August 22, 2019

https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/lifestyle-podcasts/drew-canole/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:00:46] Guest Introduction

[00:02:14] Podcast Sponsors

[00:05:42] A Man's Castle and Roots

[00:09:25] A Day in The Life of Drew Canole

[00:15:55] Talking About Massages

[00:19:45] The Importance of Fellowship with Like-Minded People

[00:27:01] Drew's Workout Practices and Regimens

[00:29:01] Podcast Sponsors

[00:32:07] cont. Drew's Workout Practices and Regimens

[00:37:30] Not Having CEO Offices

[00:41:15] How to Cope with Traumatic Experiences

[00:44:25] The Power of Water

[00:51:01] Drew's Love of Music and Creative Activities

[00:55:31] About Drew's Garden

[00:59:24] Technologies and Biohacks Drew Is Experimenting With

[01:04:12] How Drew Gets the Best Possible Sleep

[01:09:58] Takeaway from this Drew Canole Interview

[01:12:54] End of Podcast

Ben:  On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast.

Drew:  I'm trying to jump up. I'm trying to conjure up as much life force as possible so that by the time my feet hit the ground, it's like, “I'm alive.” But what you really need is those deep, vulnerable, man-to-man conversations that only the guys talk about. A gazelle gets attacked by a cheetah. Cheetah drags it in the forest. All of a sudden, it's holding onto the gazelle's neck. For that brief moment, while the cheetah goes off and gets her cubs, the gazelle is still laying there. What happens next is very interesting.

Ben:  Health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show.

Check, check, one, two, mic check one, two. Oh, hey. Sorry, I didn't see that you were already listening. That was my behind-the-scenes mic check. It's very, very technical, very advanced. It involves me saying words like that to make me feel official.

Hey, Ben Greenfield here, and there is an episode that I'm pretty stoked to get out to you today. It's with my buddy, Drew Canole. This guy is deep. He's much, much deeper than perhaps the videos you may have seen of him on FitLife.tv pulverizing kale. He goes way beyond that. Drew goes way beyond that. The dude, and I'm not kidding you, has even appeared to me in my dreams, and he is able to direct himself into people's dreams. He is extremely well-versed in all manners of spirituality, plant medicine, fasting, nutrition, fitness, biohacking. The guy's a man after my own heart. As a matter of fact, I live in Spokane and he lives in San Diego. If we lived closer, neither of us would probably get anything done because we just hang out playing drums, and harps, and guitars, and figuring out how to lucid dream. So, that's a big enough preview for you, I guess.

So, before we jump in, I do need to tell you about a little back to school special because it's back to school time. My kids aren't going back to school. They opted to drop out of sixth grade, as you may have heard, yet they will still be eating some of the same items that they've eaten since they were babies that have supported their brain formation and kept them nice and healthy and kept them from doing the same damage to their gut that I did when I was a kid that I still have to deal with. They eat sardines, and avocados, and sweet potatoes, and all manner of wonderful, healthy nutrition.

But they also absolutely love these chocolatey, crunchy, coconutty bars that I designed out of real food that I now have manufactured and formulated and have available for you over on the Kion website. They are a perfect thing to throw into your kid's backpack. Children love these things. They absolutely adore them. And the reason for that is because they taste like–well, they taste almost like candy but they don't spike your blood sugar, and they're low-glycemic index, and they've just got gelatin, and almonds, and sea salt, and raw honey, and real food in them. Even if you don't have kids, you can grab some of these for yourself and take advantage of the back to school sale even if you're not going back to school on these bad boys, these Kion Bars.

So, here's how to get 20% until August 31^st, which is about a week from now, if you listen to this time the podcast comes out. From now until August 31^st, you get 20% off the Kion Bars. And all you do is you go to getkion.com and you use code BACK2SCHOOL. That's two, the number two, BACK2SCHOOL. That gets you 20% off the Kion Bars. So, use code BACK2SCHOOL to get 20% off any order of Kion Bars at getkion.com.

This podcast is also brought to you by J-O-O-V-V. In case you don't know what that spells, it spells better testosterone, reduced pain and inflammation, better athletic performance, better blood flow. This is exactly what I wander into my office, stand in front of, pull my pants down, and work in a very intimate close relationship with for about 10 to 20 minutes a day every single day harnessing the power of near-infrared and red light. There is a host of research on this not just put out by this company, not just biased research, but actual research on photobiomodulation that is incredibly powerful, incredibly comprehensive.

And these new JOOVV devices, because they're low EMF and high power, are the most efficient and safe way to get yourself exposed to near-infrared and red-light therapy. Not only that, but they are going to give every one of my listeners who gets a JOOVV, whether the tiny little JOOVV Go you can take with you or the huge JOOVV Elite devices I have in my office, whatever you want. You get a nice little bonus gift when you use code BEN at checkout when you go to joovv.com/ben. That's J-O-O-V-V/ben. Use code BEN at checkout. All right, that's enough of me narcissistically saying my first name. Let's progress on to today's show with the great Drew Canole.

Drew:  You want to take a little sniff of this?

Ben:  He's sniffing as annoying to people during a podcast. He's chilling. What am I going to sniff here, Drew?

Drew:  Do you think? The test tube.

Ben:  It smells like a spa. It smells like one of those steam rooms, this pure eucalyptus.

Drew:  You may view yourself getting more and more relaxed as you listen to this.

Ben:  We need to be lucid, dude. That's the same reason I didn't take you up on a shot of bourbon before our podcast. Drew Canole, the king of San Diego. They're your house, dude. You have a pretty nice view.

Drew:  Thank you, brother. Well, the king of San Diego for whatever that means.

Ben:  Tell me about your new house. What are you most excited as far as what you've built into this house? Because we walked past a cold pool and a sauna, and you've got crystals everywhere, and a Buddha, and an electric muscle stimulator. Tell me about the house overall, like I just want to hear what you put into it and why. We may rabbit hole a little bit, but that's okay.

Drew:  I love it, because it's our sanctuary, right? As men, we need that place where we can go. We're an asshole slaying dragons.

Ben:  I never understood because a lot of people have asked Jessa and I why we don't live this nomadic homeschooling lifestyle, traveling the world with our children, and living in maybe a trailer, driving across America, which is kind of a shoot me now scenario for me, or–

Drew:  Be fun for a week.

Ben:  –Airbnbs. And I am convinced, maybe this is stereotypical when I say a man, I'm convinced a man needs a castle, I'm convinced a family needs roots, I'm convinced that you need to have a place with a neighborhood and a community and a place you call home that you can come to as your oasis after a long travel, and you certainly have built that here.

Drew:  I feel that. And thank you for noticing. Last time we hung out, we were at the other place in Torrance, and it was likened to this, lots of space, cold plunge, sauna, all the biohacking gadgets that you and I loved. We didn't have the yard, we didn't have the garden, we didn't have the beehives coming in, and it's nice to let the pups outside, and run around, and go out with the bow and arrow, likened to what you do, and shoot, and get outside, walk around naked. I mean, how great is it to do that.

Ben:  That's great, especially I caught that on Instagram.

Drew:  Yeah, according to your Instagram, thousands of likes.

Ben:  Yeah. The only thing worse in terms of haters, when you walk around naked is walking around naked with a weapon and getting the comments from any–sorry, no offense, you guys, because you know I love you, but you do leave these comments. You know it from the plant-based community and the vegans. They get offended with me walking out around with a weapon when you combine that with the soccer moms and the–I'm being stereotypical again, and the soccer dads with their children viewing Instagram. I catch a lot of flak if I'm naked with a weapon, especially if there's a ribeye steak involved. Instagram father right there.

Drew:  You can't blame society, I mean, a little bit because of all the–I mean, it's controversial, the mass shootings that are happening and whatnot. It's kind of a scary time we're living in, but I think the best offense is a great defense, especially when it comes to your loved ones and taking care of the fam.

Ben:  Yeah. I don't get the impression, “You're like a full-on zombie apocalypse prepper with a bunch of shotguns that kept annoying me.”

Drew:  Not a bunch. We got a few here. It's more about the food and the superfoods, more importantly.

Ben:  Yeah. Tell me about, based on everything that you have here, because I think it'd be intriguing for people to learn how a guy who is as curious and passionate about optimizing their body, and their mind, and their sleep, and their routines as you are, when you wake up in the morning in a house like this with all the different toys and all the different superfoods, what's a typical day in the life of Drew Canole look like as far as how you're actually going through and using all these little toys and superfoods and all the fun things you have here? And you could take your time. We got plenty of time.

Drew:  Yeah, of course. It's so easy to go down the rabbit hole.

Ben:  We will. Trust me.

Drew:  When you wake up, like, “Oh, what should I do first?” Because there's so much to do. But I found for me, and you may feel this way as well–

Ben:  I'm going to move this mic slightly away from your face. There we go. There we go. It was just like popping a little bit. Perfect.

Drew:  Yeah. Actually, one of the things I love to do is write. And you came out with this gratitude journal a while ago.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  And getting grateful in the morning is one of the greatest things you can do. So, I love to wake up, I love getting grateful, I love meditating, just quieting my mind, even if it's for five, ten minutes.

Ben:  I think a lot of people hear that, but they don't get the logistics of it.

Drew:  Yeah.

Ben:  Do you get out of bed first and go do your gratitude journaling and take a dump and think or find a place to meditate? You just lay there in bed and meditate. How do people who get the meditation and gratitude done with first thing in the morning? Actually, do it logistically.

Drew:  Yeah. I think it's all about how you get out of bed. There are ways to get out of bed. I've never used a snooze alarm. I've always told my subconscious before going to bed, “Sub, wake me up at 4:00, 4:30.” I call sub subconscious. And without a fail, I wake up at that time and I really almost project myself out of bed. My girlfriend now thought it was weird when we first started dating. She's like, who's this dolphin trainer jumping out of bed like I'm Free Willy in the morning? But I find that enthusiasm and that energy to–

Ben:  So, when you see you project yourself out of bed, you mean you're literally just–

Drew:  I'm literally jumping up. I'm trying to jump up. I'm trying to conjure up as much life force as possible so that by the time my feet hit the ground, it's like, “I'm alive.” Because I had a million people on this planet that died the day before and they were affected. We woke up, we had both of our eyes which are the two greatest gifts that you and I have, and we're able to see, and we're able to live one more freaking day. Like, that's important.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  So, waking up, getting grateful for that, and not having, thankfully, not too many of my friends have passed away. So, they're all here with me on this magical journey that we get to call life. So, that's a lot to jump out of bed for.

Ben:  That's a good perspective when you wake up in the morning versus, “Where's my coffee?”

Drew:  Yeah. “Where's my coffee?” Snooze alarm seven times, which is easy to do with the chiliPAD, that cold, 55 degrees, if you want to lay in there.

Ben:  That's the first hack you've mentioned. So, you'd say you're on chiliPAD. And the chiliPAD is also known as the OOLER for those of you listening in, produced by my friend Todd Youngblood, whose dad–I think his dad invented the waterbed. And so, Todd's been surrounded by the sleep industry for a long time. And then Todd invented a way to circulate cold water under your body, and then he just upgraded that with the ability to switch it to 55 degrees.

Drew:  Yeah, 55 is where I keep it.

Ben:  When he introduced that feature, I do the same thing. It's 55 degrees. It never changes, between that and CBD before bed. Those are the two things that increase my deep sleep.

Drew:  CBD added, like I said, two hours onto my deep sleep. I was at two hours a night. Now I'm at four hours a night with CBD, at least three nights a week.

Ben:  That's huge.

Drew:  And HRV is through the roof because of it.

Ben:  Yeah. Yeah, the cool environment then and targeting the endocannabinoid system before bed. I'm convinced. Those are game-changers. Those are the first two things I tell people when they ask me how to increase their deep sleep levels.

Drew:  And scent. You use essential oils and a diffuser next to you or anything like that.

Ben:  I diffuse, yeah. And so, I've got a few different blends. I'm curious at what you use after you wave that eucalyptus under my nose before we started, but I tend to go with this company out of Ashland, Oregon called Essential Oil Wizardry. They're like super woo-woo. Every bottle has a frequency crystal in the bottom of the bottle, embedded with healing frequencies. People who bottle the oils before they go in the room to bottle it, they have to pass a Profile of Mood State score to make sure they're in a good mood and there's no [00:14:01] _______–I'm not shitting you. Everything's wildcrafted, hand-picked. It's like very small–I don't know how scalable. I don't think this company's ever going to be as big as like Young Living or–what's the other one? There's a bunch of them. Young Living and what's the other main popular essential oils company?

Drew:  doTERRA.

Ben:  Yeah, doTERRA, right.

Drew:  I got a bunch of that here.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. So, Essential Oil Wizardry, I like that stuff. And then the other one I use is the Young Living essential oil. But typically, I got lavender, rose, bergamot, any of those diffusing–

Drew:  Yup. Lavender and rose.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  And depending on the night, if you're just really in the mood, have a good time with your wife or your girlfriend or your husband. Yingling is actually a good one for libido.

Ben:  Yup. Yeah. Yingling, Yingling-ling, if I can pronounce it, and frankincense.

Drew:  Frankincense, too.

Ben:  Both are really nice opener.

Drew:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  I put frankincense on my feet before bed sometimes.

Ben:  Frankincense also, I've found, induces more vivid dreaming.

Drew:  Yes.

Ben:  Probably because it is a mildly psychedelic oil. And so, you might get a little bit more DMT released by the pineal gland.

Drew:  And myrrh.

Ben:  Yup.

Drew:  And skate liver oil, if you try that, a ratfish oil. Ratfish is really good for lucid space and opening up portals to dream.

Ben:  And it's got such an attractive name, ratfish.

Drew:  Ratfish, a ghost fish.

Ben:  The frankincense and myrrh. There are a couple companies like Young Living has a blend called 3 Wise Men, and its gold frankincense–

Drew:  See, that's gold.

Ben:  And I realize we just sound like super–like guys of way too much time on the hands, for those of you listening in. But when I get a massage, I actually diffuse gold frankincense and myrrh. It's my favorite. It just relaxes my whole body and I feel amazing.

Drew:  What kind of massage you like, deep tissue, Swedish, mixture of both? What are we talking here? Kaatsu?

Ben:  My massage therapist, Tracy, comes over to my house on Wednesday nights, about 8:00, 8:30 p.m. I say goodnight to Jessa and the boys because we go 'til like 11:00 p.m. like it's a long massage. And I lay on–I know you're looking into this right now and you don't have them, but I lay on that giant pulse electromagnetic field because that thing will–

Drew:  He's coming over today for us?

Ben:  Yeah. He's actually coming over after this podcast to show us the unit because I want to show it to you. So, it's this Pulse Centers PEMF table, which is–it just rocks your body the whole time you're on it. You can lay on that without the massage and feel like you got a massage. And then I've got two speakers on either side of the massage table, and I use Michael Tyrell's Wholetones, which blasts your body with sound healing frequencies the whole time that you're on the table.

Drew:  Yeah.

Ben:  I diffuse the gold frankincense and myrrh, and then the final piece, and this is the game-changer, is I use an intranasal compounded blend of ketamine and oxytocin. It melts your entire body. And Tracy says when she works on me, she says it's like working on like a–I forget the way that she phrased this, but it's like a well-marinated piece of steak. She can just slide her hands in anywhere she wants to go, her elbows up and down the IT band, my elbows up and down the back like knuckles deep into the neck. She'll do like jaw alignment therapy and some really tight spots in the jaw, and I don't even budge. You could do scalpel surgery with a knife on me while I'm on that thing.

Drew:  You wouldn't even move.

Ben:  I wake up the next morning and biomechanically feel like I did when I was 15 years old, like no aches, no pains, just every joint freeze a bird. You're a little bit tired because that ketamine oxytocin blend depletes some of your 5-HTP. Like I'll wake up in the morning and I take–

Drew:  Interesting.

Ben:  So, I'd take Kion Aminos, which gives you the neurotransmitters for replenishing the 5-HTP. And then I take the Onnit New Mood because that also has–I think they designed that originally for after you've taken psychedelics or after you've [00:18:12]______. I think that was the original idea from that supplement.

Drew:  Smart.

Ben:  So, I'd take those two on Thursday morning after I've got the ones just to replenish everything. So, yes, long reply to your question with that. And then, the massage is, of course, just all deep tissue.

Drew:  I think we can go home now. I think people have the massage ritual. That's what they came for. This is gold.

Ben:  Yeah. All right, so we rabbit holed as promised. So, you'd get up in the morning, you got your gratitude, you got your meditation, you're already sleeping with your chiliPAD, and then what comes next?

Drew:  Cold plunge, jumping in there.

Ben:  And you have a special unit out there, I've seen before. Tell me about that.

Drew:  I believe it's called a Hygo from Michigan, Hygo.

Ben:  H-I–

Drew:  H-Y-G-O, and it's 120 gallons. So, it's pretty big. It can fit two people. It goes down to again 35, 40 degrees, something like that. I try to keep it around 50, sit on there for five minutes.

Ben:  To the main water system for your house and circulate the water that way?

Drew:  No. I wish it did. We have to empty it like every two weeks.

Ben:  Yeah. To clean it you mean?

Drew:  Yeah, to clean it. I don't put any chlorine in there, so I have the gardener dump it out in the flowers and the [00:19:20] ______ that we don't eat.

Ben:  What about like a food-grade hydrogen peroxide? I know a lot of people will use those.

Drew:  I believe we're using something similar. I know there's [00:19:29] ______ on it, and we use enzymes.

Ben:  Yeah, perfect. So, you hit the cold pool in the morning?

Drew:  Hit the cold ploo–cold ploo.

Ben:  I take a cold pool in the morning, too.

Drew:  Yeah, in the morning.

Ben:  Yeah. It's not too cold. It's pretty warm, actually.

Drew:  Yeah.

Ben:  So, hit the cold pool.

Drew:  Hit the gym. I usually drive 15 minutes to go to fit, meet my buddies there, get that–we talked about before about Blue Zones. As a man, it's important to have the wolf pack. So, you meet a few buddies in the gym, you have your conversation, you have that alone time, super important.

Ben:  Yeah. That is something I've identified as a missing component of my life, kind of like the guys up in Spokane, Washington where I live, who I can go crash at the gym with or go, whatever, play ultimate frisbee or whatever. It's kind of a very small crowd there. And so I'm actually–I'm toying around right now with the idea of joining up with like a local CrossFit, somewhere I can go work out with tribe because as much as I like to exercise solo, I've identified that every single day, there's like good 60 minutes of my life where I could be with other people who are pushing me or inspiring me. That's at the forefront of my mind right now is getting with a wolf pack for my workouts rather than doing all of them solo.

Drew:  Well, didn't you post something recently about that?

Ben:  I did.

Drew:  I heard a little bit where you were very vulnerable and you opened up.

Ben:  Yeah. I read a book called, “The Second Mountain” and an equally good book called, “Falling Upwards,” which describes how you get to a certain point in your life where you've climbed the mountain, you've been successful, you've for a long time been driven by ego, often a lone wolf mentality in which you're independent and you're self-sustaining and you're checking off Maslow's hierarchy of needs, you're making money, you're creating the ability to reproduce and have a family, you've got food.

Everything's kind of on cruise control and then you realize that is not what makes one happy in a long and lasting way with true fulfillment. What actually makes you happy is being with others, using your skills to care for others, being interdependent on others. And sometimes it takes some pain and suffering or loneliness to realize that, especially even if you've made it, you can be surrounded by wealth, and biohacks, and toys, and comfort, and ribeye steaks rolling out the freezer on whatever else, but you realize like if you're sitting there at night, eating a ribeye steak by yourself, not that happy.

Drew:  Yeah, in your castle alone.

Ben:  Yeah, in your castle alone. Exactly. So, I've identified–especially for me not living in L.A., or San Diego, or San Francisco, or New York, or these places where there's just–it's rife with folks who I would say are pretty like-minded, as far as I'm concerned, like it's–

Drew:  On the same page.

Ben:  It's easy for me to hunt down passionate, successful entrepreneurs who have a deep understanding and appreciation of health, and fitness, and nutrition, and wellness. That's a little bit few and far between up in Spokane, Washington. Yeah. I've been recently, just in the past month, really realizing fully, especially after reading those two books, how there is that void in my life. So, when you say you go and meet your wolf pack at the gym, it makes me a little bit envious. I'm like, “I got to get my wolf pack at the gym to go work out with.”

Drew:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  So, important, waking up first thing because when you're around family, when you're around your wife or your girlfriend or your significant other, it's great. But what you really need is those deep, vulnerable, man-to-man conversations that only the guys talk about. What I see is a lot of men will talk to their women about things that that's a guy conversation. And then all of a sudden, their wife is triggered and they're dealing with the emotions and the female storm which a lot of women can have. It's important to ground with your wolf pack and be initiated. A lot of men aren't initiated anymore, especially–you're doing such a fine job raising your boys and whatnot.

Ben:  Yeah. The whole rite of passage, ceremonial passage into manhood, particularly, that a lot of men don't cross over and later in their lives go and do whatever, Ironman triathlons, and Navy SEALFIT, and all these different crucibles–excuse me, burping up my Zevia soda there. Thank you, Drew.

Drew:  Cream soda, by the way, if you guys want to know.

Ben:  Yeah, it's cream soda, and you've got ginger–

Drew:  Ben Greenfield's favorite.

Ben:  Brought to you by. And with River and Terran, I don't want them, like I had to do, to feel like they need to go out and prove themselves at 20 years old or 25 years old, or go after, whatever, college or traveling the world or whatever they do in that in-between time before they start their careers. However, life works out for them, I don't want them to feel like they're still searching for when they cross the threshold into becoming a man, approaches that being formally arranged for them. In their case, it will be a week out in the wilderness by themselves without their brother, completely self-dependent, suffering, having to find food, having to dissolve their ego and spend a great deal of time in a very introspective setting without their books and without any entertainment and just being in nature and then coming out of that experience dissolving the ego even further with a plant medicine experience.

And then finally, crossing that threshold into manhood, having an official cutting of the cord ceremony, having the expectation after that that they to a much greater extent than they have been doing up until that time, and this will be when they're around 13 years old providing for themselves, making their own money to help pitch in and pay for the family's food and the bills and become a contributory member of society and go through that dark place of pain and suffering, an ego dissolution. In order to find that, I think that every boy at some point in their lives should go through that, and I don't think it should happen when you're 25 by you feeling like you need to go sign up for an Ironman Triathlon across [00:25:51] ______. Honestly, that's the itch a lot of guys are trying to scratch, I think.

Drew:  Yeah. Well, a lot of guys grow up without dads, unfortunately, especially in the '80s, '90s.

Ben:  Yeah. Or absent fathers.

Drew:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  It started in the '50s with men going to war, and then women feeling like they needed to get a job as well to carry the family. Now, you need two people to carry the house, and it's unfortunate.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  But I love what you said, 13 years old setting that up, creating that initiation, super powerful.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. So, you get your cold plunge in, you go off, you do the workout with the guys. And for you right now, you're pretty fit. You have a whole–because I know you built your entire company, and we podcast several years ago. And by the way, for those of you listening in, if you want to hear Drew's whole backstory about he founded this massively successful superfood company called Organifi, spelled with an “I”, as you hear me say when I talk about Organifi in many of my commercials with Italian accent.

Drew:  Yeah, the Italian accent. There it is.

Ben:  Organifi. I podcast with Drew about his journey in creating that company. And if you go to the shownotes for this podcast, which are at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/drew, D-R-E-W, I'll link to that initial podcast. During that podcast episode, we talked about how you had FitLife.tv, you were YouTube personality, and one of the things you were known for was being this fit, healthy, vibrant guy who would really inspire others. You've maintained that body and that fitness, and I'm sure some people would be curious how you're doing that, like what your actual workout and exercise routine looks like.

Drew:  Yeah, for sure. For me, a lot of it is mindset, likened to you. I work out five days a week, track everything, right, get your HRV and all your stats.

Ben:  You track HRV. What else do you track?

Drew:  I track my sleep. Yeah, I track what workouts I'm doing, strength.

Ben:  Oura rings. Are you in Oura ring?

Drew:  I have an Oura ring. I have the Apple watch.

Ben:  Oh, the Apple watch, yeah.

Drew:  So, the Series 4, whatever. It does a pretty good job. I worry about EMF.

Ben:  Yeah. I've heard them before. It's pretty good for that. I have one of these acoustimeters at home, but I don't have an Apple watch. I should have brought my acoustimeter down here to test your watch.

Drew:  I think I do have a little acoustimeter. We can pull it up.

Ben:  Yeah. You should test it. Yeah. We could find out about the Apple watch. Or if you're listening in and you've already tested your Apple watch, go leave a comment for Drew and I, so we know. So, you're using the watch as your tracker for HRV, for sleep?

Drew:  Exactly.

Ben:  What else are you tracking?

Drew:  What I love is that you can compete with everyone else. So, we have this competition at Organifi where we have 70 of our employees competing over the next 90 days to lose body fat.

Ben:  They're all wearing an Apple watch?

Drew:  Not all of them, but I'd say 30%, 35% are tracking everything. So, it's fun to chime in and you can send your buddies messages. That's Sage in the background, freaking out.

Ben:  Yeah, his ferocious wolf.

Drew:  The ferocious wolf. Huge, 25-pound mini golden doodle, with razor-sharp teeth.

Ben:  If you have visitors, we can press pause, by the way.

Drew:  No, we're good.

Ben:  Okay.

Hey, I want to interrupt today's show to tell you about Vuori. What is Vuori? Well, Vuori is a company that has a new perspective on performance apparel. It's perfect if you're sick and tired of traditional old workout gear, spandex and sleeveless shirts, yada, yada, yada, this stuff is built to function like traditional athletic gear, but the designs are so great you can wear it when you're traveling, you can wear it at cocktail parties. It's great for surfing, paddling, training yoga, visiting farmer's market, you name it. This stuff just looks good. It's an athletic clothing company that focuses primarily on men, everything sustainably made from recycled plastics.

They have an athletic fit with a four-way stretch, quick-drying properties, and it looks really good. If you see me wandering around, most of the time, I'm dressed in my Vuori clothing. And you get a 25% discount. That's significant on any of the Vuori shirts, shorts, any of their stuff. Go check out their website and you get that 25% discount by doing the following. Go to vuoriclothing.com. That's V-U-O-R-Iclothing.com, vuoriclothing.com, and enter code BENG25 at checkout. That's automatically going to get you 25% off of your purchase from vuoriclothing.com.

I've got one other big clothing discount for you, and this is the other pair of shorts that I wear, particularly to the beach or anything that involves water. These are water shorts originally designed for surfers and lifeguards, but they've expanded now and made their stuff available to anybody, and it's Birdwell Beach Britches. This stuff is overbuilt. Meaning, they use a four-way stretch microfiber called SurfStretch, but they also use their unbreakable SurfNyl nylon that they developed themselves for shorts that are the best pair of gear you're ever going to find for any beach activities, period.

Outside magazine called these things the 501s of the beach. They've got awesome fades and detailing the ability for you to go to their website and make your own custom gear, custom-designed jackets, custom-designed board shorts. Birdwell just makes good looking stuff that doesn't break. As a matter of fact, it's so tough it comes with a lifetime guarantee. You're not only going to get that lifetime guarantee but you're also going to get 10% off of your first Birdwell Beach Britches purchase and free shipping for any order over 99 bucks. The way you do that is you go to birdwell.com, B-I-R-D-W-E-L-L.com, and you use discount code BENG at birdwell.com.

I feel like based on these two commercials that you are pretty much equipped for the rest of the summer, for the rest of life, for any time that you need clothing. So, those are two good leads for you, Vuori Clothing, Birdwell Beach Britches. You're going to be geared up to the tee.

Drew:  I think that was Marcus, the gardener, the extraordinaire. He's been with me for, gosh, two and a half years. May has been with me for eight and a half years when [00:32:16] ______.

Ben:  Yeah. The garden looks beautiful, by the way. I want to get into what you've planted outdoors, but get through the workout and workout tracking, and what your fitness is looking like right now, how you're doing that.

Drew:  Yeah. So, strength and conditioning, I still love to lift heavy. I know it's probably not the greatest thing being 38 years old. But with all of Ben Greenfield's hacks of maintaining joint stability and bone density–

Ben:  It is good to–well, it's good to either simulate heavy lifting by activating some of those same satellite cell proliferation pathways via things like blood flow restriction training or variable resistance training using like the X3 Bar I've talked about. We're using like single set to failure, isometric training or super slow training, but I will not lie, top of the totem pole is always going to be strong man style picking heavy shit up.

Drew:  Yeah. That's what they do.

Ben:  So, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Really, most of the research shows that once a week is adequate enough if you're lifting heavy stuff with compound lifts.

Drew:  Really?

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  So, five, six days a week. I love it. I'm 195, probably eight and a half, 9% body fat. I'm about double the body fat that you are.

Ben:  And are you doing like–

Drew:  So, I'm feeling pretty fat.

Ben:  Yeah. You're talking with Mr. Skinny Jeans. Are you doing body parts split training?

Drew:  Yes. So, I'll do chest and triceps. I'll do back and bis, kind of the old Arnold stuff.

Ben:  Old school bodybuilding style training.

Drew:  Yeah. And then I'll do some intensity stuff one or two days a week depending on heart rate variability and how rested I am tracking that. I just ordered a WHOOP band to track HRV. I don't know if you've heard about that.

Ben:  Yeah. I've interviewed them on my show. I like the technology. I don't like that it emits a light on the back of your arm while you're asleep.

Drew:  Interesting.

Ben:  The data I get from that is as good as I get from an Oura ring, for example, like the sleep data. The other problem is I don't like to wear things on my wrist while I'm sleeping. I hate that.

Drew:  Yeah. Some people hate that.

Ben:  I hate that. Yeah. I take off my watch. I can't sleep [00:34:29] ______. For me, even though their technology is good, I like the device. I have a lot of clients that use it. I just wear the ring, but the WHOOP isn't bad. Yeah. The other comment that I have about the workout and the body split-style training is because I know you and I before we recorded, we were talking about leaning up and really maximizing fat burning, I don't do body split-style training. I did a little bit of it when I was bodybuilding, but even then, I use more of the root of three to four times a week full-body training, whether that's compound lifting, whether that is full-body elastic band training, full-body super slow training, full-body blood flow resistance band training, because most of the research on elevated beta-oxidation, fat burning during the day, increased metabolic rate, et cetera, it shows that these full-body lifts are superior. I typically will do concurrent strength and endurance training. I think I worked out with you once down here in San Diego, and that's [00:35:37] ______ you're doing. So, I mean, a typical workout.

Drew:  All the kettlebells.

Ben:  You're doing like an AMRAP for 60 minutes of kettlebell swings, deadlifts, squats, planks, hinging, pushing, pulling, but really by the time you walk out of the gym, it's not just your pecs that are swole, like every body part has been worked. I have found, and most research studies I've looked into, fat loss simultaneous to muscle maintenance or muscle gain have found that that style of full-body compound lifting, especially if you're working high-intensity interval training in at the same time as the weight training is superior than body split-style training for simultaneous fat loss and muscle gain although body split-style training is superior if your only goal is just the muscle gain, like the bodybuilding style approach.

But I don't have the time to do both. My fitness goals are just stay lean, to stay strong and elevate my metabolic rate. And I can do that far more efficiently with compound lifting three to four times a week, working my high-intensity stuff into that. And then on the days in between, that's like the swimming, and the sauna, and the yoga, and the walking, and more of the restorative work, and that's a general high role. So, yeah.

Drew:  I'll switch it up, test it up.

Ben:  Yeah. I'd be curious how your body responds to that. I can say I do some workouts as well.

Drew:  That'd be awesome.

Ben:  Like the style of the training I do. Okay. So, you get your work done and you've done your cold pool. What comes next? Are you breakfast skipper, or are you fasted at that point when you go to work out?

Drew:  I fast four days a week. So, I'll go to 11, 12 o'clock in the afternoon. And then I'll eat. I feel good like that.

Ben:  Like a 16-hour-ish.

Drew:  Yeah, 16 hours, brains on fire. I usually go into the office three days a week now. I was going in five days a week. I actually don't even have an office in my office anymore, and it's nice. So, we hired a CEO, Djamel, who's been with me for six years.

Ben:  So, you've shifted into–are you the technically–so you're not in the C-suite but you're like the president/founder?

Drew:  Yeah, president/founder in the C-suite observing, letting them make the decisions, but still I'm a part of it, but I'm not a part of it.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. But you're still majority owner of the company?

Drew:  Exactly.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah. That's interesting. I'm jealous of you in that respect, which gives me two things that now I'm officially envious of you–the wolf pack in that–

Drew:  Well, I got a bunch of them on YouTube.

Ben:  My offices are in Boulder, Colorado, right? So, the Kion offices. I'm down there once a month, or once every two months. So, not only do I not have an office at my company, when I go there, they just clear out a standing desk for me to stand out and do my thing. But I am relatively unplugged from some of the company culture, some of the team adventures. That's one thing I really appreciated about Organifi when I visited your guys' office where you've got like–was it Waffle Wednesdays? You've got a yoga instructor coming in every day at noon.

Drew:  Water balloon fights in the summer.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. You guys have built a really cool company culture. That's probably my biggest struggle as–currently, I'm the CEO of Kion. That's my actual position, CEO and Founder, and I am not at the actual offices that much. I'm out speaking. I'm the front man making deals at conferences, or I am studying up on ingredients for new formulations, which I love to do, like I absolutely love.

Drew:  That's your passion, for sure.

Ben:  My head dug in PubMed for like two hours just researching what I want in the next, whatever, longevity ingredient or sleep ingredient or whatever. But yeah, I don't have an office, period, at Kion.

Drew:  Yeah. And it compounds with the wolf pack thing because of that community feel, like being able to just–even going for me for two or three hours and give out 35 hugs and just one-on-ones with as many people as possible and just pour into them, like you're the kind of guy that loves pouring wisdom and inspiration into others. And it's hard sometimes when you're on a podcast all day and you're traveling around and you're not able to make that one-on-one connection.

Ben:  It is, or just bringing my boys down to daddy's office, right, to [00:40:02] _____. Now, fortunately, our COO–have you met Angelo?

Drew:  Yes. I love Angelo.

Ben:  He's amazing.

Drew:  Solid guy.

Ben:  He's amazing. And I've podcast with Angelo before. If you guys want to go hear about the guy who's running Kion–

Drew:  He's a wizard.

Ben:  Well, he cares.

Drew:  He's a wizard.

Ben:  He cares a lot about what happens there in the company. Without him, I think I'd have a much harder time just ensuring that we have happy company culture and people who actually just love as much as our employees at Kion love to work there. So, yeah, Angelo has been a real, real saving grace when it comes to me being a virtual CEO.

Drew:  How many employees do you guys have now?

Ben:  You would ask me that. I think if you combine employees and independent contractors, I think we're in like the mid-30s. I think actual employees is like mid-20s.

Drew:  That's good. Yeah.

Ben:  So, yeah, growing.

Drew:  Yeah, fast.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, back to–we're pretty good at rabbit holing I would say.

Drew:  We are moving around.

Ben:  I'm going to keep bringing it back. So, you're fasted. You've gotten the workout in and then what?

Drew:  Yeah. Usually, yoga, some type of recovery, I do.

Ben:  Right after the workout?

Drew:  Yeah, stretching out, bringing that heart rate variability back in, like the sympathetic nervous system, getting rid of that. I do TRE, too, every day, five minutes of trauma release exercises.

Ben:  Is that like tapping?

Drew:  No. It's where you lay on the ground and you allow tremors. Peter Levine writes about this in a trauma release. So, a lot of kids–I was tortured as a child. We've talked about it in one of the other podcasts about abuse. Trauma gets stored in your vagus nerve and all in your body. It's your subconscious mind. What helps, and they discovered this in India when the bombs were going off, these kids would run to their parents and they'd sit in their parents' laps and just shake tremor. And then the next day, they're out playing in the field again while the parents were still in their heads thinking about, “Oh God, these bombs could be going off again,” and they were afraid to go outside. The kids were just so easygoing, and what they realized is the tremors were actually moving the trauma through the body.

Ben:  Wow.

Drew:  And we have PTSD, trauma, everything that's happening all the time around us in this environment today with all the stressors, and there's no really active form of releasing it anymore. A gazelle gets attacked by a cheetah. Cheetah drags it in the forest. All of a sudden, it's holding on to the gazelle's neck. For that brief moment, while the cheetah goes off and gets her cubs, the gazelle is still laying there but it's still alive. What happens next is very interesting. Gazelle jumps up, boom, takes off, runs back to the herd. That vagus nerve that's in the gazelle, the fight-or-flight, the oldest nerve we have as a human being that allows the birds to fly together, the fishes flock together, all of a sudden, starts shaking and dancing in the herd as soon as it gets back. And that's what it is is the tremors. So, I try to do that every day. And what I've noticed even before I go on stage, brother, even before I talk, I do videos, I do three to five minutes of this TRE, and it's like–it's like doing an hour of meditation.

Ben:  [00:43:18] ______ video of what this looks like? Or just Google–

Drew:  It's on YouTube.

Ben:  YouTube, sorry.

Drew:  I think I've done a video in the past on it on FitLife.tv as well.

Ben:  Fascinating.

Drew:  Yeah. Super powerful. We can do some tonight if you want to see the benefits. I bet you, you'd couple that with CBD or something.

Ben:  I should try it out, yeah. Yeah, that's very interesting. I'd never heard of that. Now, this gazelle, does it then die? Is that its death dance?

Drew:  No, it's wounded.

Ben:  Okay.

Drew:  She's shaking out the trauma.

Ben:  Wow.

Drew:  So, other animals do it. You can see it, right? Like even a dog that gets a little trauma comes in, shakes out after a shower even–I mean, they're wet in there, but there's still stuff going on.

Ben:  Paul Chek is a very big fan of, and I was at his house a couple days ago. He's part of the San Diego trip of–he calls it working in as you're working out, stopping between sets and doing deep nasal breathing and almost Tai Chi-esque flow type of exercising.

Drew:  Love Tai Chi.

Ben:  My own flavor of that is that I will–usually, if I'm working out at my home gym, I'll go on a light walk with nasal breathing, or I'll get into the cold pool for just a very brief period of time because if you spend too much time in the cold pool after a workout, you'll blunt the hormetic response exercise. But it's okay to just cool the core temperature and activate the parasympathetic nervous system a little bit after the workout. So, I get in there for about three to five minutes and just swim very quietly underwater back and forth in the cold pool because my setup is that I have one of these endless pools. It's made by Aqua Fitness and it's about 19 feet long. And I just don't heat it, and it stays about 55 to 60 degrees.

Drew:  Perfect.

Ben:  During the summer when it gets warm in Spokane, I keep it covered. And whenever anybody's out and about, we always pick up a bag of ice and drop it in there just passively, not on a schedule or anything, but that always doesn't have to keep it cool.

Drew:  It keeps it colder.

Ben:  So, I jump in there and I just swim back and forth under the water because for me–and I do this a lot when I travel as well, and I'm staying at a hotel that has a nice, like a manhole pool that you can–for me, one of the most relaxing resets I can do for my body is to swim underwater. For some reason, water just feels–and there's a great book about how water affects human physiology, activates the mammalian dive reflex in the vagus nerve. I believe it's called “Blue,” I think. I'll hunt it down and put it in the shownotes. But that is one of the most parasympathetically activating things that I do after a workout is just get in the water and swim back and forth, or do the deep nasal breathing and a brief walk.

Drew:  Have you interviewed Kimi Werner?

Ben:  Yes. Swimmy Kimi?

Drew:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah. The huntress, the underwater huntress.

Drew:  She's great. Yeah. A friend of mine, like total badass.

Ben:  I didn't know you guys are friends.

Drew:  Yeah, like Indiana Jones, but like the female version underneath the water.

Ben:  Yeah. As a matter of fact, I am writing a fiction book right now, the sequel to the first book that I wrote called “The Forest.” This one's called “The Ocean.” The entire book takes place in an underwater world. And as I'm prone to do, I try to work in as much science and survival. I want the books, even though they're fiction and fantasy, to be believable.

Drew:  Yeah.

Ben:  So, I've created this entire underwater world. And a tribe of community in that underwater world is these women or huntresses and spear fisher women, and Kimi was the inspiration for that as far as like the meals they're preparing, the spears, their bodies, everything like–yeah. If you guys are listening, go look up Kimi Swimmy on Instagram or listen to my podcast with her. It's super inspiring.

Drew:  Yeah. I've only connected with her a few times, but I'm always inspired when I connect with her. I read a book, fiction book series recently called “Anastasia.” Have you read those books?

Ben:  No.

Drew:  Similar to what you're explaining though.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  One of the things I remember, this was long ago, but she would take the seeds out in the garden, put them in her mouth so that her DNA would help fragment the DNA molecules in the actual seeds, so that when you eat the fruit on it in the future, it would actually help your body break it down, digest it easier. And I don't know if that's like ancient aboriginal stuff or if it's borderline like fringe fiction.

Ben:  That's really interesting.

Drew:  Super cool though. It was littered with stuff like that.

Ben:  “Anastasia?”

Drew:  “Anastasia.”

Ben:  All right. We'll be adding all this. For those of you listening in, we'll put links.

Drew:  I'll see if I can dig it up for you, too. I know I have the books here.

Ben:  We'll put links in the shownotes. Yeah. This sequel to “The Forest” is called “The Ocean,” just all in underwater world.

Drew:  Fiction's fun, isn't it? Writing it, especially.

Ben:  It's just 20 minutes a day, and I check out. My first fiction series or my first fiction book I wrote was Fridays and Saturdays, I would write for about an hour and a half, and I actually microdose with LSD, about 10 to 20 micrograms of LSD on Friday and Saturday mornings and it just dissolves my ego, and I merged my left and right hemispheres to get creative and analytical and just wrote. But this next book is different for me. It's just 20 minutes a day. Just write something, 20 minutes a day. And I'll be honest with you, sometimes it's like four sentences because the other 15 minutes is spent researching how someone would cook some kind of algae or kelp underwater, or how are we going to desalinate the water that these people are drinking, or how would the solar flare from the top of the ocean people can't actually operate, like how long would it take before the world would sink, because I have to get the timelines and the genealogy is correct. So, sometimes it's really 15 minutes of research, and I've got five minutes left to write four sentences, but I'm hoping by the time I'm 50, I've got the entire five-book series done.

Drew:  That's rad that you're writing it. And the evolutionary response even as a human being underwater is so fascinating. Like how the hands just prune up, that's actually grip, and it takes, what, like three to five minutes before they start to prune. Your evolution's happening right there.

Ben:  Yeah. The spleen compresses and releases the red blood cells. It's, yeah, underwater, free diving, spearfishing. When I first tapped into that world, like three years ago, I realized I'd been missing out on a big part of human existence on this planet Earth, and how connected we are to the water, and how disconnected many people are, afraid of the water, afraid of sharks, afraid of pressurizing, equalizing. But if you as a human being, and I wish I'd done this earlier in my life, if you as a human being can learn an early age just how to be comfortable underwater, and how to hunt underwater, and how to collect and harvest underwater, I'm fascinated by all of that, and that is, speaking of Spokane, Washington, that's one of the things I miss when I come to a place like this. I was out in the ocean this morning.

Drew:  You're so close to–

Ben:  I missed those negative ions and I missed the enormous expanse of water that you can just explore.

Drew:  Yeah. We try to jump in as much as possible, the wolf pack, just go to the ocean, jump in. Even when it's super cold, get that cold dip.

Ben:  It's amazing. It's the best way to get negative ions aside from going for a walk after a lightning storm in your bare feet.

Drew:  Yeah.

Ben:  Those are the two best things you can do to ground it through your body is to jump in the ocean or to go for a walk after the last one.

Drew:  Yeah. So, the pool here is saltwater. It is not 50, 55 degrees. It's probably 75 right now. It's deep enough so you can go down and meditate. I try to open my eyes and I've been tracking–

Ben:  You're not talking about your cold plunge now; you're talking about your pool?

Drew:  The pool. And I try to track to see, Ben, if I can actually see better over time underwater with my eyes open.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  So, we'll see.

Ben:  Yeah. I love it. So, you've parasympathetically reset your system with the tremoring after the workout. And then what comes next to you? What kind of other interesting things are you doing during the day to optimize your body on it?

Drew:  Music is important to me. So, likened to you, guitar. I got a Pantheon Steel hand drum that I play here, which helps left and right hemisphere activation. So, doing a little bit of that then writing. I just got this baby grand, as you can see it behind me. I love the piano, man, like just jamming out on that.

Ben:  So, you can play and sing simultaneously?

Drew:  I'm working on that.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  A couple songs, like some bar classics like Billy Joel's “Piano Man” is pretty easy. There's an app called Simply Piano if you're trying to learn. You just plug away at that. I do, like you said, 20 minutes a day, 30 minutes a day, and you do it most days of the week. And before you know it, you start to pick it up, right?

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. Simply Piano. I'll have to write that down because one of the things that I really appreciate–because I'm learning–well, not learning but I play guitar and ukulele and I'm working on singing song–

Drew:  Ukulele is fun.

Ben:  What do you call it, Piano?

Drew:  Simply Piano is the app.

Ben:  Yeah. I'll check it out later. What I am working on is singing, songwriting, playing open mics, et cetera, but one thing I've always thought would be cool to do is Elton John or Lady Gaga style. Just sit down at that piano and do a ballad. To me, that's incredibly appealing and I would love to be able to do that.

Drew:  Yeah.

Ben:  So, I'm going to add that Simply Piano into my list of things to do.

Drew:  And just do it every day. It trains your left and your right hand. I bought the headphones you told me to get.

Ben:  The Halo headset?

Drew:  Halo. I used them a few times.

Ben:  There is an extremely famous musician who I'm connected with and I hooked him up with a Halo, and everybody listening will know who it is, I'm not going to say his name, but he uses a Halo now as he's singing, songwriting before he plays music and he says it's working.

Drew:  Yeah.

Ben:  So, yeah, because it upregulates motor neurons and increases neuroplasticity. So, you get better left, right-hand coordination, better motor learning. It cements what you learn more quickly. And it's actually, it was designed for athletes, but it's actually quite effective for music, music or gaming.

Drew:  I have two handpans here. I'd love to see what your take is on testing that for like five minutes, just channeling like freestyle, hitting the handpan.

Ben:  What's a handpan?

Drew:  Let me grab one real quick, do you care?

Ben:  Yeah. Go through it.

Drew:  It's so close to us.

Ben:  Go for it. Yeah.

Drew:  We'll play a little bit on the show so people can hear this.

Ben:  All right, you guys, Drew is going to play some music.

Drew:  And you got to really feel.

Ben:  All right, so Drew is going to get his handpan. We're not even going to edit this out. That's amazing. This thing is beautiful. Wow. If you guys are listening, you could probably Google handpan to see what this looks like.

Drew:  So, this is a Pantheon Steel, [00:53:59] ______ a year. I bought it from basically a Toltec shaman sorcerer like this thing. It sounds insane.

[Drew playing music with the handpan]

Ben:  Wow. My gosh. Where did you learn to play it?

Drew:  You teach yourself. So, you can kind of get the feel.

Ben:  It's very soothing.

Drew:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah. It reminds me of the same type of feel I get from like a harp, for example.

Drew:  Yes.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  It is a lot like a harp.

Ben:  It's beautiful.

Drew:  Like that feel. And you could do this, Ben, for 30, 40 minutes. You feel like you've been playing it for two minutes.

Ben:  Yeah. I would imagine you. You probably feel very similar after doing that as you would after you've meditated, for example.

Drew:  Yes.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  So, 30 minutes of meditation, 3 minutes of this. It's insane. And every drum, like you can buy of course different notes, different keys, and you get used to it over time. But doing this before writing, before getting–it really gets you into your heart, and I think as a man, like that's where you want to be, especially with writing. Sometimes we're in our head a lot.

Ben:  Yeah. Wow. Tell me about your garden.

Drew:  Yeah.

Ben:  It's beautiful.

Drew:  Thank you. Marcus has been really helpful, and Christie, who is actually Bob Taylor's garden, the guy that creates Taylor Guitars. She's my gardener.

Ben:  That's funny. I've actually got my eye on–I've played a Taylor Guitar when I was down in Switzerland. I didn't have my musical instruments with me, one of the attendees at the clinic. I was out there. He had brought his guitar. But the Taylor Guitars, they're slightly smaller. At least the models I've seen like the travel models, the sound from those things are amazing.

Drew:  I have one here. I'll bring it in. You got that, the Martin?

Ben:  Yeah. I will have to play that.

Drew:  We'll see if you can tell the difference.

Ben:  Yeah. We'll play it tonight for sure.

Drew:  Yeah. We switch it up seasonally. We got a lot of greens out there as you've seen, Swiss chard, collard greens, different types of lettuce, lots of tomatoes right now. Tomatoes are everywhere.

Ben:  Are you guys using anything special as far as like a composting or–

Drew:  What I did is I took orgonite and I buried it in the soil. So, I'd put it in every perimeter and everything.

Ben:  And for people who don't know, what is orgonite?

Drew:  You probably know better than I do. Isn't it like seven different minerals, crystal structure?

Ben:  Yeah, it's very mineral-rich. It's basically a natural fertilizer that's extremely rich in minerals, which is great because the plants are going to pull that up out of the soil and you're actually going to get more mineral-rich produce.

Drew:  Yeah. And we got compost that had a bunch of worm castings in it. The soil is very nutrient-dense. Irrigation obviously is key out there as well. We have, like I said, lots of tomatoes, all the leafy greens you could ever imagine. We got rid of all of our rooted veggies except for right now squashes in season. So, just epic amounts of squash and a huge massive squash.

Ben:  I love squash. My favorite things to do is bake squash, a little raw honey and nut butter and sea salt.

Drew:  We got tons here. So, if you want a good carb tonight, I got Japanese sweet potatoes as well, but we could always do a little squash.

Ben:  Yeah. We're having, by the way, Paul Saladino, the carnivore diet enthusiast over for ribeyes tonight. He tried to feed us testicles last night. We're out of sushi.

Drew:  Which we did.

Ben:  Yeah. Raw.

Drew:  We had a little taste.

Ben:  Raw testicles. They did not have us pay a corking fee. They let us eat the testicles right there at the sushi place. And I'm going to show you, using probably some rosemary and thyme, some of your basil out there, dandelion, some pine nuts or walnuts, little olive oil, salt and pepper, and we'll make some pesto to go along with the ribeye because I have discovered that even more than like a steak sauce or like a truffle butter or anything else, one of my favorite things to dip my ribeyes in is a homemade pesto. So, we'll do a pesto tonight.

Drew:  Yeah, we'll do pesto. Chimichurri is always good, too, a homemade chimichurri.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  Yeah. We got a bunch of the citrus trees out there as well, grapefruit, apple, peaches, plums, pears. I mean, you could imagine.

Ben:  Yeah. Do you personally garden it all? Do you use that as therapy or for a little grounding, earthing?

Drew:  Yes. So, you saw the bench out there, that teak bench, I go out there, I meditate, I sit there, put my hands in the soil. And also, I have two speakers out there, pretty big speakers. I'll play Solfeggio frequencies. I'll play different types of classical music to really connect to the plants.

Ben:  There's some evidence that shows that that can be helpful for the plants as well.

Drew:  That's what they've shown.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  Yeah. And speaking positive affirmations to them.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  Every day, I go out there and I try to say a few things positive to the plants, like the weird plant guy. Neighbors come walking up the street and they're like, “What's this guy doing out here?” I like to freak the neighborhood out–

Ben:  Schizophrenic neighbor talking to his vegetables. Yeah. So, you're gardening. And then you also–you're into some of these technologies and biohacks over here to our left here. You brought out some new electro-stim device you're going to be experimenting with [00:59:37] ______ the PowerDot.

Drew:  Yeah, the PowerDot. This thing is brand new.

Ben:  I've heard of it. I haven't used yet. I have one of those NeuFit Russian E-stim units that is a little bit more of a pain in the ass than that PowerDot to actually connect all the electrodes to your body, but it'll simulate like 600 pounds of contractile force. The problem is I only used it about once a month because I'm sore for a couple of weeks after I used it. It causes so much eccentric muscle tissue damage, but it's primarily used to retrain muscles. So, if I feel like my knees are beginning to hurt because my vastus medialis is turned off, I'll hook it up to that and it'll retrain the entire musculature in like five minutes. And that doesn't leave you sore for a long time. But if I do a full workout with it, I'm super sore.

Drew:  That makes sense. I have to look into one of the–

Ben:  Because if you recruit muscles, you wouldn't otherwise normally not recruit, and very small muscles as well, that would be a rounded joint. So, if you hook it up to your ass, you'll be working glute max, glute med, glute minimus, and then all those muscles together. That's actually I know which muscles I don't use as well when I'm running or squatting or lifting weights because those muscles are the most sore after I use that NeuFit.

Drew:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah. It just turns them back on. What else do you like around here as far as technologies go?

Drew:  I have a Hypervibe as well, one of the vibrational plates in the gym that I like to use. I have a Bemer mat, which I love, which actually got me interested in the PEMF device, and you got me interested on that as well.

Ben:  Apologize to the Bemer–

Drew:  Night and day difference.

Ben:  You don't like the PEMF. The Pulse Center is one way better.

Drew:  We have a hyperbaric chamber here as well, which I like. It's soft enclosure. I'd love to get one of the hard ones.

Ben:  Yeah. The HBO [01:01:22] ______ are useful. I think the problem with them or people's perception of them is a lot of people try a hyperbaric chamber for a few days if they've had a head injury or they'll try out one at some health conference or something like that. Most of the research on them shows that the benefits from a mitochondrial standpoint or an angiogenesis standpoint or cardiovascular standpoint kick in after about 20 to 30 sessions in a row. You need to be in that thing, either taking a nap or working about an hour a day for nearly a month before you start to realize the full benefits. I'm in the process of getting one right now for my little biohacking area out.

Drew:  Getting a hard one. The research that I looked at, it's about four times more powerful, the hard one as opposed to the soft.

Ben:  Yeah. I was talking with Joe Mercola about it yesterday. He has a hard one. I think his hard one costs like $100,000.

Drew:  Now, you can get them around 25, 35.

Ben:  Yeah. I think the one that I'm looking at is a soft chamber. I forget the name of the company. It's talking to me about it right now, but it's not the full-on hard one.

Drew:  It's still great. I mean, mine is soft. I sat in it I would say 35, 40 sessions in a row when I first moved into the house every afternoon. Probably around two or three o'clock when usually we hit that afternoon slump, I would just jump in there, reset myself, read, and then jump out. You feel superhuman, like you're two inches taller when you come out of that thing, all the oxygen that's pumping in there. Make sure you get a cooling unit, too, that hooks up to it, then get a little hot in there.

Ben:  Yeah. My afternoon reset right now is that a 20-minute NuCalm device. Do you use a NuCalm at all?

Drew:  I looked into it when I heard you talk about it.

Ben:  It's a game changer. Thing's amazing.

Drew:  You still get one?

Ben:  I put on my Mindfold sleep mask. I plug in my Bose noise-blocking headphones, plug them into the app, the NuCalm app. The only setting I ever use on it is their 20-minute powernap setting, and then I flip on the NuCalm and it just like resets everything. You sleep in and out of a conscious and unconscious state. But they're doing research studies right now on it. You can go to their website and read some of it, but it simulates a full 90-min sleep cycle in 20 minutes and resets the HRV. So, they've got really good studies on HRV now.

Drew:  Really?

Ben:  I swear by that thing now for–because for me, 20 minutes in the afternoon, that's a palatable amount of time. A lot of times I'll have an hour to just lay down.

Drew:  Now, is that binaural or trinaural beat that they're using to do that?

Ben:  It's a mix of binaural. I think they have some isochronic in there, too, and then kind of like Brain.fm I believe, almost like this AI-based algorithm that pumps out.

Drew:  Shifts it, changes it out.

Ben:  Yeah, this kind of shifting confusion brain.

Drew:  That's cool.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  Smart.

Ben:  It distracts you and get your mind off of any racing thoughts. So, it works well. Now, that leads into something I also wanted to ask you about, and that would be towards the end of the day, you've woven all this stuff, and I know you like to wind down at the end of the day. We talked a little bit about CBD. We've talked about the chiliPAD, some of these essential oils, but I know you're really into hacking your sleep. So, what else are you doing as far as sleep is concerned, your bed routine?

Drew:  Yeah. One of the things I love to do pre-bed is I look at my day. And I learned this from a medicine woman in the Yucatan jungle. I went down there and I stayed with the Ek' Balam village, the people, the indigenous people in Ek' Balam, like a community of 200 people. They don't even have power there. They're making corn on these stone stoves. I was down there for a week and I was talking to this medicine woman and she said, “Every day, observe your day as if it's an eagle is watching it from above. If you judge yourself at all or there's any moment that you judged, stop and try to do it the next day, and then the eagle the next night until you can do an entire day, day after day without judging, no judgment, nothing like that.” So, one of the things I love to do is observe my day, as the observer as opposed to just Drew, the ego of Drew, the identity of Drew.

Ben:  It just reminds me of what Benjamin Franklin would do with his journal. I believe it's the Journal of Virtues or something like. You'll see this repeated amongst a lot of great thinkers, is this idea of some form of self-examination at the end of the day.

Drew:  Yeah, retrospection.

Ben:  What good have I done this day? And honestly, I do something very similar. I lay in bed and ask myself, “What good have I done this day?” And I think about the day, which also–and my friend, Peter Martone, who I interviewed about sleep on the podcast a few months ago, actually taught me that when you tap into the limbic system and recall memories, whether it's from that day, or from childhood, or from a week ago, you actually lull yourself to sleep more quickly because you remove, erasing thoughts from the frontal cortex. I have found on many days that as depressing a message as this might be, I didn't do the good that I wanted to do. I could have been much better than I actually was. My impact, my productivity, et cetera, it's a very useful exercise, this idea of self-examination.

Drew:  It wakes you up. Right now, you and I think we're awake, but there's a whole another level of being awake. We've seen it. You've probably handed around it with some of the plant medicinals and stuff like that. But to be very aware, during the awakened day, it will actually wake you up in the dream. So, as you do go to sleep, then all of a sudden, you're lucid. Now, three or four nights a week, I would say 50% of my dream space I'm lucid. So, now I'm traveling. I'm reading books in my sleep. Like, Doctor Strange is a documentary, dude. That's real.

Ben:  I haven't seen that movie.

Drew:  Yeah. In fact, one of the dreams last night is I had already done the podcast with you, and it was cool because we got to connect these brothers and talk about some of the stuff I wanted to talk to you about. And one of the things actually was the wolf pack stuff, and it just woven self into our awakened state now, having that conversation, and it's something that changes your life.

Ben:  That's my programming. I mean, you read “Biology of Belief” by Bruce Lipton or Dawson Church's book, “Mind to Matter,” or any of Joe Dispenza's teaching. You can program yourself, not only epigenetically, but you can program your subconscious to achieve what it is that you want to achieve the next day and then sleep on it. That's incredibly powerful.

Drew:  Yeah. Tell your subconscious what you want.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  One thing I also do, Ben, and I wanted to share this with your people too because [01:08:00] ______ three people that you impacted. Send them an audio. “Hey, I really want to let you know that that moment we spent together did this for me. I want to let you know that you're on the right track. I really enjoyed connecting with you.” I used to write three notes, it's like handwritten notes, and mail them out because the art of handwritten letters just died so long ago. It was kind of cool to still do. But just audios on the phone.

Ben:  That's woven into the gratitude journal that I use is it is one person who can I pray for or help or serve this day, which means you are making a connection either subconsciously and spiritually if you're just praying for them, which you'd be amazed with the number of people who will connect with you later on and tell you that they felt as though something is happening to them. Or if you're helping or serving someone, you're literally reaching out to 365 people a year, sometimes it's the same person, it can be your mom three days in a row or whatever. But yeah, it's a very powerful way to stay connected and to ensure that you're not just self-examining yourself at the end of the day but you're actually taking action and doing good the next day.

Drew:  And if you look at the human body, you and I would agree that we're two separate human physical-biological beings, but we also have energy bodies, as we're well aware of. And our energy body, what is it, like 8 to 12 feet across. So, we're constantly connecting with other people's energy fields. So, as I'm sending you a note telling you how much I enjoyed connecting with you on this podcast, that's now in your field. So, as you go throughout the day, that's also impacting other people's fields, whether or not you know it, whether or not you even observe it.

Ben:  Yeah. Amazing.

Drew:  It's cool.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah. I know we're running a little tight on time.

Drew:  Yeah. And we got more lamb testicles to eat tonight.

Ben:  And we're eating. Paul is about to show up with more lamb testicles, but you know my audience. I know you've heard this podcast, and I know that you do have a lot of wisdom that you've accumulated over the years. Is there anything else that you want to share with folks, any message that you would like to get out there that you feel would be helpful in addition to the gems you've already poured out?

Drew:  Listening to your podcast, Ben, because I'm actually a consumer, as well as a creator, you're one of the few podcasts I listen to, it's easy to listen and be like, “You know what, I got to get everything Ben is saying.”

Ben:  It's mine in the SpongeBob SquarePants show.

Drew:  Yeah, basically. And when you do the Organifi ads, those are the best ads.

Ben:  Yes. Of course, they are.

Drew:  And I feel like I should be paying you every time I say Organifi on your show right now.

Ben:  Yeah, yeah, shameless.

Drew:  Organifi.

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  But I feel like it's real easy to think, “You know what, whatever's Ben's doing, I have to do it and I have to perform at that level.” And I think one of the biggest things that your listeners get to hear is you got to be kinder to yourself. There's so much self-beat up, there's so much I need to be here if I'm not, this guy's starting a company that already has 35 employees, listening to it and it's growing so fast.

Ben:  I need to get a cold pool and talk to my vegetables. Yeah.

Drew:  Yeah, exactly. But don't do it. Be kind to yourself. Take it at your own pace. What's crazy is when you link the mind when you link your energy field with your body and you do these things for yourself every single day consistently, you'll be blown away at where you are a year from now, two years from now. I mean, you can look back at your life right now and think, “Was it just six years ago I met you?”

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  Right?

Ben:  Yeah.

Drew:  It was just kind of the beginning of where you were now, but you did it consistently over time and you were obsessive. You have this obsessive nature by yourself, which has worked really well. So, it's cool to witness.

Ben:  Yeah, but it is stacking. It's a slow rolling snowball. And I remember six years ago, we walked into a little seafood restaurant here in San Diego, you and me and Sean Croxton from Underground Wellness Radio.

Drew:  He was doing health and wellness then, now he's doing like mindset, personal development stuff.

Ben:  He's a good guy. Shout out to him. Look him up too if you're listening in. So, yeah, a lot has changed since then, but I am very, very impressed by what you've achieved.

Drew:  Thank you, my friend.

Ben:  Inspired by what you do. And I have deep respect for you, man.

Drew:  Likewise, brother.

Ben:  I love you.

Drew:  Yeah. I love you, too. Appreciate that. You're in the wolf pack, dude.

Ben:  In the wolf pack. Well, folks, thanks for listening, and all the shownotes are going to be at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/drew. I'll link to all the books we mentioned, all the little products, all the past podcasts that I did with Drew if you want to hear a little bit more about his backstory and the company, Organifi, everything will be in those shownotes at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/drew. So, check them out and have an amazing week.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the shownotes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com, along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful “Ben Recommends” page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormone, sleep, digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please, also, know that all the links, all the promo codes, that I mentioned during this and every episode, helped to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. When you listen in, be sure to use the links in the shownotes, use the promo codes that I generate, because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.

 

 

Drew Canole is a nutrition and transformation specialist and national spokesperson for the benefits of juicing vegetables for health and vitality. He is the founder of Fitlife.TV where he shares “Educational, Inspirational and Entertaining” videos and articles about health, fitness, healing, and longevity.

Drew Canole's transformation clients include celebrities, entrepreneurs, CEOs, authors and personal development gurus. The success of his first book on Juicing Recipes vaulted him to national attention as a first-time author and has garnered media and television attention in the form of book deals, TV talk show hosting and national endorsements from some of the leading national companies focused on health, wellness, and athletics. You can see a full list of Drew's books here.

Drew is also the founder of Organifi. After experiencing his own radical transformation, Drew Canole has dedicated his life to helping millions of others lose weight and reach optimal health through the power of juicing vegetables and superfoods. His Organifi juices make this process faster, easier, and absolutely delicious!

During our discussion, in which I delve into Drew's daily routine with some deep, deep rabbit-holing, you'll discover:

-Why a man needs his own castle and a family needs roots…5:45

• Gadgets aren't enough
• The best offense is a great defense (re: dangerous times we live in)

-A day in the life of Drew Canole…9:25

• Write/journal first thing in the morning
• Meditation for 5-10 minutes
• Conjure up as much life force as possible when waking up
• Chilipad
• CBD added 2 hours per night of deep sleep
• Essential Oil Wizardry and Young Living Essential Oils

-The best type of massage according to Ben Greenfield…16:00

• Pulse Centers PEMF table
• Michael Tyrrell's Wholetones
• Kion Aminos
• Onnit New Mood

-The importance of fellowship with like-minded people…18:30

• Wolf pack vs. alone time (there's a need for both)
• Book: The Second Mountain
• Book: Falling Upwards
• BGF podcast: Brief Words Of Wisdom, Introspection & Insight From Ben Greenfield
• Need for man talk with other men, not your woman
• BGF podcast: Vision Quests and Rites of Passage

-Drew's workout practices and regimens…27:10

• BGF article: Why Juicing is Bad by Drew Canole
• “A lot of it is mindset…”
• Track: HRV, sleep, Oura Ring, Apple Watch
• Lifting heavy stuff (1x/ week is sufficient)
• BGF podcast: The Only Self-Quantification Wristband You'll Ever Need
• Fast 4x/week (16 hr. intermittent fast)

-Why the two CEOs doing this interview don't have an office at their respective companies…37:25

• Drew goes into the Organifi office 3x/week, but has delegated most decision making roles to others
• Ben is at the Kion office sporadically; is out speaking, researching ingredients for future products
• BGF podcast with Kion COO Angelo Keely
• Importance of positive company culture

-How to cope with traumatic experiences…41:17

• TRE (Trauma Release Exercises)
• Book: Trauma Through A Child's Eyes by Peter Levine
• Trauma gets stored in the vagus nerve
• Tremors move trauma out of the body

-The power of water…45:30

• Water affects human physiology positively
• BGF podcast: How To Get Started With Spearfishing and Why It’s So Good For Fitness & Food: The Kimi Werner Podcast
• Anastasia book series 
• Learn to be comfortable underwater, along with water wildlife

-Drew's love of music and creative activities…51:00

• Pantheon steel hand drum (left and right hemispheric integration)
• Owns a baby grand piano
• Simply Piano app
• Halo headset
• Here's a photo of a handpan drum like the one Drew played on the show

-About Drew's garden…55:30

• Switched seasonally: tomatoes, leafy greens, squash
• Orgonite buried in the soil
• Compost with worm castings
• Citrus trees
• Meditate and ground with the earth in the garden
• Solfeggio and classical music can be helpful

-Technologies and biohacks Drew is experimenting with…59:30

• NeuFit
• HyperVibe
• Bemer mat
• Pulse Centers PEMF mat
• NuCalm

-How Drew gets the best possible sleep…1:04:15

• “Observe your day like an eagle watching from above. If you judge at all, do the next day. Until you can go an entire day without judging.”
• BGF podcast with Peter Martone: The Problem With Sleeping On Your Side, How To Sleep On Your Back, Little-Known Sleep Enhancement Tricks & Much More!
• There's a whole different level of being “awake”
• Book: Biology of Belief
• Book: Mind to Matter

-The one thing Drew wants the BGF audience to take away from the interview…1:10:00

-And much more!

Click here for a downloadable PDF version of the show notes for this episode

Resources mentioned in this episode:

–ChiliPad

–Essential Oil Wizardry

–Young Living Essential Oils

–Michael Tyrrell's Whole Tones

–Kion Aminos

–Onnit New Mood

-Book: The Second Mountain  by David Brooks

-Book: Falling Upwards  by Richard Rohr

-BGF podcast: Brief Words Of Wisdom, Introspection & Insight From Ben Greenfield

-BGF podcast: Vision Quests and Rites of Passage  with Tim Corcoran

-BGF article: Why Juicing is Bad by Drew Canole

–Oura Ring

-BGF podcast: The Only Self-Quantification Wristband You'll Ever Need with Will Ahmed

–Organifi

-BGF podcast: with Kion COO Angelo Keely

-Book: Trauma Through A Child's Eyes by Peter Levine

-BGF podcast: How To Get Started With Spearfishing and Why It’s So Good For Fitness & Food: The Kimi Werner Podcast 

-Books: Anastasia books series by Vladimir Megre

–Halo headset

–NeuFit

–Bemer mat

–NuCalm (discount applied at checkout, 65% off the first month of any new monthly subscription)

-BGF podcast: The Problem With Sleeping On Your Side, How To Sleep On Your Back, Little-Known Sleep Enhancement Tricks & Much More! with Peter Martone

-Book: Biology of Belief by Bruce H. Lipton

-Book: Mind to Matter by Dawson Church

–Books by Drew Canole

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