly harder challenge than you're still ratio, that could enable you to get into flow state. But really what I discover is flow is finding a way. It's a rhythm, right. And writing that way of writing that rhythm as long as you can until something triggers you out of it. But all of that still, you know, to me it was like, what really is this? And to me, I concluded that flow is just life force. It's really accessing life force. And you could do that in a number of ways by getting hyper present, you could do it.

It's all tapping into that way, because even life force, everything moves and oscillates, right? Yeah. But, you know, that's what I want to say, is that I'd love you to focus a little bit more on that, because one of the things it's very difficult for people when they get very ill is their energy is low and their brains aren't working well. So they, you know, the so when you when you're talking about flow initially they're all think of it. Oh my God I can never go there. But yet what you are now beginning to talk about is something that might be accessible to anyone.

Because what difficult is, is like, I always like to say is like, no, it's hard to learn how to swim when you're drowning. Yeah. And many people, when you're chronically ill, you feel like you're, you know, wants you to do anything. It is so much effort. So I would that just tell me more about the connection that you see? Yeah, that's a really, really good point because Hope was the first thing that got me. It's really a state of mind is the mindset. Right. So it's all perceptual. And and it was it started with hope.

But then it gave me more energy. Yeah. It's like a you know, in business we say it takes money to make money, right? If you don't have to happen, you can't make it. Yeah. You know, not all cases, but that's the. That's the pretty good rule of thumb. Yeah, pretty good rule. Thumb in the same degree. It takes slow to get slow. You know, it takes energy to to heart to create more energy. It takes, you know, life force to get more life or so if you don't have enough, then you need to harness what you have until it builds up to a point where you could actually take bigger steps to get more life for. So.

So for me, what I discovered was this there's five layers to how we access life works. I kind of set up the framework because I'll answer your question a little bit more clearly. The first is your first layer is your body, your physical body. And this is where all the biochemical reactions, the matter, you know, the physical dense matter, part of, the system resides. It's also the most dense part of the system. And, yeah, this is what we study the most, right? In medicine is the biological, physical body and how those kind of chemical reactions take place and what it triggers.

And, you know, that's what this the books and stuff that we seen primarily on recent books on flow states or us is what mechanisms are are created within the body to either either tap into or keep us in that state. Well, then there's a second layer, which was what I call the energetic body. This is where your meridians are is what they referred to in eastern medicine or you're not is and are you better also your chakras. So this is where all the kind of the energy, channels exist which powers the physical body.

Finding Hope Through Comic-Con 18:38

So if, if you don't have a, if you have a specific block and a meridian, then there's not enough flow going or life force going on here. Therefore that part of the physical body is going to get weaker. And then it invites, you know, various pathogens or other biofuel, toxins or inflammatory triggers to come in and weaken that part of the body. So, so that's the secularism meridians that are the energy supply. The third layer is a mental emotional body. So this is the body where fear and trust are your two anchor.

So if you're in a fear state, then all these negative emotions that I say are rooted in fear, will express themselves and then create a meridian block, which will then translate to some kind of biological impact. And if you're in a trust state, you're opening yourself up to more flow. Then you're accessing the flow, which means there'll be more flow or flowing through your body, which will push off any of these physical toxins or inflammatory triggers. You know, taxing your system, so to speak, your nervous system so that fear, trust, mental, emotional body, you know, which is really based on fear and trust, fear constrains your ability to access more life force.

And trust opens your channels to access more lifeforce or flow. So that plays a big role in the layer of above. That is what I call your perceptual body. This is where your belief systems exist. This is your programing. A lot of it from childhood. Right. So yeah, if you have a belief system or you're programing that creates the emotions and a lot of cases without you realizing it, that determines that steers you, right, or steers your your day to day feelings and thoughts. So that's a, you know, a bigger body.

So each one is getting bigger but less dense. Right. So yeah, the dense is a physical. The less dense they're energetic and the less dense or mental emotional that less dense or perceptual. And then this last layer is what I call this layer universal truth. This is where all truth exists and also where all flow exists. All life forms infinite ocean of flow and then what happens is, if you have a belief system misaligned with one of these universal truths, you get less flow. And then that generates a fear based emotion which creates less flow, and then that creates a meridian block which creates less flow.

And then your body gets drop, only drops the flow down that channel from this ocean from which your physical body now has, you know, pathogens, heavy metals, chemicals, food allergies, these physical inflammatory triggers or stressor that would block your flow even more. So in my case, my had Lyme had have, you know, had bacteria parasites all send that created inflammation which made me sense that the chemicals heavy metals foods and that kept cycling on itself. So what I had to do at first was reclaim the flow I already had before I got on.

And that was through diet lifestyle. That was through supplements and detoxing. You know, some of these protocols like, using created to help me detox the inflammatory triggers on my system so I could stabilize. And then once I stabilized, it was, how do I open up a channel to get more flow from up here, from that fifth layer down? And that's when I started looking at my triggers. Like every time I had an emotional trigger of some kind, I would stop and say, why am I feeling that way? At first, I recognize it's my responsibility.

It's always me. It was not somebody else, right? So it was something within me that was misaligned. And then I backward engineer it, you know, in a manner of speaking, to figure out where it came from. So I first say, okay, I'm feeling some kind of discomfort. So that's me. What am I feeling? And I'd start asking myself, why am I feeling that? What and why? Essentially, until I figure out what the story was, I had a story. Well, where that story comes from, and then that I'd regress myself to a point of where I get to the point of origin of that story with, which is where that belief system was set in that fourth layer.

And once I could get enough information around that story, it would just essentially numb or dissolve the chart emotional charge around what that was triggering. And I would get this moment, this perceptual I get it. Oh my God, that's what it was. And that's when I would say I pop a to follow. So it's in this fifth layer of the universal truth layer, all these universal truths we're here to experience as humans are trapped in these bubbles, and each bubble has a certain amount of flow in it. And every time you get a ha moment, you pop that bubble and all that flow goes down to your baseline and increases your baseline flow level of flow per system permanently.

So if you experience all the truths, say that let's assume they're 6000 universal truths just to put a number around it. Take it. Yeah. Comprehensible. If you experience all of them, you pretty much have achieved enlightenment and you exit this matrix, so to speak. And otherwise, the more you experience, the more flow you have, the more you can access and experience more. So it takes flow to get flow. And what I ended up doing was systematically finding my triggers backward, you know, regressing myself to figure out where they came from, having these perceptual shifts is, ahem, I was popping the street that was increasing my baseline of flow and doing that over and over again until my immune system actually had enough flow to put myself until I became asymptomatic, essentially because my system became higher than mine.

I mean, we can't put a self on top of it so it can manage it better versus ly overwhelming my immune system. So it was really through this process. I mean, obviously I continue to detox and do the stuff I could on the physical level, but the thing that pushed me over the edge was that, yeah. And I can tell you how, what are those things I did essentially. That's kind of that's kind of an interesting bounce, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, no, that, that that's important. What I want to point out to people is that the the dance is often personal in the sense that what works for one of us can guide, but it does.

Exploring Healing Modalities 24:18

It's not necessarily going to be the same because we, you know, we just hear differently and we move differently, to information and our belief systems are much different. You know, just like our immune systems are much different. I mean, that that I think is what people have to understand is that chronic illness. And I think I probably say this every time each one of these episodes is this phrase will come in. There is chronic illness is a disease of you. It's your individuality that is being expressed.

Acute illness is usually has a lot to do with the trigger of the event, but once it becomes chronic, once it's with you for six months, eight months, a year. Now we're dealing with the dance that your immune, your physical, energetic, you know, you know, emotional perceptual body. That's the story that it has making, you know, and that's where the work really is. You know, healers, doctors we can guide. But it's that internal thing that's really going to bring you to health. And, and that's the beauty of the work that you are teaching us today is that, it's restoring that individual responsibility in a, in a very open manner.

You know, it's a really that's the part that I'm really hearing from you is that there's not one way to do this. It's just. But awareness and following that is really important. But so so what are the steps that you did though with that, with that caveat in mind, how can I. Yeah, I mean, so I guess what I was showing was kind of the like a framework of the mechanics of what happens, you know, between, these layers and how you engage each of those layers. You know, it's very novel and custom to the person.

Right? So for me, for example, you know, for me to tap into flow, I play the piano. And, you know, the more I play the piano, the better I felt, because it was it was bringing me present. It was, you know, something about the music and just kind of not having, you know, there's a lot of more nuances and the framework outside of it not having expectations, not, you know, allowing yourself to just kind of be open and free, you know, freedom. Is there these things that, trigger what I call, a more persistent state of flow versus acute standpoint, like, you know, the flow state, the peak performance allows for more persistence.

Curiosity is one of those things, you know, being present, but you can't be present all the time. But you could be curious. You can be compassionate, selfless acts, humility, gratitude, like those things are actually more permanent triggers of love. So when I was playing the piano, I just sit there and just play. No expectations. No, you know, no one to please. I was just grateful that I had fingers and, you know, keys to strike. And, And I would just feel better. So the more I did that, I realized, wow.

Maybe, there's something around music. At least for me, it was music that, could help me get better. So I started. I put a show together to experiment with this, that put a show together called flow, which was like yoga mixed with circus, led to my piano concert. So I pulled a cast together of like 14 aerialists, acrobats, dancers, musicians, singers, and composed a show that turned yoga into a performance art. It's like a 90 minute Off-Broadway show. It was that we performed at Performing Arts Center at a very Cirque like flair to it.

And, it's a totally new concept. And mind you, I've never done a performance like that, never put a show together like that, especially for ticketed audience in a public venue, like a, you know, like their line up performing arts center. So it was all novel for me. But the analogy of a feeling, I was like, oh, this is cool. This I, you know, there's also a lot of nerves. There's like, oh my God, what if I just find a bunch of people? But you know, when you're in the flow, you don't think about that.

You're super present. So within about two and half months, we went from composing an entire 90 minute new set of, you know, compositions that we would perform to train. Pretty much. There's only a we want to experience performers, everyone else, and it's kind of new. So random choreographed them. So it was a fully novel express not just for me, but for everybody for the most part. And we did. Our first performance is sold out. And I mean, it was ahead and we had two standing ovations. It was just something that was like totally unexpected.

I remember feeling so full, while we were doing our final bow, like not knowing what to do or something like this, something I never imagined would happen. And, came off of that. It was the first time I could meditate because my brain settled for the first time. Has so much lifeforce flow through me that it's stabilized my entire body where I could actually meditate, because before I could meditate anymore, because that soft tissue in my brain was just going haywire, it actually it many times it sent me it would like, send me in the opposite direction for me in a downward spiral into anxiety and depression if I meditated too long.

So I had to use other methods like sound to help relax my brain or, you know, or focus like have to focus on a task to get so present. But sitting like a seed to meditation wasn't helpful. So, so yeah. So then I did a sit and we did a three month run of this. And by the end of that three month run, I remember the final bow, November 7th in 2015. That's when I realized I was asymptomatic for a month, and, I didn't have any more symptoms. And that's why I moved back to the West Coast to continue where I left off in life.

But in that process, you know, I found that that music, like the playing, the music, and I improvised half of the shows in terms of the music. And the other half was framed, you know, for the performers to know what the keys were. But, bring the audience into the flow, because what I did is I'd have them do these exercises with me before we started, have them breathe with me so we're synchronized and have them do a giant element of theta with me. So to harmonize, I'd have them close their eyes and meditate for a minute.

And so they're all present. And that created this connection. And then that connection fueled my improvization and kind of fueled my composition or informed it. And then that informed the performers and the performers were received by the audience. And we create a group flow dynamic that way. In, in that setting, in a, you know, a live show performance format. And that was really cool that that feedback loop was amplifying the amount of lifeforce, the amount of applause and receiving. Yeah. And that's what I think accelerated my recovery, within what, what I find so intriguing about that.

Flow States and the Five Layers of Healing 30:48

And, and I think it has something to I mean, it has a lot to do with who you are as a being, but also as some of this process is that, you know, because we see so many people, you know, you think of so many actors and comedians who need that moment but can't really eat it, you know, I mean, like, they it's like chocolate to them rather than sustaining food, if you know what I'm saying. Like they go out there, they perform, they feel alive and well. But as soon as the applause stops, oh, God. Pulled out of clips, it's fraction of a moment here.

The technical difficulties. But but and flow, you know, we just want to we don't want to, have the power go off, in the middle. Okay. So to be a little. Okay. But, you know, but but that's saying that that's what really intrigues me is that you. And from the first time I heard your story is that you were able to eat this as real nourishment rather than as just, ego enhancement or or or reducing the pain transiently. And do you have any insight into that? I mean, have you ever thought about that versus, you know, because I'm sure you've seen lots of performers who are in that state.

They live for the moment, they're on stage, and then they're kind of half dead afterwards. And that's where I think a lot of the alcoholism and drug abuse comes in the performing industry, because they somehow they don't sustain it. They don't let it feed them. Right? No, no. You're right. So I mean, the digestibility, of access in tapping into flow and absorbing it and, you know, like digesting that flow. So it actually has a persistent effect on the physiology and your body, your mind and spirit.

You know, that has a lot to do with that third layer, that mental emotional layer. Right? So the mental emotional layers that you're in trust layer. So with me because this wasn't my line of business. This is something novel and new and kind of like a fun, playful project that I was experimenting with. It wasn't I wasn't basing my livelihood or my identity on this thing. It was purely experimental. It allowed me to stay present and just enjoy, like I'm playing in a sandbox. And, you know, when kids play, they're usually present.

And when they leave the playground, you know, they're they're doing something else, but their identity has nothing to do. They're not thinking about what they were doing on the playground or just moved on to the next thing where a lot of the performer people are in the performance industry, in the film industry, in the entertainment industry, you know, there's a lot of, expectations set around how this defines them. Like, this is my identity, and if this doesn't work or I don't get received well or, you know, whatnot, then my being a resultantly is less, you know, there's some correlation to their, their being which they correlate to their identity, which they correlate to their work.

And, you know, that's not true in just entertainment. That's true. And anyone that has fun, you know, performers or what, you know, and yeah, whatever the the close coupling of an identity to the work ends up triggering, triggering these expectations and attachments that are counterproductive. So it constricts the flow. I mean, I feel like in the body it's like you have a corset on instead of having an open system. Right. It's very. Yeah, that. Thank you. That that's a very, I hadn't thought of it that way, but that makes perfect sense.

Yeah. Too much identification. Yeah. I'll expand on that a little bit because it's interesting. I spent 15 years researching fear. One of the things that came up with. So when I researched fear, I jump out of planes from sharks and do all these crazy things just to understand the difference in what I was thinking and how I felt when I was safe compared to when I felt like when I was in danger and I identify these three pillars of fear. The first is time. So I found that if I'm, you know, fear always exists in the future is what if this happens?

What if that happens? A lot of times it's triggered by the past, but always experiencing the present, right. So I found if I brought myself present, then that first pillar of fear, will go away. There's no room for fear. It exists. If you're present. Right. The second pillar sounds like if you. If you. But you can't always be in the present. You got a plan for the future. You got to do things sometimes and put yourself in the future. And it's fun to be in the future sometimes. So if you're out of the present, then the next pillar was attachment.

And I found that, you know, there we have attachments to things, whether it's a person, place, thing, object, ideal, you know, or some future version of ourselves. And if we have, you know, the attachments, not the problem. You know, we need attachments. Those are essential relationships. And we need relationships to grow those the feedback loops that help us identify and understand and grow. But the nature of the attachment was, various. Right. So you can have a very rigid attachment, like connecting you rigidly to this, in this case, your identity or this version of your identity.

And you could have, you know, there's stresses on both of you and this, attachment that forces in life push and pull. And you got you and this object that your attachment and creates stressing that being. And then if there's enough opposite forces, they'll snap that beam, you know, slingshot away from each other. And then it was a miserable experience because the whole thing was stressful, where if you shift that attachment to what I call, orbital attachment, where you use gravity to keep these things in your orbit, and, and, you know, if these fly forces push on you, they'll just move you around each other's orbit.

There's no stress in the system. And the the difference between the two is letting go, essentially. So instead of when I'm in a rigid attachment focusing on the object of what I want that to look like, be how I want to perform it relative to me. But if I reverse that, I let go of that focus on me, what I want to be, what I want to become or not, or my growth, my own growth, you know, things that make me joyful and happy. Then the right things will gravitate in, and the wrong things will be the way.

And everything will just stay in a natural state based on your own resonance and, without any effort. So it's completely effortless, completely flexible. So just that mindset shift of letting go. So, you know, it's not just so I like what you were saying. So it's really focusing on the the blessing of your own joy. You know that that's something that again, that's not really how we often think of things in this culture. You know, we all can think some things how we're going to make somebody else happy.

How we're going to do the right thing. And it's almost like we don't trust that we can depend, that our own joy is okay. Exactly. Right. And, you know, when you're enjoying your present joy, but by actual definition is presence, right? So so when you're experiencing joy, your present. And for it goes to the first pillar, you get rid of the first pillar. But yeah, that's exactly right. Pleasure and joy, you know, are the ultimate experiences of presence and, ultimate expressions of presence. Right. And then it also it makes you feel more connected.

And another word for flow. But when I think of flow is connection, it's feeling connected. Right. And that happens when you feel present. And then the third pillar is kind of, is attachment to specific outcomes a very special case? But attachment, this was of outcome which we call expectation. Right. So we have this like formed idea of what we want, this goal somehow this goal to manifest. You know, it's like I want to be the number one comedian in the world or, you know, you know, in the context of entertainment, you know, I want, to sell out this, you know, the state or, you know, we have these expectations, but these expectations are based on these goals, and the goals are based on intentions.

And if you don't have alignment between the intention, that goal and the expectations will always be off. But even if you have an expectation, what you need, you need some kind of something to anchor and pull you for it propel you towards something. But what I found is if I shifted my expectation to a preference, it opened me up to so much more energy because if I had an expectation, I didn't meet it. There's no real joy that that's gained because you expected it. But if you didn't, there's a lot of disappointment. It's only doubt.

There's mostly downside, right? But if I shifted into a preference, it's just a subtle mindset shift. I prefer this outcome, but I'm open to other outcomes. Then if you achieve it, there's a lot more joy, which then brings you back to presence. And if you don't achieve it, it's not the end of the world. There's still other ways that the universe and other things that could enter the system to still serve that goal, or even more importantly, serve that intention that you just have a thought and that that allows the serendipity of life to be in.

You can be more interactive with whatever is being presented to you, right? Yeah, because you'll actually have the space to notice that something different has happened. Exactly. That's what I did. Get it. And that's all you can think of, right? That's exactly right. And I think they all move around because then that once again brings you to being present. Right? So you're so it's all connected. If you take down any one of the three pillars, fear goes away. If you take it away fear, you stop constraining your flow.

You move into a state of trust so that it opens you up to more flow. So fear was the number one thing I found that was the biggest blow by force constraint. And anything that moves you out of these fear states or expressions of fear of others, jealousy, anger, you know, sadness, depression, any any of these, any negative emotion, that's, you know, essentially all negative emotions written fear. So any negative emotion, if you move from there to a state of trust, which are all positive emotions like graduates ability, courage, joy, happiness, hope, you know, those are, those are expansive emotions that expand your pipeline to access more flow

Music, Presence, and Recovery 40:48

and then the fear and constraining emotions that constrain your pipeline access my flow. So it goes back to perceptual. It's always perceptual. And it's just again, an interesting thing is how, many people, who I know who are very, you know, well, very aware of the energetic levels feel that and we see this actually, that the bugs, you know, the different from mycotoxins, which really isn't alive but has, that is a messenger or something that was alive and, you know, babka, Bartonella line. They actually produce emotional states in us that aren't ours.

Right. And when you're ill, that over identification with that state keeps you absolutely locked down. And it doesn't allow to enter this to be even. Imagine that you can enter any, any expanded state. And you know so and it's not even yours because yours. I mean, I just love this concept, you know, yours is the opportunity. Gratitude and joy is something that we should be able to accept. We should so that we can access it any moment, if exactly if it's if we can put down our stories, but not so easy when we're suffering.

I mean, to be fair, that's why I say that's what these are wonderful things. But, you know, when you're drowning in the midst of your pain, it takes a lot of will, I think I would imagine, to be, or something. Something. Yes. To transform. I'll say what happens, what I've noticed. And you're 100% right. It's, What I think there's an there's a universal mechanism that's built into us that it takes letting go and surrendering. Right? And, okay, your body, the universe. So somehow we can use so much to the point where you have no choice left but to let go and surrender, and then your body can regenerate.

Because for me, I had such big ambitions, had so much energy, so much flow has so many ideas. I had a very specific identity. I was trying to. My identity goal was so big and unending. It was something I would never be. Should be perpetually. It's never enough for me. I was just. There's this big identity hole that I was trying. That this boy that I was trying to fill. And I was doing so many things successfully. But unless I hit a brick wall and fell to a point where I had no more energy to hold on to that ambition, I would never seen what it was.

And it was essentially this perpetual mouse wheel going. Running there. Running for sure would have eaten the applause exactly. But once again, I was basically running a standstill. And when I when I hit that brick wall, it forced me to let go of everything. And that's when everything became clear and it realign me. It allowed me to grow at a much, you know, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually at a much higher state than I could have ever done if I continue to be healthy in that state.

So I think surrender and letting go is letting go is an act of surrender. And, that's ultimately where we all need. Which then leads us to humility and gratitude. Right? And then gratitude is the highest expression of one of the highest expressions of trust. Yeah. You know what? This this reminds me, I, I, I always say, and I think I have failed that I, I want to I want to learn from the finger of the Lord rather than the two by four. And, yeah, unfortunately, most of us require the two by four.

That's why I think people always talk about the incredible regenerative nature of of loss and illness. You know, though, none of us want that. We want to get it. I would much rather attain this by listening to what you're saying and acting on it in the light and having to go through, that, that dark night. I mean, it truly is a dark night of the soul. But what you have to go through and with people who have chronic illness have to go through. But what's wonderful is to see that how well you've laid out the path.

Because you I love this because it's a it's accessible. Yeah. You know, when you say that, it's interesting. What I've found is people learn through two methods. Most things in the world are are binary because of this dual duality system that we live in, right. So you either learn through pain or you learn through awareness. And it's sometimes it takes enough pain to develop awareness, but once you get enough awareness, you can start leveraging awareness and gain more awareness without the pain.

But yeah, ever since we're, you know, a baby, right? Until we hit a wall or fall on a ground, we know not to do that again because we had the pain feedback loop. Right. But you don't have to use pain for eternity. You just you. Sometimes we need enough pain to create boundaries that we could then expand from. And then awareness is what expands our boundaries. So you just need a starting point. And that's what that's where the pain, that feedback loop of pain is. Right. And and just getting more, more aware.

I mean that awareness is the thing because, you know, that way you don't have to, you know, like, please touch the stove. You just get close. You feel the heat. Exactly. You the awareness. That's the awareness. Yes. But you but you knew at some point that if you touch the stove, something must burn you to know not to touch the stove, to show that reaction. That's why kids do touch eat everything just to know how it makes them feel. So they discover their boundaries. But at some point when you've done it, you now the awareness will tell you don't do that again or do it differently.

Right? So what do we do? Hopefully do it differently. But so I just going back to the flow of the music, I mean because the very you music seem to have been, you know that. I don't know if that was a magic, but the that strongest that that really strong piece of this. How do you see that flow going through going to your life? I mean, with something with music very important to you when you were younger? Yeah, that's a good question. So what I did is after I did my live stage show, you know, the one that had a cast of 14 people and we had these big performing performing arts center gigs and, and we had a audiences that would observe and enjoy the show.

It was an external stimulation, you know, for the audience. I realized that I couldn't really carry that, that cast everywhere I wanted to at every time I felt like I wanted to play. So yeah, because there's a big management. After you had a book, you got a permit tour, you got it. So you got to your elbow. You got to make sure everyone else is available. Unless you're on a tour with a committed, you know, crew. But this is this wasn't this was these people have day jobs. Somebody somewhere, lawyer somewhere, or yoga teacher or somewhere.

Yeah. It was, you know, this was something we did together as something that'd be fun, you know, creative. So I ended up doing was inverting my, my, show. And I call that flow the experience, which was where I do these piano sound bars where it's only me. I would show up, do performances here in San Francisco, at Grace Cathedral and all around the country, and then bunch of international shows as well, where I show up a play for about 45 minutes to an hour. People laid out around my piano, and then they just drop into a meditative flow state during that time, like almost like an extension of us in the yoga to my music. And I improvise every shows.

I never knew what I was playing until I sat at the piano. I felt the energy of everybody around me and then their dropping in was my feedback loop for me to drop in a flow, because for me to play and improvise of that long of a set, I had to be hyper present the entire time. And so that was my mechanism to continue to heal and also now express and use music as a medium of my energy to help heal others. And the information, the feedback I get that I would receive after a lot of these concerts, would be, you know, tend to be a one of four buckets, one of those, they got the deepest sleep they've ever had.

And these are people that can't sleep. So I finally got to the point where they got to get a deep sleep. Another bucket was, wow. I felt like I was I was, dancing across a cosmos like, you're on some psychedelic or brought them back to some psychedelic experience they may have had in the past, you know, or some memory or some, like, you know, someone told me their cat passed away. They relive their entire life with their cat. Or that time. Yeah. Or, you know, so, you know, the third bucket would be this emotional trauma release that a person told me that they realized that they just let go of 15 years of trauma from their father passing away, through that experience, and that this fourth bucket is some physiological change shift or pain going away or symptoms going away from some disease.

So remember a woman that had a shoulder surgery and the pain was so intense, that that was the first time after the sound out that she left in Philippines from that shoulder anymore. And I've had people come to me say, hey, I've had this disease or symptom or whatever for, you know, ten years or so and for the first time it's gone, you know, so a whole variety of physical illnesses, ailments and, you know, diseases all relieve themselves or release itself. It was interesting to hear all these stories.

And I found the correlation was, they were just accessing so much flow that is moving and pushing things around their body in their minds that a lot of flesh, a lot of things out that were stuck, doing that together exponentially. It was a compounding effect for everybody to drop in and, and feel it, you know, feed off each other's energy to drop in deeper. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, what's that like in the Gnostic gospels? You know, 2 or 3 or more gathered in my day, you know, I mean, just, it's.

Yeah. And I mean, you know, I think. Yeah, you know, that's why people go to sports events and concerts and, but, you know, but but those are, I'm not eight, you know, I mean, like, they're big energy, but they don't necessarily move us, in, in the direction of health. They just it's a little bit like the stand up comic. He gets the applause and it feels really good in the moment, but it doesn't necessarily feed the body, you know. Yeah. And what sounds like what you what, but your ability to tune in to just the just presence is helping engender that and, and train that in the rest of the people.

I mean and it's so cool that feedback loop. I mean, I'm sure you've noticed that depending on where you were, your energy was was different. Oh, yeah. And it's different every time. And what I've noticed is what I'm really enabling people to do, to

Fear, Attachment, and Letting Go 51:38

do is going back to what you were talking earlier is to let go. I'm using the music to help them like a because the first 10 minutes or 15 minutes, they're probably still thinking and, you know, doing things. But at some point the music takes over to the point where they just all sudden drop everything and they're now just gone. It's all it's like. It's all like, you know, doing plant medicine, you know, experiences, where at some point you don't have the energy to continue to analyze and they you to stop and then your mind stops, then everything drop, and now you drop in that when that's when, when you let go is when all the magic happens.

Right? It's that's that's the surrender is when your body allows itself to shift and reorganize itself to do its most optimal state, you know, give them out that frontal, that frontal cortex stops being, you know, conversation with what you call your limbic system. And that's the thing, you know, how are you going to be smarter at survival? Right. Exactly. Instead of exactly being being being is, you know, I, I have to say, I guess there's something about our culture. And, you know, I never certain certain is a culture or toxin load that's may just be so hard, you know, in this at this time, in, in our, in our universe or in our world, in America, I'll, you know, I will say both.

I will say, but what's the feedback loop for the other? Right. You know, I think the, I mean, culture is I mean, they're they're two sides of the same coin, right? The, they're not toxins, but just just the, the the things we develop. Toxins are a result of human progress the way we perceive it. Right? So if we, you know, we need to, like, create more food, then we genetically modified them. And now you have pesticides that are bathing our system for the idea of helping the greater good, so to speak.

But that doesn't always work. Yeah. In fact, it does the opposite a lot of cases. So, so human development and growth of this, you know, human race and species has side effects. And these side effects are toxins and then the toxins and and that human growth or that species development reinforce, reinforce culture. You know. So the opposite of is like sting, you know, as indigenous people, you know, would not scale as well. Right. So there's some balance between the some balance between the two and making sure we're in alignment with nature and natural systems while we can still continue to grow and expand our potential as a species, you know, we we want be, you know, landing rockets, you know, like space-x does, you know, and going to the Mars whatever.

If we stayed indigenous, but we could also not go all the way the other side and just assume that, oh, any kind of technology is going to benefit humanity. That's not true either. Oh, yes. Yeah. No, I think the balance tech, the technological fix, I mean, because that, that, that is really the curse of our lives is that so many people, especially in my generation, really think that we can fix anything, you know, and, No. You know, I mean, we, we are, we, I think we're coming up to the limits of what we can, you know, we can do workarounds, but if we absolutely forget that we, we live that what makes us, makes us joyful and alive is connection.

Then we don't. Then we have to keep going back to connection and not just fixing, because fixing is linear, you know? I mean, we're great engineers. That's how, it's funny how well our minds adapt to the engineering model of life, but, you know, but again, but indigenous people tend to tend to live in a much more, rhythmic, sense of life. And somehow the engineering part is, seems to just have become so dominant that, I mean, that's that's where my brain is stuff most of the time, you know, you come in, I want to fix it rather than see where it can be held.

You know, I guess that's what that's what women always complain is that most men want to just fix problems rather than just listen. Yeah. And, listening, listening is fixing, you know, heart centered listening is hard. One. That's a hard lesson for those of us who just want to. But that's just for I agree. That's because we're trained that way from our educational institutions, right? We're trained to fix things, to solve problems. Yeah. We're not trained to be. Yeah. We're not. You know, if you go back to the technology argument, you know, I'm a big fan of both sides, indigenous and nature based, you know, civilizations as well as advanced civilizations.

You know, but it's a it's a matter of technology. But I would say that, you know, being a fan of advancing technology, I'd say the what's missed those and most advanced technology that exist on this planet is our human bodies and minds. And, this thing that this vehicle that we're possessing and, and running around, it is far more advanced than anything we've ever created or will be able to create in the next, you know, set of centuries or millennia. So if we start ignoring this thing, this technology that's already has all the built in sensors and, feedback loops in there, then we're missing the boat here.

We're thinking we're enhancing this. We're in fact, this this the machine can already do so much that we haven't even tapped into yet. Yeah, yeah. But that that that's where we get stuck because we forget what we can do scientifically is we can be scientific and very good at it if it's something we create. Yeah. But when something that is in nature, the best we get are interesting stories about how it works. I mean, that that is that, you know, as you experienced when you did your journey going through all the various healing modalities, each one has a beautiful story attached to it, as does, you know, Western conventional medicine.

We have a story. The thing is, there are stories. There are best approximations. And we if we hold them gently, we can use them. But when we get rigid in think, it's like building a bridge. Yeah. We don't do so well. And, you know, but it just keeps coming back down to honor the physical body. But, you know, remember the music, you know, because we we just don't do that now. I mean, really, the first thing that goes in school is art, music education. Waste of time. Yeah. And it's just about journey is a great example of how this is what it means to be alive.

You know, it's our creative natures. Yeah, yeah. That's it. That's the culture we should be nurturing is the creative potential of us. And, you know, even bridges are designed to have flexibility. Otherwise they don't work. Yeah. Coming from somebody that builds bridges like you have to design, you know, different anchor points to make sure that whole bridge has flexibility

Closing Thoughts and Resources 58:48

because there's so many different forces pushing on in all directions. So, inflexible bridge breaks and flexible bridges state. So yeah, flexibility is you know, it goes back to that attachment Secretary attachment going from rigid to orbital flexible. You know, that's important. And all things and all things. Yeah. And I have to be careful because I was about to enter into the worlds of politics. But I'm not going there okay. I well so I mean, other two hours. Yeah. No. And maybe not for this one, but I would just wrap it up with, I mean, I just want to hear a little bit more.

How can people learn more about what you what you have done and how you look at the world and heal? Yeah, it's a good question because I haven't formally put myself out there as a platform around this. I've helped people. I've been approached by people. You know, my I'll just say my Twitter is my Instagram and my Facebook are all at rave, meta or rave media. They matter. You messaged me at any one of those platforms? I am writing a book on this. On all of this. Trilogy. In fact, from Fear to flow to perception.

So that is in the works. My piano sound bats. I do, you know, that's also what's going to find me on Facebook. And yeah, those are some of them are available and really, really worth listening to. Yes. Yeah, yeah, they're on SoundCloud. They're on I recently became a teacher for Insight Timer. So some of my sound bites are on the the meditation app called Insight Timer. So you can find some of them there, but I, I'm actually actually now working towards organizing this into something more formal and, accessible and hopefully helpful to a large audience.

So that's my goal for this year after Covid. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think hopefully for today, I think this is just an inspiration for people to most importantly, never give up hope. I know it's it's so hard. And, you know, one thing that I just want to throw in there, one of the most difficult things, especially in after this year of Covid, year, half of Covid now, is I just want to honor is how difficult it is for people with limited financial resources because one of of, you know, because everything that people try outside of their of their own selves, right? Yes.

I guess this is this is probably be the limiting message of hope is that there still is that place in inner quiet and listening to music, and finding that inner in quiet inquiry, you know, I mean, just isn't true. I mean, who was I am blocking on that nice. Author who wrote that wonderful book. Is it true? You know, just when you're doing that self inquiry and, like, you know, you get lost in the anger and the blame and the and really, is it true, you know, how much is just we've all contributed and forgiveness.

And so I said, even if you can't afford the next greatest, best therapy, going back in words and listening to what you've been saying today, I think is is a great start. And and who knows, might be the source of your healing. You know, better than the next, ID therapy. Thank you for that. Thanks. Thank you. And, yeah, I think the last thing I would say is, you know, let's say hope is your bridge to healing. And, and ultimately, when you heal, the thing that happens is to heal. You just have to let go.

Surrender. And what are you letting go of? Fear, doubt and judgment. Yes. Well, I thank you that that that works for all of us, whether we're fighting chronic disease or just living life. Yeah. So. Exactly. Thank you. That's the thing. Give us a lot. Okay. All right. Thank you. All right, you two, thank you very much. For.