[Transcript] – The 3 Key Steps To Intuitive Eating, Ego Dissolution, Raising & Educating Children In A Modern Era & More With Paul Chek.

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Transcripts

https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/podcast/lifestyle-podcasts/paul-chek/

[00:00:00] Introduction

[00:00:49] Podcast Sponsors

[00:04:07] An Espresso Aficionado Borne of Necessity

[00:10:42] Intuitive Eating and A Discussion on What Is “God”

[00:28:37] An Alternative View of Human DNA

[00:41:15] Soul Connection and Ego Dissolution

[00:49:26] 3-Step Process on Learning to Be Guided At 3 Levels

[01:01:22] Podcast Sponsors

[01:04:36] cont.  Soul Connection and Ego Dissolution

[01:11:17] Paul's Thoughts on Educating Children

[01:31:20] The One Question Paul Chek Wishes He Could Answer but Hasn't Been Asked

[01:42:06] Closing the Podcast

[01:44:05] End of Podcast

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

Paul:  Consciousness is the reference point from which information and energy flows. You are conscious of what is happening within the range of your sensory perception. Imagine if you were a dance floor, could anybody walk or dance on you without you knowing about it? No. But paradoxically, you're not doing anything. God is like the dance floor. My work with my soul is better than their test because I can find that they tell me that there are things I can eat, my soul says, “Don't eat it,” and when I do eat it, it causes problems.

Ben:  Like what?

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

Hey, hey, hey, welcome to today's show. I'm incredibly pleased to bring you Paul Chek. This is, I believe, my fourth interview with the man, the OG of health and fitness himself, a guy who's been a personal mentor to me, an enormous inspiration, and a wealth of deep knowledge. This podcast, like all my podcasts with Paul Chek, threatens to blow your mind. Paul was actually a guest for the big Meditation Challenge that I recently led at Kion. We developed a book called “Meditation Demystified,” and then led people through a whole bunch of guided meditations. Paul Chek was one of those people.

And when you get the “Meditation Demystified” book, you'll get access to a guided video meditation, one led by myself, one led by my COO, Angelo Keely, one led by Emily Fletcher, a host of other meditation experts, and of course one led by the man himself, Paul Chek. We've got this eBook available for just $9.99. It has over 40 pages of information on meditation, everything you need to know about meditation. Meditation, as the name implies, Demystified, as well as those handy-dandy video meditations. You're basically going to be able to levitate when you get this book, cross your legs, levitate. It's that good. So, send me a video of you levitating, by the way, after you get it. So, you get this at getkion.com/meditation. That's getK-I-O-N.com/meditation for that handy-dandy “Meditation Demystified” book. While you're at getkion.com, check out all of our other fantastic products. You're going to dig them.

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That was a wonderful, wonderful breakfast. That was a great way to start a Friday.

Paul:  We can thank my beautiful wife, Penny, for her magic in the kitchen.

Ben:  Well, I didn't expect any breakfast. I came up and you gave me your world-famous butter espresso.

Paul:  Yeah, baby.

Ben:  You've studied the heck out of espresso. I didn't realize that.

Paul:  Yes, yeah. Quite extensively. I did it for a number of reasons. One, I really was working myself so hard when I was your age that Penny and I would often work 18 hours a day. We would go home, walk home sometimes, and the sun was coming up, and we would be back at work by about 9:30 or 10:00. Like you, I was just into everything, studying everything, testing everything, and I had so much spirit moving through me, in Yinying terms I had an archetypal possession. I was completely and utterly embodied by the caregiver archetype.

So, I found espresso was really helpful for me to stay productive, but I was also studying functional medicine and doing a lot of functional medicine testing on people. And I found that one of the key things that I kept running into is people who had a lot of blood sugar handling problems and adrenal burnout, where I saw this thousands of times we're getting up in the morning and having nothing but coffee on an empty stomach. And so athletes would do that, for example. And by the time they would get to the gym, they were already in a blood sugar crash. Then you have all the blood sugar handling issues, you got inflammatory problems, you got hormone regulation problems. And it's very hard to get people that are addicted to a substance like caffeine to change just because you're giving them logical, rational reasons for it.

So, I saw that behind the biochemistry was the lifestyle factors, but behind that was the issues of behavioral change. And I found that it could take me months of coaching people through the science of change and using techniques, building rainbow bridges, saying, “Okay, do this, do this, do this,” showing them how to get off it in stages, replacing it. But people have such a deep connection to coffee or caffeine, but the coffee is really the experience, the smell, the taste, the social aspects of it.

I began meditating on how can I help people through this process knowing that they're not going to change quickly. And one day I was sitting in my office at my glass table here, and I was also doing research on vitamins, and I had a big bottle of certified organic time-release vitamins. And I also studied chelation, and I happened to pick the bottle up, and I just noticed the word chelated on the bottle, and a lightning flash went through me of intuition. I went, “Ah, I need to chelate this coffee.” And I knew from my studies, if I just tie that coffee up in fat, then I have something.

I'm dairy intolerant so I can't even use cream, but I know from years before I realized what was going on that you could put nice–because on our farm, we had our own cream and you could put full-thickness cream right from the cow in there and it was just like having coffee dessert. So, I started getting organic butter and experimenting with how much butter. And because the butter has just enough protein that it'll actually tie itself into the coffee so it doesn't float on top, I found that was the ideal. And then I experimented with nut butters all over the world. I hired a professional librarian to do a worldwide literature search to see if there was anyone else that had thought of this, and the only thing I came up with is that the Tibetans use yak butter in their tea. So, I thought, “Well, at least there's one culture that's doing something like this.”

So, I begin teaching people. Laird Hamilton was one of the people I taught this in around 2001, and he loved it right out of the gate. He can notice a difference. So, I was doing functional medicine testing with people, monitoring their health appraisal questionnaires, their body signs and symptoms, mental, emotional symptoms, all the things that I monitor, and I noticed that people did significantly better. And I was educating, “Look, if you're going to drink the coffee, put at least butter or one of these nut butters in it, and then be conscious that you need to get some food in you.”

So, if your habit is to get up, get to work, at least have some jerky or some raw carrots, or some celery sticks, or some nut butter or something to stabilize you 'til you get to lunch because a huge percentage of people didn't need any breakfast at all and they would get to lunch. Some of them would then have rabbit food lunch and they would then massively overeat at dinner time and go to bed with this massive load of food on them. And that, as you know, has its consequences, too.

Ben:  Yeah, caloric hyper-compensation.

Paul:  Yeah. So, I found that the application of butters and oils like coconut oil, almond oil, cashew, I tested all the nuts, the problem was all those oils even de-floats on top, so it doesn't tie itself into the coffee. So, you do get a food source, but I found it still caused a rapid escalation of cortisol, and the blood sugar handling was helped a little bit by the butter in the stomach, but the butter is too slow to come in. I mean, the oils were too slow to come in because they go through the digestive process. But the butter, because it will actually tie the coffee up with the protein in the butter, acted just like a time-release vitamin, and it was miraculous. And I was testing myself extensively, doing everything from regular urine pH, salivary pH tests before and after hard workouts, blood pressure heart rate. I was checking all sorts of stuff out, and I found that it was very, very effective.

Ben:  Well, between that and I think the 18 different kinds of sauerkraut that Penny brought out, salmon, the eggs, I'm feeling pretty good.

Paul:  Good.

Ben:  I've got some energy in me. Now, you talk about all these different tests, these ways that you are monitoring response to coffee, or butter and coffee, or butter and espresso, heart rate, cortisol, blood glucose, et cetera. And obviously, self-quantification is something a lot of people are doing nowadays. I've seen you engage in, for example, dinners at your house where you'll pick up a plate and just ask your body if that's something that's going to agree with your body on that day, engage in this process of what I think is described as intuitive eating.

Paul:  Yeah. I'm actually talking to my soul, which includes all the wisdom of the body. The soul is infused in you just like wet into water.

Ben:  Describe to me how intuitive eating works.

Paul:  Well, there's a number of ways. First, we need to look at the difference between intuition and instinct. Intuition really is asking the totality of yourself a question and waiting for the answer. I mean, this has to get a bit metaphysical or it won't make sense. But if you say, “Well, what is the soul?” The soul is the total consciousness within any living being. Well, then you have to say, “Well, where does consciousness come from?” Well, ultimately, what we call God or source or the zero-point field is all that can really be conscious because it's monitoring and experiencing everything that exists.

So, I tell people only God can give the soul. The soul is God in you. You could say that the sum total of how consciousness works in the universe is alive within us, including the source of consciousness itself because without the source, being the source of consciousness, we could not be conscious, which leads to one of the conundrum in science where everyone's trying to figure out where consciousness emerges from and looking at brain scans. And I keep telling people they're looking at it the wrong way.

What human beings are being measured for is the data they're conscious of. Like right now, you're listening to my voice, so someone had fMRI on you, they would see that while you're listening to me, your brain is reacting because you're conscious of. But if you're like Ken Wilber or an advanced yogi, and I've actually seen a video of Ken Wilber completely stopping his brain, dead flat, there's nothing going through it at all.

Ben:  You mean like with an MRI, they've measured this?

Paul:  With electroencephalogram technology and brainwave monitoring, he can stop his brain, and a lot of advanced yogis and meditators have been shown to be it–

Ben:  What does that even mean stop your brain?

Paul:  It means that you no longer are processing the flow of information. You're into a still point, a zero point. You're in what a Zen master would call no mind.

Ben:  So, this would be even like slower than say like a theta brainwave signal?

Paul:  Yeah. Basically, when I saw the video of Ken Wilber, you could see the typical readout of conscious activity in the brain and it just flatlines like somebody died on an electrocardiogram.

Ben:  Holy cow.

Paul:  Yeah. And I've read studies. There's a great book.

Ben:  You've got a lot of books in there.

Paul:  Right there, “Destructive Emotions” by the Dalai Lama. And that book is investigations with the Dalai Lama brings people, scientists, together every year pretty much for a conference and he chooses the top people in specific fields. This one was on destructive emotions, but it was when they first really started using advanced brain science to determine what was going on with monks' minds when they are meditating and in different states that would give them different challenges while they're in an MRI machine.

The Dalai Lama brought them these advanced meditators to test. One of the top researchers in the world on exploring consciousness through brain studies was leading the project, and the researchers over and over said, “Oh, my God, we had no idea that what's happening with these monks was even possible.” Scientifically, they can't explain it. The point being is is that if you look at God from a scientific perspective, the only numerical value you can give God is zero because many of the religious traditions speak of God as unconditional love or words like omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. Omni means all, which mathematically equals the absolute. And the absolute can only be encapsulated by zero because it's no thing yet it's everything.

Itzhak Bentov, in his book, “Stalking the Wild Pendulum“–and Itzhak Bentov was a very, very interesting man. He was the first man to scientifically investigate how meditation affects the physiology and the mind of the human being, and he's the inventor of the heart pacemaker that's still used today. So, he's a very skilled scientist. He was a remote viewer, very advanced meditator, wrote three beautiful books. But Bentov basically describes how frequency that can be measured ultimately goes faster and faster and faster until a signal is everywhere and nowhere simultaneously, which is the zero point or the absolute.

So, if you look at a sine wave, like a typical sine wave, you get your horizontal line like an electroencephalogram, you've got a positive and a negative. The positive cycle goes above the line. The negative cycle goes below the line. But the line itself is the reference point from which emergence begins. So, it would be the functional zero point. Even on a mathematical chart, it would be the zero point. So, what I described, and I've meditated on this deeply and done medicine journeys exploring it for many, many years, and when I asked my soul these questions, my soul says, “Consciousness is the reference point from which information and energy flows.”

You are conscious of what is happening within the range of your sensory perception, which ranges wildly. And Bentov showed right in his book “Stalking the Wild Pendulum,” which is sitting right here, the reference range of a human being goes all the way down to atoms, and all the way up to very, very high vibration realms where you have angelic beings and other beings. And many people think, “Oh, angels. That's a bunch of airy-fairy bullshit.” But really, spirits, angels, and those types of beings which are consistently discussed throughout the entire shamanic and religious history of humanity. And every single culture, they're there. Buddhism's full of them, Islam's full of them. They're there.

But what Bentov described, and also what Rupert Sheldrake and Matthew Fox described in their book, “The Physics of Angels,” is that what we call angels and spirits is really the flow of energy and information. In other words, our human psyche perceives the flow of energy information. If I say to you, “Imagine a pink elephant,” an image of a pink elephant comes up, but really all that's vibration. I just put a bunch of vibration into your ears. You interpret it as imagine a pink elephant, and a pink elephant becomes the image emergent of the flow of energy and information.

So, all cognition is really our sensory systems selecting information that we then have decoded through our own use of symbols, CAT means cat, and we generate an image based on our connection between those vibrational information flows. Like hot water, we know it's hot, it's heat, right? It's vibration. And so what we're calling spirits and angels and all that is really the flow of energy and information that is then anthropomorphized. We put our human interpretation on it.

Basically, anything that can be interpreted in any way in the universe is information, and energy is what it takes to cause information to flow or to move. And if you look at something like a house or a mountain or the chair you're sitting on, it's energy and information. So, the point that I'm making is when we're talking about a soul, we're actually talking about the zero-point that is always behind any vibration. According to current research, you have 30 billion, billion biochemical reactions per second in the human body, and every one of those produces a measurable vibrational shift or frequency. So, if you say, “Every single thing that's happening that we call life is producing a sine wave,” well, the zero point, the way I describe it to my students, “Imagine if you were a dance floor, could anybody walk or dance on you without you knowing about it?”

Ben:  No.

Paul:  No. But paradoxically, you're not doing anything. You're just laying there. God is like the dance floor and everything else in exactly what the Hindus say, Layla and Maya. Maya means the grand illusion. Layla means the dance or the play. So, God is that zero point, which is expressing itself as polarity. Zero only has two qualities. It's absolutely empty. Yin that which is receptive and empty; and yang, zero that is full. Zero has no boundary, no border, no definition. That's why God is often described as–

Ben:  Would that be synonymous with infinity?

Paul:  Well, not really because they're going to be multiple infinities. So, you can have the infinite life of stars versus the infinite life of a bug versus the infinity of light. Scientists have described that you can't really use infinities because infinities can be classified specifically. You understand what I'm saying? Not all infinities equal the same thing. Infinities can still be relative to each other. Eternity would be the zero point because it can't be measured or weighed. There's no beginning or end to it.

Another way to think about this is, and I learned this from studying Fred Alan Wolf, if you take a piece of string and you lay it on the table–we'll call the left end of the string the past, the middle of the string the present, and the right end of the string the future. If you take the string and tie the two ends together, you don't have past, present, or future anymore, you have now. So, the zero point that we call source or God is the past, present, and future all bound up into one experience of itself. But what I'm saying is zero has two qualities, absolutely empty of everything, and absolutely full of everything, and those two constantly interact, which is what produces spirit. So, spirit is the flow of energy information, and soul is that which is experiencing it.

Ben:  So, how is this flow of information relevant then to the idea of you picking up a platter of food from the table and identifying via intuition whether or not it's something you should eat versus some other form of self-quantification?

Paul:  That's where I'm driving at. What I'm asking my soul a question, I am quieting my mind and doing my best to empty myself. So, I get to the dance floor or the zero point, the point that you would be at if your brain completely stopped. I'm emptying myself. So, I'm saying, “Dear soul, is this salmon an optimal food for me to eat today?” And then I will feel a surge of energy or I might–I've been doing this for so long, my soul will communicate to me an image or even appear to me as a woman and speak to me like I'm speaking to you. For most people, it's a surge of energy, an uprising of energy.

Ben:  If that food is something that would be appropriate for you at the time.

Paul:  Yes. If it's inappropriate, usually, you have a sinking of energy. The best way to describe it is, what do you feel like when somebody is lying to you and you know it? While they're talking to you and they're telling–

Ben:  Typically like an unsettling feeling or gut.

Paul:  Yes. It feels like you're falling into yourself, right?

Ben:  Yeah.

Paul:  And so, when the soul is saying no, most people will have the experience of energy dropping down and the feeling of discordance of incongruency. And over time, I teach people to practice, and each one of us has our own natural voyances. In other words, some of us are naturally clairvoyant, some of us are naturally clairsentient, some of us have immediate knowing, some of us are clairaudient. In other words, we don't know why but we're having voices in our head. They're telling us things that keep turning out to be true.

So, each of us is gifted. You could call it genetically or spiritually with a voyance. And once you learn to work with one voyance, it will open the doors to the others because what we have to do is break out of our programming, and our cultural programming is that all this stuff is bullshit. So, once you realize that by following the voice of the soul, which is what's speaking to you through your voyances, your life starts functioning a lot better than when you're calling the shots, or your ego is calling the shots.

So, people come to the point in their own spiritual development where they realize it really doesn't matter what all these scientists say consciousness is or isn't. It doesn't matter what my parents say or what anybody says because my experience is when I listen to that still small voice in my head, my life works a hell of a lot better. So, when I listen to it about selecting diet, or about selecting exercise, or which airline route to take, or whether I should or shouldn't make this or that financial investment, things seem to be magical, and things happen that I come to the realization I could have never done with my own conscious process.

Ben:  Now reminds me of the quotes. I believe it was Rudolf Steiner that you quoted when we were over there in the kitchen drinking our espresso. What was that quote of Steiner?

Paul:  Steiner said, “Human beings will convene–” he said this in around 1900. He said, “Human beings will continue to invent technologies outside themselves until they've either destroyed the planet or they come to the realization that everything they've created outside of themselves is a copy of a technology that exists within themselves.” And Steiner was a master of all this.

Ben:  So, based on that, what do you think of things like food intolerance or food sensitivity testing as a way to precisely quantify this versus something like intuitive eating?

Paul:  Well, the thing is that you have to realize that the ego is a very, very strong construct. It's a survival construct and it's most significantly created by enculturation. When we fit into a tribe or a culture, there are to-do's and not to-do's, taboos, there's rights, there's customs, there's beliefs. I mean, you know enough about tribes to know that not everybody believes the same thing, then we have their myths.

So, whenever we have to go through an enculturation process, we have to adopt certain ways of relating and certain idea structures that are inherent to that race, or that culture, or that tribe. So, the ego actually is a construct of ideas passed onto it, through its family first, its tribal society, and its society, and its culture, which are meant to help us survive, right? For example, if you start having sex with children in public, some Christian might shoot you or someone else might choke you out or whatever because it's very against our cultural practices and norms to do that, and you'd probably end up in a prison pretty quickly.

The impulse that we have through our biological instincts, our animal instincts, and other factors such as not all ideas are created equal, in other words, what the way some people relate whether it'd be to children, or to life, or to money, or to sex, I mean all you got to do is study all the weird sexual practices out there, and some people think that's completely normal and think that we're weird for being a little more conservative. But the point I'm making is that the ego structure is really often referred to as an idea plex. It's a set of programs that you use to navigate to enhance your survivability and ability to cooperate within the society, or a tribe, or a society, or a culture.

And so those ideas in our culture, which is largely a scientific materialist culture, negate concepts like the soul. They negate concepts like spirits. They negate the concept that somebody can feel the vibration of a plant or a tree or talk to a plant or a tree. So, when a lot of my students come through my training, they have a real withdrawal. Fortunately, I have a library full of very, very good scientific investigations that actually show a lot of the scientific materialistic stuff is wrong. And people like Itzhak Bentov gave very solid scientific explanations by just looking at the science of what the human body can perceive through its nervous system relative to what society believes and things like that.

What I'm saying is is that it takes quite a bit of time to learn to work with your soul because the filtration system is your programming, and it's also your genetic programming. We have many levels of ancestors working through our genes. And in my spiritual research and research that's now available shows that what we think of the DNA is not really a bunch of information like it is in a computer. It's an antenna system that's tapping into morphogenetic fields, it's tapping into the collective unconscious of the planet, and it's even tapping into the field we call mind and the non-local mind that is everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. So, our genes really–

Ben:  And there's research on it now?

Paul:  Oh, yeah. You can look at Gregg Braden. He shows some stunning research. Also, he showed that the Michelson-Morley experiment was repeated by the U.S. Navy I think in '79 or '89 and they actually proved that the ether does exist.

Ben:  What's the Michelson-Morley experiment?

Paul:  Michelson-Morley, they were the first–because Einstein was stumped by the fact that there had to be something in what we call empty space to suspend planets and stars and bodies in space because it if there was nothing there, then how could they be there? How could they stay there? And alchemy has been talking about ether for as long as alchemists have been around, which is a long time, especially if you go to Egyptian alchemy and whoever built the pyramids obviously knew these technologies.

Because Einstein's math showed there has to be something there, which he called the ether, Michelson and Morley were the first scientists to put together an elaborate experiment to try to test it. And so they were using a method by assessing how much drag there was. I can't remember the exact details, but they basically said, “If there's something in space that has to create some kind of friction,” and therefore, they could measure it. And so there had to be done right when the moon eclipses the sun. It's been a long time since I read the research. But basically, they could not prove the existence of the ether.

Now, some of these astute scientists of the day said, “It's wise to remember that absence of proof is not proof of absence because a lot of the great scientists' mathematical equations kept showing them that there was something there.” Point being, Gregg Braden cited the U.S. Navy research showing that they had used much more elaborate testing with laser technology and they proved that the ether does exist. He also showed recent research, quite recent in the last couple of years where scientists took–they made a vacuum and they used photon counters that can count single photons. And so once they created a vacuum, they had the photon monitors watching and they would see that photons would spontaneously emerge and disappear like popcorn popping out of nowhere.

Then they wondered what would happen if we put a strand of DNA in there. When they actually show this, Gregg Braden shows video footage of what happened because the photon counters can actually pick up the photons. They put a strand of human DNA in there, and immediately, all the photons wrapped itself around the DNA, and all the photons took on and recreated the shape of the DNA in light, as light, and they showed that DNA was organizing the spontaneous emergence of subatomic particles popping out of the zero-point field instantly. So, they showed that DNA actually is interfacing with the quantum world and organizing it.

Ben:  Wasn't that whole shape discovered or initially I guess imagined when someone was using a lysergamide? Was it like an LSD–

Paul:  LSD, yeah. Francis Crick, I believe it was, was on LSD when he basically had the vision of the double helix. And then later, it was proven scientifically. But yes, he was using LSD at the time, and that's one of the ways I did the research years ago because I keep a list of notebooks full of the questions I have as I'm doing research into health or spirituality or whatever because it's just–as you know, there are lots of–a guy as smart as you will have as many questions that he can't get the answers to as he has the answers to.

So, I investigate these things. I do it through scientific research and books and worldwide literature searches. And I also go deep into meditation, and I also do medicine ceremonies, and I go into meditation, I have my soul guide me, I paint mandalas with symbols on them to tap me into that frequency. For example, if I want to meditate on how the world is created, I might take a black canvas and paint the symbol Aum, which means the sum total of vibration that is behind creation, and it's an ancient Hindu symbol. An Aum, ah-ooh-em, underscore means, ah, I awaken; ooh, I'm dreaming; em, I'm falling asleep; underscore, dead silence, end of cycle. Ah, spring; ooh, summer, I'm dreaming, I'm living out my dream; em, fall; underscore, winter.

So, you see, if you study the Hindu system of the cycles of the UGAs, that every single thing in the universe has the spiraling cyclical energy and it's constantly going through this cycle of four. And Aum said that number four is the number that represents wholeness. You can find it everywhere throughout the universe. And then you look at Rupert Sheldrake's wife Jill Purce, I think she's got a book sitting right behind you called “The Sacred Spiral,” and she's an expert at geometry and sound healing, and she goes deep into the fact, and gives all sorts of ancient discussions on the fact that seers would see spirals through space. Then you get to string theory and it says that at the base of everything is vibrating strings.

When you start studying the mystics and the most advanced scientists who are open-minded like David Bohm and people like that, you see all this convergence of all this information. But my point I was leading to is I was asking questions of my soul because I just did not believe that when they were doing the genome research and they kept calling all the other DNA junk DNA, I said, “That's ridiculous. That's like saying that billions of years of evolution has somehow made a mistake and we're carrying around more junk DNA than we actually have working DNA.”

My intuition was because I've spent years–you remember I started meditating and being trained by yogis when I was a kid. And so I've had plenty of time to go deep into these things, and I can talk to plants, and I can talk to trees, and all the shaman got all their recipes from the plants, and the trees, and the animal spirits. So, these things were not foreign to me. When I saw this stuff coming out, I said, “I'm going to investigate and find out what the hell this DNA is.” So, I did–at that time, this was many years ago, and now I did an LSD journey and just went into meditation. What my soul showed me, which was quite phenomenal, my soul told me, “Look at the sun.”

And so I looked at the sun, but I had to be very careful because it was so bright, but I tipped my head down so that the sunlight would hit my eyebrows and bounce through, kind of like sun coming through the leaves, how you can look at the sun if you look through the leaves on a tree, it'll protect you enough. But you see the kind of color spectrum like it was going through a prism, right? And what I saw when I went into meditation and relaxed my mind was that photons were leaving the sun and they had immediately starts piling around them each other like the whirling dervishes. The Sufis–ever seen the whirling dervishes spinning around each other? They go into–

Ben:  I don't think so, no.

Paul:  Well, Rumi started the Mevlevi Order, but the whirling dervishes will spin, and they have these dresses that open up like umbrellas and they go into like a ballerina posture.

Ben:  What's a dervish?

Paul:  A Sufi master.

Ben:  Okay.

Paul:  Which is the mystical branch of Islam. And so they will do these spiral movements, which takes them into a complete state of ecstasy in union with God. And so as soon as I saw these photons coming at me, they were spinning around each other kind of like male and female courting each other dancing, and my soul showed me that the photons actually have a positive-negative relationship, which scientists didn't believe was possible. And then lo and behold, I found in Phil Callahan's research that during solar flares, the solar flares are so strong they can make photons turn into monopole entities, which is where we get paramagnetic and diamagnetic energies from the sun.

So, you actually have a polarization. The south paramagnetic substance has an attraction to the South Pole of a magnet, a diamagnetic to the North Pole. But scientists believe that photons were not polarized like that, but Callahan showed through his research that indeed, during solar flares, they are and this is behind the basis of how the soil gets charged. And I talked about in my video that you'd see on YouTube or by from the institute called “Nutrition: The Dirt Facts,” because this is at the basis of soil science.

And so, what I saw was these photons were actually creating a matrix that looked exactly like DNA, and that becomes the energetic blueprint that informs the biological process that we call the sperm meeting the egg. And that our DNA is actually tapping into the information fields throughout space wherever we go from non-local to local, and that what they call junk DNA is actually the DNA from the evolution of species all the way from single-celled organisms all the way up to men. And we have a recorded history of every single thing that's happened on this planet in our DNA and whenever we go into a meditative state or we can use our conscious attention. So, what I'm saying is if you're talking to a tree, you're tapping into what they call the junk DNA, which is the genes that tap into the frequency that the trees are on.

Ben:  I think the disconnect for people will be when you talk about being able to tap into that DNA, being able to reach that zero set point, now when we get to the practicality of this, how can someone actually learn to do that, whether it's around food, or like you mentioned, exercise or anything else?

Paul:  Yeah. The practical application, and in my primal pattern eating online course, I take people through a three-step process of learning how to be guided at three levels. One is diet logging. So, the first level of training is you have to work within the ego structure. There's no sense trying to learn to communicate with your soul if you've got too much religious or scientific programming because you'll never trust it anyhow.

When I test people in my class and teach them how to connect to the soul, if they get a clear response, then I show them how to ask questions. I say, “Okay. Ask a question.” When I was seven years of age, this happened. Is it true? And they'll find that they can get the answer, but the one thing you have to do to be able to soul connect is you have to be brave enough not to try to answer the question from your own ego structure. In other words, if you haven't reached the point in your life where you can sense yourself thinking and know that you're the one doing the inner talking, right? Like if I'm talking to you and you think, “Oh, I got to remember to ask Paul this,” you're aware that you're doing that, aren't you? You can feel your own mental processes. So, only when a person gets spiritually brave enough to disconnect from their own internal process and see what arises without them getting involved can they ever access that which is behind those network, that network of social programming, which is a network in the–and it's not in the brain but it's in the field, and that's the other thing.

Ben:  Can someone learn that type of ego dissolution without the use of, say, plant medicines?

Paul:  Oh, absolutely. I learned it way before I was using plant medicines, yeah. There are lots of ways that happens and many people have stumbled across. And when most people learn is when they're in a deep crisis when they're completely and utterly beyond themselves when they're completely out of their wits like–

Ben:  Yeah. I recently read a book about that called the–well, there are two books I recently read, one called “The Second Mountain,” and one called “Falling Upwards,” and both are based upon the idea that we reach our sense of knowing what our true purpose is in life or what's going to bring us joy, or fulfillment, or happiness when we're going through a period of intense pain or suffering in which our ego has been dashed to the ground when we realize everything we've been striving for could be in vain and it's then that we throw up our hands and despair and realize, “Well, I'm not everything that I thought I was.”

Paul:  That's right. There's many great accountings of people that survived the Holocaust and wrote books about tremendously powerful, mystical experiences that they had. Even Viktor Schauberger, who's one of the world's experts on water, talked about experiences in concentration camps. What's the guy–I can't remember his name. He wrote an amazing book about life and–

Ben:  “Man's Search for Meaning?”

Paul:  Yes. Viktor Frankl.

Ben:  Viktor Frankl.

Paul:  Yeah. And that happened through the Holocaust. And so, there are many people–and you talk to near-death experience people, people that have near-death experience, they've all had these kinds of profound–not all, most of them have had profound experiences of realizing everything they thought was true was completely wrong.

Ben:  So, you have to set aside your preconceived notions and pre-programmed thoughts and beliefs, let's say with nutrition when it comes to your idea of how molecules might be interacting in your body, your idea of whatever it might be, lectins or glutens or anything else, and instead, dissolve your ego, set that aside for a moment and simply listen to what your body is telling you.

Paul:  Well, it's not your body, it's your soul. Your body is like a two-way receiving center, like a two-way radio that you're using to tap into the frequency just like you can use a television by just changing the station or a radio by changing the station.

Ben:  Have you found that when it comes to things like food intolerance test, for example, that this type of approach seems to agree with what those tests tell someone?

Paul:  It depends on how good the person is, but my work with my soul is better than their test because I can find that they tell me that there are things I can eat, my soul says, “Don't eat it,” and when I do eat it, it causes problems.

Ben:  Like what?

Paul:  Geez, I'd have to think. It's been years since I did the testing. Well, coffee. I tested strongly negative reactive to it, but as long as I drink less than one shot of an espresso a day, I find it very supportive to mental, especially if I'm writing because coffee is referred to as the writer's drug because it linearizes thought. Steiner said–

Ben:  Coffee and cigarettes, baby.

Paul:  Yeah. It's coffee and tobacco. Steiner said coffee and tobacco linearize thinking, but teas, particularly the teas that flower, are best to use for creativity because they bring your mind into more of a spherical search for whatever it is that you're interested in. Marijuana does the same thing. That's why people can't get much done on marijuana because it sends their mind all over the place in a sort of a circular hunt, which is really terrible if you're trying to write an article, or get a paper done, or analyze a patient's chart or something where you need a good linear process. So, there's one example–

Ben:  Yeah. It's interesting the synergy between a lot of these things. Even smokers who drink coffee have been compared to smokers who are non-coffee drinkers and they have a 30% lower risk of cardiovascular disease simply because of the protective effects that caffeine can have about some of the effects of tobacco and nicotine.

Paul:  There are also other things that they don't talk about. Look, if you study the Hunza of Northern India, which Major-General Robert McCarrison, who is sent by the British military to investigate, they wanted to find who the healthiest people in the world were so they could model the diet plans for the military for feeding soldiers because in the First and Second World War, in the First World War, 49% of all British recruits were turned away due to being medically unfit, most which was malnutrition. In the Second World War, it went up to 51%. In England, I think 51% or 52% in the United States and they stated they determined it was a state of national emergency because they had to reject 17 to 25-year-old men who were supposed to be the healthiest men in their culture.

And so they tasked Major-General Robert McCarrison, an MD, with researching worldwide to find out who the healthiest people were so they could build a diet plan based on the healthiest people. He decided it was the Hunza of Northern India, who he found men at 110 years of age still working in the fields and siring children and living like they were 45. He found that many of them were regular smokers and drinkers and it had no apparent ill effect on them.

So, my point is, and many cultures have found that George Burns was a drinker and a smoker, and I've seen documentaries from all over the world where someone's 102 and they've been smoking since they were 13. And shaman, I mean there's an entire culture of tobacco, shaman, which I've studied, and they drink tobacco, they eat it, they smoke it, and they fuse themselves with the consciousness of the tobacco plant and it has no apparent ill effects on them. In fact, one of their tests for a healthy person is if you can take a full breath of Nicotiana rustica, the strongest tobacco in the world, and have no negative effects, they say you're healthy. And I actually have tested people on that. I've had people take one breath of Nicotiana rustica and pass out completely unconscious. And lo and behold, they had all sorts of internal traumas that were not resolved from childhood traumas to relationship traumas.

These are things I've spent years testing and testing on myself and willing others. But the point that I was leading to is that what we often forget is that the psyche is more powerful than anything in our body. It's ultimately what's directing our body because the psyche is the basis of what you believe and what you believe is–if you believe you can bend a spoon, you'll bend a spoon. If you believe you can walk on fire, you'll walk on fire. And what my point is is that if you get a lot of joy out of drinking espresso or out of smoking, now, what we've got to remember is like 400 and something carcinogenic chemicals and a commercially traded cigarette. But that's not what these cultures were smoking. They were smoking their own homegrown tobacco, which is as clean as a whistle, and that's what I use.

But if you get a lot of joy in connection to the spirit world and it is an adaptogenic effect that gives you a sense of connection to the earth, connection to the elements and makes your life more joyful, those psychological effects are far more power than the negative physiological effects of the tar it might give you in your lungs. We keep forgetting that the psyche is more powerful than the physiology and you can track that right back to spontaneous remissions from cancer when someone just simply decides they do want to live, or they do some healing work and all of the sudden, tumors the size of oranges are gone in two days and medicine and science can't explain that, but it's the power of the psyche, and Jung spoke extensively of the power of the psyche.

Ben:  Yeah. And in our last podcast, perhaps the podcast before that, because the third episode we've recorded we actually had a discussion about your intriguing use of these different blends of tobaccos, and essential oils, and plant medicines, and the volcano bag that you use. So, if you're listening right now, I'll make show notes for this podcast at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/paulchek3, Paul Chek, the number 3, and you can go listen to my other two episodes with Paul. But no discussion of this.

Paul:  I wanted to–

Ben:  Yes, go ahead.

Paul:  I want to just finish the connection so we wouldn't get lost. The first stage I teach is logging. So, what you do is if you have a day timer type calendar in your phone, like Monday, almost every phone has one, it starts 24-hour calendar, six o'clock a.m., seven o'clock, I say, “Write down exactly what you're eating and drinking, even spices. And then whenever you get a symptom from brain fog, to back pain, to neck pain, to indigestion, to constipation, to feeling the need to frequently urinate, to skin problems, whatever it is if it's not optimal and it's not something you'd call ideal, write it down.

And after about seven to ten days, you will start seeing a pattern such as this, “Within an hour of eating chicken, my brain gets foggy and I feel very tired. And look at this, over 10 days, I ate chicken four times, and within one hour, it happened.” And I say whenever you start seeing the pattern of negative physiological or psychological, it could be mental, it could be emotional, in connection to a food, if you can't track it to the one food, so maybe it was chicken, corn, and peas you ate that day, then you have to say, “Okay, which of the foods on that plate do I eat the most often?” because that's the ones you're most likely have developed an intolerance to because if you have leaky gut, that's the food that's getting through the most often in your immune system that's going to build antibodies against it.

So, then you say, “Okay. I eat chicken more than I eat corn and peas.” So, you take chicken out. And lo and behold, your symptoms go away, or they get a little bit better, or nothing happens. Then you say, “Okay. Now, I got to take the peas out.” And the symptoms either go away or they get better. And then you take the corn out. Now, if each of them got a little bit better, you might end up finding, guess what, you have an intolerance to chicken, peas, and corn and they're three things you eat a lot, and you have been for a long time.

So, then you got to take three months completely off to let your immune system reset itself, and you also have to do the work to heal a leaky gut syndrome where that has to be done, too. You have to look. Do you have a parasite infection? Do you have an internal fungal infection? Do you have a dysbiosis? You have to know how to finish the job. Otherwise, what happens, you go through the labor of identifying what foods but you keep taking medical drugs or drinking alcohol in empty stomach or being in stressful relationships, and you find it works for a while, but next thing you know there's nothing you can eat.

Ben:  Yeah. It's a good point. In many cases, you're not allergic or intolerant to that food, you simply have antibodies from that food entering your bloodstream because of a pre-existing leaky gut issue. I've found that many times in clients is once they followed their 12 weeks bone broth, and L-glutamine, and colostrum, and lignite, and other things that help to restore the function of the zonulin protein in the gut and heal the lining, they can return to these foods just fine.

Paul:  Yes. And when I was a vegetarian, I could eat all sorts of foods that normally I could not eat at all. For example, anything from peanuts causes like hives to show up on my body like an acute immune response. When I was a vegetarian, my body started craving to smell a peanut butter, just practically made me horny. I'm like, “Wow. My body really wants peanut butter.” I was afraid to try it but my soul said, “Try it.” And I did and I had almost zero reaction to it. I'm like, “Oh my god, because as a kid, I love peanut butter. But then I realized later, it was causing me a lot of problems and had to get off of it and it showed up on my food intolerance testing multiple times.” But when I took meat out of my diet, my body was able to adapt and I could eat several things that I could not eat before, and peanuts and peanut butter and nuts were one of them. When I'm eating meat, I cannot eat any nuts.

But the next step is muscle testing. So, I use a duckbill muscle test where you use your index finger and thumb-shaped like a duckbill, and you start with a baseline. To get a baseline, you just say, “Okay. How much energy or force does it take me to just overpower the joint?” That would be your baseline. And then to teach the students, I say, “Okay. Now, what I want you to do to show you how this works, state your name and your age out loud and then ask your body, ‘Is that true?'” So, my name is Paul Chek. I am going to be 58 this month. Dear body, “Is that true?” And it tests not only as good but stronger than the baseline.

Then I say, “Okay. Now I'm going to tell a lie and I'm going to try as hard as I can with my muscle test.” My name is Margaret Janespa (ph) and I'm 74 years old. Dear body, is that true? And no matter how hard I try, I'm weak as cheese. The body will not support a lie because, from an evolutionary perspective, it decreases survivability. And the way I explain this to my students is imagine being in a tribe and you are all starving because there was a famine, and you're out trekking through the jungle looking for food, and one of you wanders off and finds a bundle of bananas and decides to hide them and keep it a secret. And you eat a bunch of them and hide the rest and you run back and join the tribe, and the tribe looks at you and says, “Did you find any food?” And you say no and you lie. So, the question I have for the students is, did they increase or decrease their chance of survival? What's your answer?

Ben:  Well, if you look at it from a tribal standpoint, they would have decreased their chance of survival.

Paul:  They decreased it. And in nature, you can't survive alone. You're not going to make it out there alone. So, once you realize that you need each other to survive in an unbridled nature, by feeding yourself and withholding from the others, you've decreased not only your chance of survival but everybody's because if they die, you're alone, you'll get eaten. If you share it, then all of you have better blood sugar and better chance of being cognitive enough, and alert enough, and aware enough to find more food.

So, the point that I'm making is the body will not support a lie, and the only time this is a problem is if you have a frank addiction. Of all the people I've tested, so one of the things I used to do, and I still do for my students, is I would take all sorts of things like organic versus commercial raisins. I would take table sugar versus certified organic sugar from, say, cane sugar, certified organic versus just processed white sugar. And I would put them in envelopes that just had a letter and I had the code to know what was in it, and I would simply say, “Just put that in your pocket, or stick it in your breast pocket, or put it on your body and just say, ‘Dear body, is what's in this package good for us to eat?'” and muscle test on it.

Nobody tests strong for sugar, or saccharine, or aspartame, or any of these–and even the commercial foods. And so if they said, “Well, I tested pretty good for package D,” which was commercial raisins, but they didn't use the package with organic raisins, then I would say, “Check it against package F.” And every time, package F would be a better muscle test. Every now and then, somebody would test positive for aspartame or positive for sugar. They get stronger. And when I investigated, they were addicted.

So, what happens if you reach the point of physiological addiction, then you cannot rely on your body to give you honest biological feedback because the system itself is confused and it is basically cross-wired. It's like itself can no longer give you reliable information. So, you have the logging, which teaches you to pay attention to your body and realize that those symptoms are there because your body's doing exactly what it has to do to keep you alive.

Ben:  And then the muscle testing after the logging.

Paul:  And then the muscle testing.

Ben:  By the way, I always thought muscle testing was bunk or at least difficult to replicate reliably until I went to the offices of Dr. Craig Buhler in Salt Lake, who works with a lot of professional athletes with deep tissue work called Advanced Muscle Integrative Technique, AMIT. And he actually invented a device that quantifies the amount of force, the pounds per inch of pressure used during muscle testing to be able to precisely replicate whether a practitioner is pushing harder or pushing less hard when testing a muscle. And then he will go through the body, place his finger or his hand upon certain muscle points, then muscle test you at the same time, identify muscles that are turned off, and then with deep tissue work and trigger point therapy, turn them back on. That was the first time I realize, holy cow, I mean because he turned my glutes back on and I had peroneal issues, and he did all this with this muscle testing device. So, yeah, there's definitely something to it.

Paul:  When I was a younger therapist, at one point, I had a device that would give a readout in pounds and ounces, and it was like a handheld pressure plate, so I could have someone do a deltoid test and push down on their hand, it would give me an exact readout. So, I would just stop it when their hand started to move. And I had so many left-brainers that didn't believe in that that I had to find a way to validate it for them and I could show them beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were much stronger.

For example, they might have a short leg, like a left leg might be X millimeters short and it was causing torsion on their pelvis. So, I would use the muscle testing to determine what amount of heel lift I needed to stabilize their pelvis. And so I would muscle test them until they were at level because a lot of people would use heel lifts based on the measurement of the X-ray. So, if it said you were five millimeters short–like I'm five millimeters short because I broke my left leg in five places cliff diving and I lost enough bone that on a scanogram, my left leg is actually five millimeters short.

But sometimes you can't use exactly that much heel lift because there's a mathematical ratio. Your acetabulum comes into your pelvis at an angle. So, there's a lever arm. So, if you add five millimeters under the heel, it might lift your ilium 10 millimeters. So, there's a mathematical ratio. What I would do is I would stack business cards under their heel a little bit of the time until they tested strong and I would get a heel that's custom-built. But because there was so much doubt amongst doctors and therapists, I used a calibrated system to show them that I could show them in pounds of force generated that it worked and there's great stuff on muscle. I got all sorts of comprehensive books on it in my library, and the science of it, and how it works through the brain. George Goodheart is the man that really pioneered that.

But the people that have the hard time with muscle testing are the people that are addicted and the people that don't believe in it. Well, if you don't believe in anything, it's not going to work for you, and that's one of the diseases of our culture is not being open-minded enough to try things. And therefore, you don't have the ability to learn because you're programmed, you're now a biological robot with no chance. What's the third step?

Ben:  In addition to logging and the type of–

Paul:  The third step is the soul. So, because the soul is challenging for a lot of people because of religious beliefs, or because of a lack of religious beliefs, or confusion, what I tell people is always muscle test against what your soul says. So, if your soul says–what happens is they often can't feel the response very well, especially if they're tired or they're using stimulants like coffee and they're too buzzed up because if you–you have to be able to feel a subtle response like that. So, I say, “Okay. If you find that you're having a hard time listening to your soul, then double-check it with muscle testing, or say something like, ‘Dear soul, it sounded to me like you said yes, I could have two eggs today. Dear body, our soul said we can have two eggs today. Is that true?'” Yes. If you get a no, then follow your body until your access to your soul is as strong as your muscle testing.

Ben:  Hey, I want to interrupt today's show to tell you about how not to eat giant gaping holes of nasty carcinogenic-based wounds, bleeding, sucking wounds in your armpit. Now, that's probably a bad visual, isn't it? Well, anyways, I'm talking about deodorant, in case you haven't guessed. And the problem of course with a lot of modern deodorants is they're chock-full aluminum, and parabens, and talc. But this company that I'm about to tell you about, they only use ingredients found in nature, like coconut oil as their anti-microbial, and shea butter as their moisturizer, and tapioca starch to absorb wetness. Get rid of those pit stains.

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Alright, so when it comes to the soul connection, any last elements of that when it comes to piecing together these three steps to intuitive eating.

Paul:  Yes. The biggest challenge with soul connection is that if the ego has any attachment to the outcome. So, if you say, “Dear soul, can I eat these chocolate chip cookies?” And you psychologically say–are in a stressful period of your life. But in your childhood, when you're eating chocolate chip cookies were usually times of celebration, parents weren't hard on you, then the child in you will want those cookies, and so it will negate the impetus, impulse of the soul. Basically, the ego learns to mask the soul.

So, what I teach my students is you have to have legitimate spiritual courage. You have to be brave enough to hear no when a part of you is addicted, or a part of you wants it, or a part of you needs it for comfort food. So, it's a legitimate spiritual quest and only the people that are brave enough to truly listen to their soul and find out what happens in their life ever find out the truth and the power of the soul. The rest of them say, “Oh, my soul said, ‘I'd give you a whole box of Oreo cookies,'” or, “My soul told me to go out and rape some chick.” I'm like, “No. That's not your soul. That's either your shadow or your ego impersonating your soul until you–and I always encourage people to meditate because if you don't practice calming your own mind and getting behind your thought process so you can witness it, you can't differentiate what I call the energy signature of the soul from your own ego structure.

When I'm teaching soul connection through food, it's actually me introducing my students and my patients to a legitimate spiritual practice that takes as much commitment as any legitimate spiritual practice, and it requires a level of spiritual courage that you must confront your fears and your addictions or you will always have to go back to muscle testing, or diet logging, or blood testing, and you won't ever be able to grow because you're not ready to grow as a human being. You want to stay stuck in the position of a child, or a victim, or a saboteur, or a prostitute, or a poor me syndrome.

Ben:  Yeah. It's kind of interesting because a lot of people will, instead of listening to their bodies and making those necessary dietary modifications, we now have the ability to be able to use supplements to cover those up, like for example, people will say, “Okay. Well, caffeine seems to–” whether because someone is a fast genetic metabolizer and has a COMT gene or CYAP gene that would dictate a fast coffee oxidizing or a slow coffee oxidizing response, or whether they have some kind of a pancreatic enzymatic deficiency to being able to digest that hunk of meats that their body is telling them not to eat.

They'll say, “Okay. Well, I'm just going to take L-theanine and [01:07:42] ______ with my coffee, and I'm going to take this massive dose of enzymes with my meat, and I'm going to take a histamine blocker with this version of alcohol.” And you can literally have a closet full of supplements that allow you to never engage in intuitive eating because it's so easy to temporarily cover up the harm.

Paul:  But you never grow.

Ben:  Maybe a little hard on the pocketbook, but you could do it.

Paul:  Yeah. It's rampant. It's part of the medical model. It's also one of the reasons I have a problem with biohacking because a lot of biohacking is using some kind of supplementation to cover up a response you're getting from the body when you're eating something that isn't working for you or drinking something that isn't good for you, be it chocolate, coffee, you name it. And so exactly what you say. But what happens is you are not listening to the wisdom of the universe. You just meditate on what it took to create Ben Greenfield.

And when you really do that, you'll realize that the entire universe is involved, every fucking bit of it. And the level of technology that we exist in and as is so far beyond anything medicine has that if we don't have a legitimate willingness to grow spiritually to come deeper into the mysteries of life and meaning in service of other human beings, because ultimately, we come to the realization we can't do it alone on any level, and that we need each other.

One of the most painful things for me as I've spent, like you, my whole life studying and researching and practicing, and studying the mystics, and working with yogis, and learning so much, it hurts me tremendously to walk through a shopping mall and see how sick and beat-up, and to go to hospitals, and having worked in rehabilitation and see all the shortcuts, the drugging and the bullshit. For me to just watch that go on and not do my best to share what I know with people is too painful, I can't do it, because I know what life is, I know what God is. This is not a theory for me. God's not something I read over a book. God's something I eat, sleep, breathe, shit, sing to, dance to, hug, kiss, and drive every day.

So, if we keep playing these technology games and science games, we are to the degree–I'm not saying there's not a place for all of that. Look, I use digestive enzymes, too. There's a time and a place for everything. But I don't use them to cheat myself. There are times where I actually might do that though. I have a bad reaction to popcorn, but I love popcorn and I don't want to live such a limited life that I can't enjoy popcorn once in a while. So, on popcorn night, I take two tablets of hydrochloric acid.

Ben:  I'm the same way with the wonderful lavender butter popovers at my favorite restaurant in Spokane, Wild Sage. And so, I always show up to Wild Sage with a big bottle of dipeptidyl or the Gluten Guardian supplements in my bag. And I pop five of those before I go in because I do want to enjoy myself.

Paul:  And so, I tell people, your body is a garden. It's up to you to take responsibility for how many weeds you're going to let grow in the garden, how many parasites you're going to let in the garden, and at the end of the day, you're that garden. So, when I eat the popcorn, I take full responsibility for the itching and the immune reactions. I know I can manage it with supplements. But I also know that if I do that too often, then I'm actually creating far more stress on my body than the joy could ever compensate for, and that's called being an adult.

Ben:  I'm really curious how you do this with children. You just had–well, what is this, your fourth child?

Paul:  Third.

Ben:  Your third child.

Paul:  Yeah.

Ben:  New baby. You have a pretty big gap between the latter two and the first.

Paul:  Paul Jr. will be 40 next month and Mana is three and a half, and Zoe was born on July the 20th.

Ben:  So, less than a month at the time we're recording this.

Paul:  Yeah.

Ben:  Yeah. How do you plan to educate your kids?

Paul:  Well, you know, even with Paul Jr., I tried to ground him in the realities of how the world works. And I said, “Look, there's no such thing as a free ride.” And so, when he wanted a toy when he was like seven, eight years old and onward, I would say, “I'll meet you halfway.” The one thing he figured out on his own that he could do was collect bottles and cans and cash them in for money. So, I remember one time he wanted a remote control car, real nice when it was $250, I said, “I'll meet you halfway because if I just give you stuff, you're going to expect mommy and daddy to give you handouts all the time when the world doesn't work that way.”

So, he got up every morning. It was quite funny because the bums used to get really pissed off at him because he would get up so early that they would find him in what they called their garbage cans, and he would actually get into some pretty harsh interactions with bums that were pissed off because he was collecting all the bottles and cans. But he saved up $125.

Ben:  So, you're teaching him self-defense simultaneously?

Paul:  Well, I was teaching him the tactics of negotiation and saying, “Okay. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday you get it. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday I get it.” And so, when he was a teenager and he started getting into drugs because there were tons of drugs in the high school that he went to, and he wanted to explore, and he would come home stone and think he could slide it by me. I actually happened to be working with some police officers that were injured from the SWAT team and also the drug branch of the San Diego Police. And I told them what was going on with my kid, and they brought me their handouts that they used to train police officers on the exact chemical makeup of the drug, the side effects of the drug, and the behavioral characteristics of people on the drug, and what the long-term consequences of the drug were.

So, they had all these reports for the police officers and they gave me their whole file. And I had Paul Jr. read it and I tested him on it. I said, “My brother was a drug–I was raised with a drug addict. My father was very violent.” And long story made short, I saw what happens when a parent forces you, tells you no, gives you no control, and beats the hell out of you. And so, I said, “I am not going to physically abuse you. I am going to let you learn–if you want to play with adult substances, then you have to be an adult about it. So, I want you to read all these so whenever someone offers you a drug, you know exactly what you're putting in your body and what the consequences are.”

So, he read that. And I said, “The rule is as long as you can pass your grades at school and get your homework done, I'm going to let you explore, but I'm also going to tell you that you don't do this stuff and drive around in cars or do stupid shit like go to video cage. You need to go somewhere like a canyon or sit somewhere safe or let me know you want to do it and I will have you come here. And if any of your friends are coming, I have to have permission from their parents.” Well, none of them were brave enough to get permission from their parents. But basically, by the time he was 18, he had explored all sorts of drugs from cocaine, to crack cocaine, to LSD, and he navigated it and he knew the consequences and he took responsibility for it.

Ben:  That is nowadays one of the versions of that form of parenting. It's called love and logic. And there's a book by the same name, and we use a very similar approach in our house. There's no distinct no's, like, “You cannot do that.” Sure, when River and Terran were young, they would approach the fireplace in the house. And that was a, “No, don't touch that,” and I would stand up and get their hand just because I didn't want to have to deal with a third-degree burn on a two-year-old. But our style of parenting now is the same as what you've just elucidated where we'll educate River and Terran about the consequences of their decisions.

What does the protein gluten in excess, especially when combined with glyphosate due to the lining of the gut before you go to Braden or Matthew or any of your other friends' birthday parties? Just know that and then make the decision for yourself. Sometimes they'll indulge in what they want to indulge in and put up with the tummy ache the next day, but they know why. Furthermore, they're not having the cupcake as trite and items that might seem because it is forbidden fruit. They're eating it because they're interested and they understand the consequences, and we'll do the same in our house.

They already know the effects that porn would have on their neurotransmitter balance on the way that they might view women as objects, et cetera. But there will be no rule in our house that they can't–they can go to Pornhub whenever they want when they're 12 or 13 or whatever, but they will be educated about the physiological effects of that on their body, the psychological effects and the consequences they would need to deal with as part of that.

Paul:  Yeah. Paul Jr. was the first youngest level 4 practitioner ever to graduate just when he turned 19. So, by the time he was 19, he had enough knowledge and skill to know that if he ate gluten, what the response was exactly how it got there, and that he was responsible for that. He had developed enough knowledge to take adult responsibility for himself, whether it'd be recreational drugs, food, alcohol, sex, whatever. So, my approach to raising my kids is protect them from what they're not old enough, mature enough, and wise enough to understand, like you got to protect a kid from fire or sharp objects or a chainsaw.

When they have the intelligence to understand what it is they're dealing with, like what is a chainsaw and why is it very dangerous and how does it work, then I teach them the cons of what–like when my father was teaching me to use chainsaws, he showed me, “Look, this chainsaw can catch a knot and kickback. And if that thing hits you in the face, it'll cut your face right open and might even cut your head in half.” We would be falling trees and he'd say, “Look, this can pinch the saw blade, and if that saw blade gets pinched, you might not be able to get it out. You're going to have to go get another saw to fall a tree into that tree, then you're going to have to get your saw and run like hell before you get hit by one of the trees or you've got to wedge it, but sometimes you can't wedge it because there's not enough wood left, and if you wedge it, it'll split the tree and it can come right down on top of you.”

So, I actually learned real-time real-life situations with real live explanations, and sometimes demonstrations. Like, my father would purposely hit a knot and watch the saw jump and he knew it was going to do it and he'd say, “See what happens.” So, by the time I was holding a chainsaw and using it all day, I knew what to do and I knew that you don't want to play with fire, with something that can cut your arm off or your leg off. And so, I think most parents today are too busy to really parent and they don't spend the time to do their research on the things that they need to know so they can inform their children so the next thing you know, they're running off to doctors with every–

Ben:  Or they trust an outdated educational system designed to support the agricultural revolution and the–

Paul:  Well, yeah, designed to brainwash kids so they don't know how to think for themselves.

Ben:  And the creation of factory workers, which was necessary at a certain time.

Paul:  Yeah, especially for the factory owners.

Ben:  But now, exactly, experiential education and these so-called unschooling movements in which children learn through life experiences, through consequences, and through practical hands-on education to me is so much more palatable. That's how we're educating River and Terran now. With your kids, are you going to–because another approach, and this is one that a great author named Seth Godin talks about quite a bit is to use institutionalized education that we pay for and that's readily available, and have your children go there and learn how to play well with others and be good little factory workers, and learn their math, and their STEM, and their reading, and writing, and handwriting within the lines and everything else. And then when they come in the door from school, then your responsibility of educating them and the other matters of life begins.

Paul:  You know how many parents will do that, Ben?

Ben:  Well, that's the problem, and I'm curious what you plan on doing.

Paul:  Well, what we're doing, and I researched education systems worldwide and having spent 25 years studying Steiner's work, and he developed the Waldorf School System based on how the brain grows and develops, and a lot of the things Steiner was sharing in the late 1800s and early 1900s have now been proven by advanced brain imaging and technology. The list of things Steiner showed us was Steiner invented biodynamic farming in response to a crisis in Germany. And research shows biodynamic farming produces the most nutritious food, bar none, in scientific investigations. And he used all sorts–I won't get too heavy into that, but my conclusion was Steiner's system is the best because Steiner does not want the kid's left brain being activated before about seven to ten years of age because the right brain has to come online first because it's the brain that makes connections to everything.

Ben:  That's why free play and creativity–

Paul:  And so, his whole system for the first, probably, eight or nine years is all storytelling, arts and crafts, singing, dancing, acting stories out, they do plays, all of which have educational meanings. They each take a role in the play. They hand-make their own costumes. They're doing arts and crafts. They have gardens at the school. They all garden every day.

Ben:  And this would be Waldorf?

Paul:  Waldorf.

Ben:  Okay.

Paul:  Yeah.

Ben:  So, you'll probably find like a good Waldorf'–

Paul:  I already have. Mana has been in there. There's a minimum age they start. I think he started at two and a half. There's a certain criteria. They have to meet to go into the beginning. So, he's going into his second year now. He loves it. And I've had many patients with kids in deep crisis, from health crisis to psychological crisis, to depression, to anxiety, you name it, and many of them had their kids in Catholic schools and public schools. And every single person that I've encouraged to take their kids to Steiner school has profusely thanked me because not only did the kids heal, but it opened them up to the world of their creativity.

So, Steiner's whole model is built on this–the system is built based on how the brain grows and develops and integrates itself just like you can study embryology and see how a fetus grows and develops. So, Steiner's system includes movement, it includes food, it includes meals. They don't want the kids having–they want no exposure to screens, but we said to them we're not going to give Mana no exposure because we want him to have some awareness of technology because of the world he's going to go into. If you think of how much technology is advanced in your own lifetime and in my lifetime, there was–I remember when faxes came along.

Ben:  It's going to be exponential now that–

Paul:  It's going to be wild.

Ben:  –now that technology is creating technology rather than humans creating technology.

Paul:  Right. So, I said to the Steiner school, “Look, I will minimize my son's exposure and I will make sure he's not watching things on there that aren't good for his mind, but I will let him watch shows that show how a tractor works, or show how to make a puppet, or things that I think are educational, inspirational.” Like there's a show called Blippi and this guy goes out and shows how tractors work and earthmovers and bulldozers, and he's a real comical guy, and it's all very good educational material.

But the point is they want minimum screen time and maximum engagement in natural expressions of the child that bring it into the world of wonder, mystery, and connection, and they do a lot of painting and coloring so that the child learns that they have this creative ability and they get their hands and fingers dirty metaphorically, so by the time they start going into studying mathematics and memorizing things that their right brain is intact, works well, and they can ground, shall we say, specific knowledge into general life experience and general knowledge. And that's the approach I'm going to take. The other thing is with all this vaccination stuff, well pretty soon, you're going to have to homeschool. So, I've been looking into– there are groups of parents that don't want their kids vaccinated. So, now there are groups of parents getting together, taking turn–

Ben:  But we're in California where you can't file an exemption.

Paul:  Yeah. Well, you can't now.

Ben:  No religious, no philosophical, no medical exemptions allowed, from my understanding.

Paul:  Yeah. If we can't–because now that they passed the mandatory exemption, he may not even be able to go to Steiner school. So, we will just get a group of parents that feel the same way as us and we might invest in hiring a Steiner teacher to train the kids privately.

Ben:  Yeah, until they all get wiped out by measles. I'm joking.

Paul:  Yeah. Well, you can get wiped out by your parents as well.

Ben:  Yeah. But I mean, speaking of getting wiped out, all joking aside, you and I were talking in the kitchen about children and the potential danger of an imbalanced approach to education that's based on technology due to this whole so-called zombie apocalyptic scenario in which there is a realistic possibility of a solar flare, or as you referred to, you called it what, a magnetic pulse–

Paul:  Yeah, magnetic pulse weapon.

Ben:  Yeah. In which we might revert to a state in which we have to learn how to survive without technology.

Paul:  Yeah. I feel that it's important.

Ben:  That's how to make fire, how to cook, how to hunt, how to farm, how to garden.

Paul:  Yes. Basic survival skills. When you told me how you're raising your kids, I was like very, very impressed because you're teaching your kids basically what my father taught us. My father is as mean and dangerous a man that he was with a really skilled survival as a master hunter. I was skinning animals, and shearing sheep, and castrating, and all that stuff on the farm. It was hands-on. I mean, from the time I was eight, I was responsible for tractors and working in fields and driving hay wagons and farm trucks. I had adult responsibilities, and learned how everything works, and was engaged in everything, and had to learn how nature works. And it didn't matter whether the power goes out on a farm. You got to take care of the animals. You got to get the field work done. And if it means no tractors and no electricity, then you're out there barehanded–

Ben:  Also, you learn a lot about life and death with River and Terran and had to kill six chickens and drown baby mice taking over the barn and they've had to learn hard lessons about the coming and passing of life.

Paul:  Example is we had a bad parasite infestation. I believe it was our potato crop, or one of our crops had a very bad parasite infestation, but my father didn't want to use chemicals, so he bought 5,000 praying mantises, which turned out to be the perfect bug to ethos. And we got a huge shipment and every one of the praying mantises within its own little cardboard cage kind of like Chinese food comes in a little–and we had to unpackage and release those into our fields.

Ben:  I did not know that. We had to do the same thing. We had locust infestations where I grew up in Lewiston, Idaho.

Paul:  I was in Fruitland, Idaho.

Ben:  We brought in praying mantises. And I remember, they didn't come in individual boxes, but we had like cages of praying mantises that we had to release. We had pigs, we had chickens, and this all started with us just buying this stuff to manage the locust population.

Paul:  Yeah. And so, we sat and watched the–it's fun to watch a praying mantis because they're great hunters and they hold onto them just like we hold onto a corn on the cob and they'll just eat them up. And so, for a kid, imagine releasing 5,000 of these things into like a 10-acre field and watching them just clean that place out, and then your crops are healthy again. So, I was fortunate that my parents are very holistic. My mother is a spinner, a weaver, an artist. We made all our own food, our flour, our butter, our eggs, our cheese, our ice cream. Everything came off the farm. We butchered our own animals.

Now, a lot of kids can't get that kind of an education in this city, but we all have a choice as parents to decide what is important to us. Is it important to be a lawyer working in New York City where you can't teach your kid jack shit unless they're watching it on MTV or some crazy-ass television? Or do you say, “I've got the responsibility of my legacy and one day I'm going to die and these kids need to know how to take care of themselves.” And I think that's all up to each individual parent to decide what they think the risks of life and the future of life is, and we're facing, as you know, but you and I could talk for 20 hours about all the ways that the system could collapse and bring people into a state of trying to exist.

I mean, think of it. If the power goes off, the entire food delivery system worldwide is run by computer systems, and within 72 hours, there will be no food and everybody will be raiding the supermarkets. There will be mobs. It'll be Mad Max reinvented. And so, when people just live complacently, it's just complacency. I'm raising my kids not in a hardcore way, but I want them to understand exactly what you're teaching your kids.

Ben:  Yeah. Hopefully, they'll be the ones not inside the supermarkets but out in the backyard harvesting dandelion and–

Paul:  Exactly.

Ben:  –making a bow.

Paul:  And during the Second World War, with all the food shortages, 50% of the food eaten was grown in people's backyards. And many books in my library showed that across the board, people's health significantly improved because they weren't getting junk from stores. They were living out of their backyards. And so, we have a garden at home and Mana eats out of it. He goes out with Penny and Angie. He gardens. He eats the peppers and the tomatoes, and he loves it. He goes to birthday parties with friends and he's the only one that brings real food, and he's the only kid that eats vegetables, and they look at him like, “Wow, your kid is unusual. He's eating raw broccoli and he loves it.” I'm like, “That's mommy was eating that when he was in her tummy and that's why we feed him.” Like you said, you teach the kid. “Look, okay, you eat that cupcake. Tell me what happens in the morning.” And now the kid makes the connection. It tastes good for about two minutes, then it feels like shit for three days, and they usually start placing themselves.

Ben:  Yeah, they do. As you mentioned, we could talk for a good 20 hours or more. There are a lot of questions that I want to ask you today that we didn't have time to get to, like plant medicine and Christianity, and spirituality, and purpose and meaning. And we will definitely do a part two of today's show because there are a lot of questions.

Paul:  Well, I have some great answers for you.

Ben:  And I know you do. However, there is one question that I really do want to hear your answer to, and it's relatively straightforward and simple. Is there something you haven't been asked in a public forum or on a podcast? Is there a question that you haven't been asked that you wish you had been, a message that you want to get out to the world that you haven't yet been given an opportunity to get out?

Paul:  Well, that question, because you sent me a list of questions in advance, so I knew what we were going to talk about. When I saw that, I thought, “What is the one question I wish somebody would ask?” One of the biggest criticisms I get from people is that I talk about God too much and they don't want to hear about God. And I've explained many times why I do that, but the question nobody ever asked me is, why do I love God so much? And the answer is because God has unconditional love. God is the source. God is the zero-point field. God is the empty in the full meeting each other. God is that which is coming to know itself through the experience of life, which is us. We are God experiencing life and God is growing and realizing itself through us. When we grow, God grows. You can't evolve one iota without adding it to the entire world or the entire universe, therefore, God.

So, I've had many profound union experiences and God experiences with and without plant medicines. Too much to explain in a few minutes, but I find that through working with my soul, I've come to learn that if I am brave enough to get the answer to anything, I can get it, and the only limiting factor is my own fear. If I want to know whether my child will be born healthy or whether my child is going to come through a C-section, I can get the answer, but I'll give you an example. I asked my soul, “Is Angie going to be able to give a natural childbirth at home? Because last time we had an emergency situation, she had a C-section. We had a–“

Ben:  For this last baby?

Paul:  Yeah. We had everything all set up for Mana and she had to have a C-section, an emergency. But this time, I said to my soul, “Will Angie have a natural childbirth at home?” And I asked about six times and I kept getting a yes. So, when all of the sudden a crisis came and here we were facing a C-section, I said, “Okay. How in the world there's only one way I could have got a yes when my soul never would have told me yes if the answer was no?” Because I learned every time, I thought my soul was telling me to do something and it turned out to be a problem, that my ego was generating that answer because I had some kind of an attachment to it.

Well, none of us wants our wife to have a C-section or go through surgery. So, I went deep into meditation and I said to my soul, “I thought you told me several times that Angie was going to have a natural childbirth at home.” And my soul said, “No. I told you several times to be ready for anything and you were afraid to have to go to a hospital because of your angst and resistance toward the western medical system. So, you chose to tell yourself that you would have a safe childbirth at home. I told you to be ready for anything.”

So, I found that the truth of God and the truth of life is–the book of life is open to all of us, but because we are afraid of fear, we are afraid of not getting our own way, we're afraid of hurting, we're afraid of change, that our ego structure blocks us from the wisdom of consciousness that is an open book, and true spiritual growth is being able to handle reality. And so, I love God because God is all there is, and I believe in the first principle of Sufism which says, “There is no god but God. I worship everything and everyone.”

Life and its challenges are the challenges of God coming to know itself. Conscious is coming to know what it is capable of and what it is. And to me, it's one thing to be a badass in a boxing ring, or winning a race, or thinking you're cool because you have lots of money. But to deal with the pain of God's own growth, and God's own self-realization, and God's bravery, God is brave enough to live, to die, to be tortured, to be Hitler, to be the child getting sexually abused, to be the person getting murdered. And at the same time, God is the mystics, and the great surgeons, and the great teachers, and the great lovers. And most people aren't mature enough to realize that God can't truly come to know God unless God's brave enough to dive into the darkness of God with equal commitment to the light and the love of it all.

So, I love God because God's totally alone, and it is through that aloneness that God manifests the illusion of separation without which love has no purchase. If you're all alone, there's no way you can really experience love because you don't know what love is. Love is the flow of energy and information through empathic and compassionate connections itself.

Ben:  That's where the interdependence comes in that you talked about.

Paul:  I could never know Ben Greenfield and love him if I didn't have the illusion of separation from him. But really, what's looking through Ben's eyes at Paul and Paul's eyes at Ben is the same consciousness and that's God. And so, my love of God is really my love of the genuine desire to grow, and to experience, and to accept, and to honor, and to worship.

Ben:  Well, I think, Paul, that if there's one big takeaway that I got from this discussion and really a message that the universe seems to be sending me repeatedly of late, it is not only that need for interdependence and how much we do rely upon each other, but also the importance of learning how to set aside the ego, learning how to dissolve the ego, whether it comes to your eating, whether it comes to the way that you educate your children, whether it comes to the way that you treat yourself and your approach to your consciousness. The ego is a bitch.

Paul:  Well, it's a double-edged sword like everything in God, right? You got fear and you got connection. You got good and bad. You got light and dark. You got good and evil, right? Isaiah 45:7 in the Bible, King James Bible, “I create the light and the dark. I create good and evil. I, the Lord, do all these things.” But the ego is absolutely a gift from God because, without the ego, there isn't a sense of self, there's no way to navigate a society, a culture, or a world, or a sense of individuality.

So, first, you have to gain an ego to have that sense of identity and capacity. But then as we grow spiritually, we learn to let go of what's often referred to as the false ego, the I, me, mine, the territorial ego. And we grow to realize that the real truth of ourselves is that we are our enemy, which is why Jesus said, “Love thy enemy as thyself.” And what you find is that the basis of all religions is the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” And I've told people, “Look, if you just get rid of everything in the 900 and some pages of the Bible and just repeat, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you' for thousands of pages, maybe people would start getting it.” And when you look at religious motivation as the primary source of almost all wars, we come to the realization that the ego is not only a dangerous thing, but it brings us into the conflict.

So, just like my son had to learn about drugs and our kids had to learn about fire and sharp objects, we should have matured enough by now to realize that we all need each other and we don't have to beat the hell out of each other and torture each other and torture the planet. But the ego is something that has to both grow through the formative forces of life experience and is largely influenced by our parents, but then the spiritual quest is when you come to the point where you realize that the ideas that have been programmed into you aren't creating happiness and they're not creating freedom, and you have to reach deeper and question your own thoughts.

Steinar called that the birth of the awareness soul, the day you realize that your own ideas and the ideas of experts don't work for you and you question with deeper thoughts. So, if you have diametrically opposed experts on any topic, like, “Should I take cold showers?” and PhD so and so says, “No, it's bad for you,” and Wim Hof says, “It's good for you,” and he's got all his research behind them, then you have to do your own research, you have to jump in the cold water. Carl Jung says, “Intellectualism is a common cover-up for fear of direct experience.”

So, we reach the point where our ego takes us to where we can't rely on other people for direction. We have to be brave enough to have a direct experience. And I think that's what a lot of the illness is in the world today. It's people listening to somebody else's ideas and not listening to their body and having the direct experience and taking the responsibility for their own body, their own life, their own relationships, and overcoming their own shortcomings to become a better lover, to become a better friend, a better teacher.

Ben:  In a state of constant busyness and distraction, which is so rife in this modern era, it is very simple to ignore that still small voice in the silence–

Paul:  Yes, it is.

Ben:  –to allow your ego to drive the shit.

Paul:  But it's also very simple to end up on drugs and have your life falling apart, and your dick doesn't work, and your sex drive is gone, and your back hurts, your neck hurts, you can't shit, you can't digest. So, the real spiritual quest begins when you decide that your body is talking to you all along and you have to stop renting your problems to doctors and therapists and really fully participate in being your own gardener. And then you realize when you're your own gardener, bullshitting yourself doesn't help you or the garden.

And that's the real spiritual question. You don't need a religion. You just need relationships, right? If you want a real religion, just fall in love with somebody and be honest about their feedback and encourage them to know that you aren't criticizing them to beat on them, you're saying the things you're saying to help them be a better person. And when you love somebody enough, to be honest with them and you love yourself enough to trust the people you should be trusting or giving good feedback, then you've found the temple of the Divine.

Ben:  Well, Paul, I love you. I love your butter espresso. I love your salmon and eggs breakfast. I love your beautiful heaven house.

Paul:  Thank you.

Ben:  And I love that we could do this podcast together, so thanks.

Paul:  Yeah. I love you, too. You're a real honest seeker and you've often come to me with real deep honest questions about your own life and about everything. I always love seeing how full-on you are. I mean, you're deep into it, man. I get the joy of hanging out with a guy who I consider to be as much of a pioneer as I've been in my life and you're not a guy who's afraid to enter the rodeo and ride the bull, so congratulations. And it's lovely to see you put your children and your wife in such a high place in your life. And to me, you've entered the real truth of religion there.

Ben:  Thanks, man. Thanks. Well, I know we're releasing this on our respective channels. For my listeners, I'll go ahead and find links to all the books, each and every one that Paul mentioned, all the resources, my other podcast with Paul, and a lot more, and I'll put all that at BenGreenfieldFitness.com/paulchek3, Paul Chek, the number three. Stay tuned for more wisdom from Paul Chek and go ahead.

Paul:  Yeah. I was just going to say for my listeners, Ben, if you can give me the link to Kion and anything that you want to share, Penny will weave that into the podcast because I'd love them to have access to the depth of your genius. I remember the first time I heard you on a podcast, the first thing I said to myself was, “That's one fucking smart guy and I got to meet him.” So, here we are.

Ben:  Here we are for the, probably the dozens time we've got to hang out. So, I'm stoked. It's been a pleasure to get to know you over the past few years and I can't wait for the next show.

Paul:  Let's do it.

Ben:  Alright, man.

Paul:  Thank you, bud.

Ben:  Thanks.

Paul:  Blessings.

Ben:  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.

 

 

For the third time, I've joined Paul Chek at his home hidden away in the hilly backcountry of San Diego, California to interview him. And this time we take a deep deep dive into topics such as intuitive eating, consciousness, ego dissolution, education models such as Waldorf and unschooling, and much more!

Paul is an internationally-renowned expert in the fields of corrective and high-performance exercise kinesiology. For over twenty-five years, his unique, holistic approach to treatment and education has changed the lives of countless people worldwide. By treating the body as a whole system and finding the root cause of a problem, Paul has been successful where traditional approaches have consistently failed. Paul is the founder of the C.H.E.K (Corrective Holistic Exercise Kinesiology) Institute, based in California and the P~P~S Success Mastery Coaching Program.

He is a sought-after presenter and has consulted for organizations such as the Chicago Bulls, Australia’s Canberra Raiders, New Zealand’s Auckland Blues, the US Air Force Academy, and other elite organizations. He has produced over 60 DVDs and 17 advanced-level home study courses designed for the fitness and clinical professional. He is a strong believer in the essential role provided by practical training and has developed four advanced level training programs to provide hands-on instruction for the exercise and health industries.

Paul's CHEK Exercise Coach Program introduces fitness and exercise professionals to an integrated approach to conditioning; the C.H.E.K Practitioner Program is a two to four year advanced level program teaching corrective exercise and high-performance conditioning; the Golf Performance Series focuses on functional conditioning for golfers; the Optimal Health and Fitness Through Practical Nutrition and Holistic Lifestyle Coaching Program contains three levels and shows how to reach optimal health from the inside out. Thousands of people worldwide have been trained in one or more of these challenging and elite level certification programs.

Paul has also accrued three US patents for posture calibrating, hydrotherapy, and equipment inventions and has also designed several pieces of functional exercise equipment.

In this episode with Paul Chek, you'll hear:

-An espresso aficionado borne of necessity…4:30

  • Paul and his wife at one time worked 18+ hrs a day; espresso was an effective way to stay engaged and productive
  • Caregiver archetype
  • Studying functional medicine, Paul found people who had blood sugar issues, had coffee on an empty stomach
    • Inflammation, hormone regulation issues
    • Logic doesn't work to get people to kick a bad habit
    • People have a deep emotional connection to coffee
  • Came across some time-release vitamins; saw word “chelated” on the bottle
  • Saw a connection between chelation and coffee to help with above-mentioned issues
  • Began using organic butter, nut butters, yak butter tea
  • Laird Hamilton was a fan out of the gate
  • Encouraged people to put something in their coffee and eat a bit of food first thing in the morning

-Intuitive eating and a discussion on what is “God”…10:40

  • Difference between intuition and instinct:
    • Intuition is asking the totality of yourself a question and waiting for the answer
    • Only “God” can give you the soul; the soul is “God” in you
  • Ken Wilber is known to be able to “stop” his brain (see video)
  • Book: Destructive Emotions: A Scientific Dialogue With The Dalai Lama
  • Scientifically speaking, “God” can only be defined as “zero”
  • Book: Stalking the Wild Pendulum by Itzhak Bentov
  • Book: The Physics of Angels by Rupert Sheldrake
  • “What we call spirits and angels is the flow of information and energy that is anthropomorphized” (human interpretation)
  • Eternity, not infinity, is the zero point that we call “God”
  • Intuitive eating: One empties their soul, then asks if a particular food is what they should eat that day. They'll receive the answer according to the energy they feel, positive or negative
  • “Human beings will continue to invent technologies outside themselves until they've either destroyed the planet or they've come to the realization that everything they've created outside of themselves is a copy of a technology that exists within themselves.” -Rudolf Steiner

-An alternative view of human DNA…28:55

-Soul connection and ego dissolution…42:40

  • Ego dissolution often occurs when people are in a deep crisis
  • Books by Viktor Schauberger
  • Book: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
  • Set aside preconceived notions, and allow your soul to speak to your body
  • YouTube video: The Hunza Diet
  • A British medical officer found that the Hunza people were regular smokers and drinkers with no apparent ill effect on their longevity
  • The psyche is more powerful than physiology
  • 3-step process on learning to be guided at 3 levels:
    • Diet logging
    • Muscle testing (duckbill muscle testing)
      • The body will not support a lie
      • Addictions and unbelief inhibit honest biological feedback
    • Listening to the soul
  • The biggest challenge to soul connection is a connection of the ego
  • You have to have legitimate spiritual courage
  • Supplements muffle the signals of the soul

-Paul's thoughts on educating children…1:11:15

  • Ground children into the realities of the real world (meet halfway on buying toys)
  • Book: Parenting With Love and Logic
  • Education system designed to support the agricultural and industrial revolutions
  • BGF Podcast on Unschooling
  • Book: The Kingdom of Childhood: Introductory Talks on Waldorf Education
  • Steiner invented biodynamic farming, which has proven to be superior to other methods of farming
  • Minimum screen time, maximum engagement with the world and creative stimulants at a young age
  • We have a choice on how to raise our children: either allow screens and teachers or we can be proactive and use those as tools while retaining our role as primary educators

-The one question Paul Chek wishes he could answer but hasn't been asked…1:31:20

-And much more!

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

Resources from this episode:

-Podcast: Why Humans Need Winter, How Too Much Christmas Is Dangerous, Rites Of Passage & More With Paul Chek.

-Podcast: Heavy Rock Lifting, Building Your Own “Water Charging” Station, Biomechanical Fixes, Plant Medicine Journeys & More With Paul Chek.

All of Paul Chek's books

Chek Institute

-Book: Destructive Emotions: A Dialogue With The Dalai Lama by Daniel Goleman

-Book: Stalking the Wild Pendulum: On The Mechanics Of Consciousness by Itzhak Bentov

-Book: The Physics of Angels: Exploring The Realm Where Science And Spirit Meet by Rupert Sheldrake

The Michelson-Morley Experiment

-Youtube video: Gregg Braden's explanation of the”phantom DNA” experiment

-Book: The Mystic Spiral: Journey Of The Soul by Jill Purce

-YouTube video: String Theory Explained – What is the True Nature of Reality?

-Article: A Brief History Of The Whirling Dervish

-Book: Ancient Mysteries, Modern Visions: The Magnetic Life Of Agriculture by Phil Callahan

-YouTube series: The Dirt Facts by Paul Chek

-Book: The Second Mountain by David Brooks

-Book: Falling Upward by Richard Rohr

Books by Viktor Schauberger

-Book: Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

-YouTube video: The Hunza Diet

-Book: Parenting With Love and Logic by Foster Cline, MD

BGF Podcast on Unschooling

-Book: The Kingdom of Childhood: Introductory Talks on Waldorf Education by Rudolf Steiner

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