AS Seen On

By: Stephan Spencer

Introduction

Corey Boutwell
“The pivotal part in a transformation is when you begin to understand how difficult the process is going to be but you also have 100% trust that your body is going to help with that.”
Corey Boutwell

I always love geeking out about health with a fellow biohacker, and this episode is no exception.

Corey Boutwell is a fitness model who has won numerous fitness competitions. He is a WBFF

World Beauty Fitness and Fashion professional athlete.

He’s the host of the Corey Boutwell Podcast, a coach to entrepreneurs, and an expert on getting men to activate their Alpha.

When my friend and mentor James Schramko recommends I interview someone, as he did with Corey, I take it seriously.

In this episode, Corey shares a lot of his secrets to optimizing one’s strength, longevity, energy, and overall vitality. Some of his favorite tools and techniques, as you will soon hear, are infrared saunas, ice baths, DNA sequencing, Dutch tests, wearables like the Oura ring, fasting, breathwork, ayahuasca, cacao ceremonies, and sound healing. This episode is a real treat! So, without any further ado, on with the show!

In this Episode

  • [00:09]Stephan introduces his next guest, Corey Boutwell, a fitness model who has won numerous fitness competitions. He is a WBFF World Beauty Fitness and Fashion professional athlete.
  • [01:27]Corey explains what it takes to get a body into such shape that one can be a fitness model, win different competitions, and attract soulmates without effort.
  • [05:22]Corey shares the time he used to take in going to the gym and further shares doing ice baths and saunas to prevent wastage.
  • [07:59]Stephan shares his recent learning called hormesis, which gives the idea that you can have these positive stressors like a cold shock from an ice bath or intermittent fasting is a positive stressor as well.
  • [09:48]Corey explains his fasting method and shares an interesting story of a man who wanted to lose a whole bunch of weight and is now living his best life.
  • [14:33]Stephan also shares to the audience his fasting regimen in which he did a 42-day metabolic reset.
  • [18:12]Corey gives a tip to try a few different things to find out what works best, work at a particular time and stick to it.
  • [23:09]Corey shares running a few medicinal psychedelic mushroom ceremonies and explains the law of attraction and the importance of asking for help.
  • [26:43]Stephan wants to know how Corey ended up doing mushroom ceremonies.
  • [31:31]Corey shares about the cacao ceremonies and their benefits.
  • [36:28]Stephan asks about the frequency of cacao ceremonies and how it works.
  • [39:13]Stephan asks Corey about the details of microdosing mushrooms.
  • [47:05]Stephan shares the two important reasons for blessing foods: it transmute it and have gratitude for where that’s coming from like you’re alive.
  • [51:37]Corey explains the difference between bodybuilding and weightlifting.
  • [52:41]Stephan asks the most important thing to consider to avoid injuries.
  • [54:26]Corey shares learning everything himself and creates a training program.
  • [57:56]Stephan asks about vendors, companies or supplements, tools or resources that have been most impactful for Corey.
  • [64:32]Visit Corey Boutwells’ website to follow his journey, podcasts, programs and events.

Jump to Links and Resources

Corey, it’s so great to have you on the show.

Thanks for having me on, Stephan.

Let’s talk about what it takes to get your body into such shape that you can be a fitness model; you can be a winner of different competitions and attract your soulmate, or attract the opposite sex or whatever without effort.

Without effort would 100% be extremely nice, essentially. I think a few people can relate, I think a lot of men in particularly if they are at a sort of position in their life, I kind of think that every single male when you’re a kid, you see comic books, you see TV shows, you see movies, and you see heroes. And you just see that the power, the competence, the challenges that they’re overcoming, and what comes with that is how they look. 

You see the power, competence, and challenges all these superheroes are overcoming and what comes with that is how they look.

And ever since I was a little kid, I always looked up to heroes and wanted to follow heroes, and I wanted to be like a hero. And I sort of just knew, “Okay, well, one day, I’m going to do whatever it takes to get a body to look like one of those so that I could step into the identity of someone who is like a hero.” And what it really takes is a really short, simple answer, which is the hardest part, which people don’t understand because I’ve done this naturally without steroids, without performance enhancements, and I’ve had a body that I’ve been very proud of for like up to 10 years, and  I’m only 28. So I’ve been blessed with, I would say, the opportunity to stay consistent with training. And that’s really the key. The hard part is understanding when things get painful and when you want to finally get when you want to be attractive. 100% of the body is going to help with that. 

It is one thing that definitely draws people in, but it’s not everything. Like growing up, you think like, “Oh, I got the body, I’ll get all the girls,” Nope, not at first. So that is definitely one motivation. If you are in a sort of a state where you don’t have too much energy or you get down on yourself, and you want to have more confidence, it extremely helps. And also, it really helps if you have a business or just for personal development, depending on how you look at how you train, because it creates discipline. It takes a long time, and you have to deal with injuries and being like muscle word “humble”. You get humbled all the time with the training, but the one main key is staying consistent with your training pretty much every single week for your whole life. 

And when you look into the research and all the science and all those different things that are diving deep into the study is that you start to realize that resistance training in the body is anti-aging. Losing fat is anti-aging. It activates all your different anti-aging pathways and stuff like that as well makes your body more resilient and increases your immune system. And they’ve helped sort of what I believe is like a little bit of a stigma around bodybuilding per se. And instead of people thinking about going to the gym and training and thinking, “Oh, bodybuilding this or go through my body, like whatever it is, or there have been guys in the gym, or whatever it is.” But my motivation is completely different.

If you take responsibility, eliminate the stigma and understand energy maintenance, it makes it easier to go to the gym more consistently.

Like in terms of energy maintenance, health, and longevity, when you wake up in the morning like you brush your teeth, it’s a ritual, a habit, it’s completely super easy to do doing and think about it, right? But for training and going to the gym, I believe it should be the same thing because you’re looking at an event like, “I want to get fit for this wedding, or I want to get fit for this, I want to fit into these, I want to slim down or want to put on some muscle to get a girl or whatever.” Whatever that motivation that is, that one motivation once it’s there, and it’s done, it’s gone. And you go back to, “Oh no, now I’m not proud, now I’m not looking at this, and I don’t feel as confident anymore, and I don’t want to take my shirt off at the beach,” or something like that comes up instead which can be quite annoying and quite painful. Instead, if you take responsibility and sort of think about it in a different sort of way and take out the bodybuilding stigma and think of it as energy maintenance, then it makes a little bit it easier to get to the gym more consistently and build a body that you like as well.

How much time does it take at the gym?

Seriously, like in all honesty, I’d say half an hour five times a week minimum. What’s an hour really like? And this is doing it naturally. I’d say yes, five times a week, half an hour, doing it naturally without using anything extra like any sort of other crazy things. And so not crazy things but using saunas and ice baths and, and different other methods or diving deep into any other like biohacking type of science. Instead, this is just pure training.

Right? Do you do the biohacks, the infrared saunas and ice baths, and all that?

Yeah, I definitely do. One of the things in the WBFF competitions, it’s an untested competition. The majority of the bigger competitions is that are untested for performance enhancements. So as a natural competitor, I’m like, “Well, how can I get the upper hand? How can I be extremely as healthy as possible, in order to get a little edge on everyone,” and so don’t really deep into getting like my DNA tested. I went really deep into doing a whole lot of psychology work so that I could make sure that I was staying all consistent. And I was really disciplined, deep into like meditation so that I could heal as best as possible—obviously, the difference between sympathetic and parasympathetic states. And if you’re in a sympathetic state, what we’ve figured out for bodybuilding is that you only want to be in a sympathetic state for one hour a day, roughly one hour and a little bit more. And the rest of the day essentially wants to be like a monk, super Zen, in a parasympathetic state.

The pivotal part in a transformation is when you begin to understand how difficult the process is going to be but you also have 100% trust that your body is going to help with that. Click To Tweet

Because that one hour during the day, you want to be 100% warrior and 100% beast and really tested, pushed, and challenged yourself. And when you do your damage, like all the good stuff in your body, you damage all the muscles, and as your body heals for the rest of the day, the longer that you can remain in a parasympathetic state, the better you’re going to grow the more optimized your hormones are. But also, when it comes to ice baths and saunas and other things, they play a big role because they release heat shock proteins. Activate your two pathways and all the cold shock proteins and all those different things. 

So using those for recovery and using them when you get sick, or rundown, or tired because you would obviously know the studies. I’m sure that you might have talked about it beforehand, something crazy. Saunas and heat shock proteins increase, like prevent muscle wastage by like 95 or 98% or something absolutely ridiculous. If you’re getting into a sauna a couple of times a week, it literally just prevents pretty much all muscle wastage, which is crazy. Because I use fasting in my bodybuilding routines and things like that as well might cause disorder in there and prevent all this muscle wastage. And I can keep a healthy-looking, fit, attractive body.

That’s awesome. I just learned a term recently called hormesis. Dr. Pompa explained this at the Biohacking Conference was at a few weeks ago. And the idea is that you can have these positive stressors like a cold shock from an ice bath or intermittent fasting is actually a positive stressor as well. You can stack these stressors, and that up-regulates hormone production of things like growth hormone that will yield better health and longevity, just better performance. All sorts of great outcomes happen from up-regulating these hormones. 

Even just for an hour during the day, you want to be 100% warrior and 100% beast and really tested, pushed, and challenged.

I’m actually going to have Dr. Pompa back on this podcast. He was on several years ago, and we didn’t talk about Hormesis in that episode, so he’s going to come back, and we’re going to talk about hormesis a whole episode of it, so that’s gonna be fun. 

But the stuff that you do is definitely biohacking. It’s also just good common sense health to be intermittent fasting, or that gets the correct terminology, and accurate terminology is time-restricted eating because if you’re eating within an eight-hour window, or maybe even better, a six-hour window, and then the rest of that time you’re not eating anything, not taking in any real calories that get your autophagy going. So it’s eating your cells that are no longer good. Get chopped up, and that’s not gonna happen if you’re always chowing down Snickers bars all day long.

No, it definitely won’t. But I do fasting a little bit differently. So I don’t actually do intermittent.

Oh really, what do you do?

So I do like one 24-hour to 48-hour fast a week is essentially what I do. So I’ll do rough-in intermittent fasting; I probably do 12 to 14 every single day, not for the fact of intermittent fasting, though. I like to wake up and have a couple of hours before eating mainly for brain performance and to do some cardio. Because once you do, as you mentioned with the hormesis. If you’re a little bit fasted in the morning, it also works by having a coffee. If you do cardio and have something like a cold shower in there as well, you’re stacking all these reasons for your hormesis to work well. And then when you finally eat, I save all my carbs for later at nighttime so that I have good brain performance, that I have good energy, and that my body is in a state of burning fat and getting things through. And after doing a DNA test, understanding that my body is way more predisposed to thrive off of a low-carb diet which sucks because I like carbs so much.

Me too.

But this is what we got to do. Man, I was just like, “Please give me some bread and butter for the love of God.” But that we can’t do that. Not lots of mounts anyway. Not if I don’t want to feel as optimized as I do all the time, which is great. So I do things like that. And then I’ll do like one 24-hour fast, which is known or termed as a mini fast to a 42-hour fast. And I had this really interesting story because I didn’t know deep down to the fasting rabbit hole, and I was talking with my dad about it. And he wanted to lose a whole bunch of weight, and he doesn’t really exercise to do so much. And I was like, “Well, firstly, one, we should remove carbs as tracers experiment, and we’ll build you up to learn how to do some three-day fasts.” He lost, I think a total of 27 kilos-28 kilos, within a two and a half to three months period, healthily, because he was practicing a 24-hour fast every single week, he built up to doing 48-hour fasts not every single week but regularly build up to a three day fast, not every single week. 

It’s better to start small and work my way from there than do nothing about my health at all.

But he did a couple, and then he did a challenge of eight weeks in a row, where he did a three-day fast every single week, for eight weeks in a row. He had all of these tests done beforehand, overweight, he was like headed these tests, when the doctors had cholesterol was way too high. He had polyps inside of his gut, which was a little bit scary. And a warning said to get like his prostate checked and all those sorts of things for cancer and all these other health markers that were coming up. And now he’s fantastic. And he’s remained fantastic. And it’s been a year since then. And he only does like 24- to 48-hour fast, he like absolutely cleanse everything out. And it’s really interesting as far as like autophagy goes because it actually maxes out on the third day. It goes up to something like 800% on like, during the afternoon and on the third day. So it’s very interesting. So he went through all those, and all his health is just like on tyrannies. He looks great because he’s got more energy than all his friends. And at least friends complain about everything. And he’s like, “Well, I’m great.”

That is amazing. Wow. It probably saved his life.

That’s what we do. That’s why we said don’t take that lightheartedly as well because we had a little scare. I was like, “Well, we got to do something,” I want my dad to be absolutely thriving, and his relationship with food changes as well. Because obviously, if you do any sort of prolonged fasting or some sort of any type of period where you’re restricting food for a long period of time, the food that you choose is, with the relationship they have with food and how food tastes completely changes. And he’s completely changed. They went from chocolates at nighttime, snack and chocolates. And now he just has like Greek yogurt and berries and like manuka honey. He’s just; he’s just living his best life, which is so good to see. And I’m so proud. So thanks for bringing, like mentioning that during that story.

All it takes is one person listening to this, and they relate to the story, and they make some behavior changes or they encourage a loved one to do that. And you’ve saved a life just by being on the show.

Yeah, it’s so true, especially if they want to go through probably actually a course which I explained the entire thing, not just like a shameless plug, but like if anyone did want to want to know, you can dive into the fasting. There are resources everywhere. And I have some podcast episodes on that as well. But will be which explained.

I save all my carbs for nighttime so that I have good brain performance.

Very cool. So I did a different kind of fasting regimen. I did a 42-day metabolic reset. And my eating window was eight hours a day, no snacking. So it was just two meals in that eight-hour window. And then those two meals were completely devoid of carbs and oils. It was four ounces of protein, four ounces of fruits, and four ounces of vegetables. And you get unlimited amounts of high water content vegetables. Like for example, you can have a huge salad. Lots of spinach if you want to or unlimited amounts of cucumbers or something like that. But the denser vegetables are four ounces. That’s it. And that was hard. That was hard, but I pulled it off. I did the full 42 days; you’re supposed to do another 30 days of a maintenance diet to just kind of keep your body in this place of expecting not to get to too much junk. And I completely blew it after that. Hello, sugar. I missed you. But I lost 20 pounds, and I lost 4% body fat. Well, we’re down to 13% body well. I’m back up to 15 now or 14.8%.

When did you do this?

I did this about two months ago. I finished about a month ago. I’m not going to repeat it. I don’t need to, but I lost quite a lot of visceral fat. Now my stomach is much flatter. It’s not like a washboard, but it’s noticeable. It’s pretty cool. So that works for me. I followed Sachin Patel’s protocol. Well, it was; I don’t know if I can talk about this too much on this podcast; I guess it was water. Okay, my stool was water. But once I started eating carbs again, that went away. And you weren’t supposed to go hog wild on carbs after the 42 days; you’re supposed to kind of ease into it and just have some little bit of starchy vegetables optionally and not have a bunch of French fries and stuff, but, like I said I there’s a difference. I’ll have to tell you there’s a difference between restricting and suppressing. I was totally suppressing those 42 days. One week to go, oh my goodness, I can’t wait.

Definitely suppressing, so I would recommend restricting, and then it’s a little easier to keep it in check, but I want to get to a place where I’m in; it’s kind of a happy medium where I don’t feel deprived. I went two and a half years without eating sugar for the most part, and it was just during holidays like my birthday or Christmas that sort of thing where I’d eat desserts and then the rest of the time no desserts. I went two and a half years like that, and then I completely fell off. But I didn’t feel that deprived, because I would allow myself to have your sugary desserts on holidays. Halloween is coming up. 

I think it also depends on you have to try a few different things to find out what works best for you and then work at a certain time and then stick to that. That’s like one thing, and fitness competitions that like you can’t do are when you set an intention for like a competition. There’s no room for any movement for whatever it is, or like cheating on your diet or eating sugar or something like that. Which I think is, can be, depending on how you look at it can be unhealthy or very healthy. Because as you mentioned, I really liked that term. So thanks for saying that. I really like those two terms; I think that’s very helpful because a lot of people when they enter a bodybuilding competition, will suppress the whole time instead of having a little bit of restriction there instead. 

But what is really good as you have something to do, and if it’s like sort of your lifestyle. And that’s something that you’re going to do, and you have alike you have an event, we have an excuse, we have to stick to something, and you have a good relationship with it, where you’re not suppressing because if you have an event and you’re suppressing it, you’ll never stick to it. Or you will relapse afterward. But if you have something that you can work towards and be proud of and have some, like the right excuse to do something, I find that a lot easier to actually get through and do things.

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And it also makes a big difference. If you incorporate it into your identity, the person who stops smoking or changes their diet, and that’s a behavior versus who they are now. Big difference, right? I’m a non-smoker is an identity. Whereas I don’t smoke, until when? Like, how long are you going to go if you can start smoking again?

So you want nicotine tablets away? 100% agree. So I find that with a lot of people that I work with, the entrepreneurs that I work with, a little exercise that we do, which is very simple. And it’s very easy. We have a discussion because a lot of people sometimes just don’t have the time to sort of self-reflect to have those moments. So they kind of get me into like, “I’ll give me some time to think about myself.” 

And we’ll do an exercise. It’s just really simple. We’re just like, what does the best version of yourself look like? And let’s write it down. Let’s map it out ad you completely map it out. And with all the men that I work with every single time, fit and healthy comes up every single time. And then we just start looking at, if this is the best version of yourself, what does this person do every single day? So easy, just working on the fundamentals like, well, they probably get up just a little bit earlier, when they go to bed a little bit earlier. The first thing they do is drink a bunch of water in the day, and they go to the gym most days, and they do cardio, and they eat healthy food. And they have a little bit of time to; they eat like 80% healthy 20% soul food is what we like to call it. 

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

And we just map all those things. And we just go for like 100 different things throughout the day for just like all the little things that they would do to be the best version of themselves and how they’d like make just a little bit of time here so that they can really optimize their brain and their energy. Because ultimately, like people, entrepreneurs, or business owners, they’re the most important part of the business, like they’re the leaders. I think there was literally a study done. I can’t remember where I read it. It was one of the leadership books. And it was like if a leader is down or a little bit like unproductive, it’s like the whole business drops by like that same amount percent something like that. Don’t quote me on a comment, but I know it was quite drastic wasn’t “Oh, my goodness.” And it was literally like the most important thing is the CEO, the leader and the mood that they’re in the decisions that they’re making, and the energy that they’re in. And people want to be the best version of themselves and start a business and get themselves optimized. 

All those different things, when we’re looking at just what they do on a day, are very simple. When we look at those and go, “Okay, I like doing this in the exercise.” Let’s just picture yourself right now, like if you do, if you’re just doing everything that you’re doing currently, at the moment, for the next five years, what does it look like? For the next ten years was look like? The next 20 years? What’s it look like? Then just working our way up. And there was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s disgusting. That’s horrible. I hate that.” And then they do the like, “Oh, this is the worst is literally a picture this was gonna happen.” “Oh my goodness.” 

And then we do. “Okay, so if you do all the things, the best version of yourself does.” I mean, look at five years from now, ten years from now, 15-20, we keep going up. That looks like heaven. That’s amazing. It’s like everything I want. We had a little realization, just like look at all these little things that this person is doing within a day, a man just got to keep consistent with them now. That’s sort of like removes imposter syndrome because I believe that if you start doing all the things that the best version of yourself does today, the only variable that is preventing you from getting all the things that you want manifesting your dreams and your goals and your ideas is just time.

So that’s cool. So you said manifesting your dreams that sounds a little woo-woo.

Yeah, it is. I dive in deep into the woo-woo, not dive deep, but I dabble into the woo-woo stuff a little bit.

I dabble into the woo-woo stuff a little bit.

It was, tell me more about that. How does that work well for your coaching and into your own personal life?

Well, we actually run quite a few like, like medicinal like psychedelic mushroom ceremonies. I do that quite often quite regularly and microdose quite a bit. But it sort of started off just a diamond tip item. Everyone’s read Think and Grow Rich, the book, right? Well, one of the best books in the world. And one of the things that stuck with me out of that book was the fact that the law of attraction they have more science around the law of attraction than what they do for gravity. And I was like, “What?” I think that is absolutely insane. There’s one part of the book that I completely took, and it changed my perception immediately. And it was like, “Well, this is the case, then surely, we can do like other things.” 

And in terms of just like, manifestation, visualization, positive affirmations, being in your best energy,  I’m trying to think of some experiences because of every time that I’m following along the path of my own hero’s journey, like one of the parts in the hero’s journey. If you look at the model, it is when you answer the call, and you start like diving into the world of the unknown, is if you do answer the call correctly, and you’re on the right path as you get supernatural aid is the term. Meaning like the universe or the unconscious is going to serve you. So when you make the right decision, synchronicities start happenings. We talked about it on our podcast. With thinking, just think like, well, this is amazing. And it’s just really small things to me. Like, for me, I’ll just start thinking like, “Okay, I’m working on doing these things.” And, man, I actually kind of need some more money at the moment, like I’m upgrading with the few things that are happening, I should probably work on getting some more clients, and then I won’t even do anything. And the next day, I have two people ring me up, and they’re like, “Hey, I want to start coaching.” Great. 

Okay, I’m ready to be like, get into the big game, jump up a level into the fitness competitions. I want to win a pro card. I think it’s time for me to do that. And I competed against all these other guys and performance enhancement drugs and stuff like that. And I remember looking at them behind the show, “Well, I’m screwed. This guy’s fantastic.” And then I said to my like, force myself my own mind, I was like, “Well, no, I’m not.” I’m like, manifested this. Everything in my life right now is serving this one point I’ve won. And I knew that I won, like the day before the show, like because you see each other throughout the day, everything was the day I was like, I’ve already won this. And there was no doubt in my mind, I literally onstage before they called out like my name to when I stood there when they called out number seven, I got ready to stand for it. And they called out my name and Mr. Ford. And I was like, “Yep, that was me.” So that was, like, really quite fantastic. But there’s a whole bunch of things like that as far as opportunities that have happened. Same with partners, relationships. Ready for a girlfriend now. Boom! Walked into my life. It’s just insane.

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That’s awesome.

But that’s when you know you’re on the right path. And you’re on the right journey. And you’re doing the right things for sure.

Yeah, you do get the supernatural assistance. They’re just waiting there for you to ask, really.

Yeah, so true. Asking for help is so important. I actually got that out of my mushroom journey once. We were just talking about it, for I don’t know how long it was in the journey, but we were just talking about how important it was to ask for help or imagine some sort of, you could say, energy,  that’s just around all the time. And every time you’re frustrated or stuck, people also like giving help, and they like rewarding people and stuff like that. So asking for help is extremely important. And we’ll just blow our minds. And for the next like, couple weeks after that. We were asking people for help in our own lives, and we were just discussing it because he had like a good like men’s group. And it was just amazing. Just some of the results that come up. They were like had this thing from a house. And I was stressing out like so much for us, there’s one person for a little bit of help, and it’s just solved all my problems. So I find that quite important. 

How did you end up doing mushroom ceremonies experiences? Or was it Ayahuasca that you started with? And then you went to mushrooms? Like how did this all unfold for you?

Asking for help is so important.

So the first time I took mushrooms was just being a kid in Amsterdam, trying them out. I think a lot of people who have used them recreationally have just been like, “Well, these aren’t supposed to be used recreationally.” That’s for sure. I ended up just thinking the whole time, and I was like, “Well, this is like crazy. Where’s my brain going?” I was like, okay, so this isn’t like the sort of stuff because I’ve always sort of been a little bit in tune with being in consciousness, being the best version of yourself, being in really good energy, and just being aware of different things. So this like need some respect around it, for sure, some reverence and how to use these. So one of the next times after those I did it was for a personal development exercise with my ex-partner and me. And it was a beautiful exercise we did together because we’ve just attacked the start of our relationship. And we just wanted to enhance it, we just really wanted to enhance, and we did this like, like a full proper ceremony together. I was just asked, but we went through, we set intentions, we discussed all the things that we wanted to feel and talk about prior, we had like a week to sort of feel into it. 

And after we had the mushrooms, we had this mind-blowing love experience. And we get to talk about all these different things. Sort of like wants and desires that we didn’t even realize that we needed or wanted to talk about. And being in fitness competitions, one of the things that I’m very aware of is, the more love that you give, the more love that you receive is also going to put your body into a parasympathetic state. So I wanted to maximize that, a little bit selfish, unselfish there, but it’s a hack you mean you can use it. So we did those that brought ourselves together, like really well, we had exercise, we just wrote little things to each other. And things that we had this very conscious conversation, and it was amazing. It was just mind-blowing;  that sort of opened the perceptions to the world of how important it can really be because after that, we were just so fantastic. And from then, I dive into an Ayahuasca journey. And Mother Ayahuasca was just said to me; basically, you’re not ready yet. Just come in, I just went off, “Jesus, this is quite insane.”

Cacao is just chocolate in one of its most raw forms. And it’s essentially the way chocolate is made.

And then I’ve made quite a few mushroom journeys with men and men’s group afterward, where we usually do like a cacao ceremony. Or somewhere someplace we have done like sound healing ceremonies, as well. But they’re usually start off with a  cacao ceremony that will dive into the heart space of being extremely appreciative or in a hot space of gratitude. Not just for like, for life, for being alive, for being the positions that we all are. And just to summon really good energies for the mushroom journey. Everyone would say a poem or something like that. And then we’d also set tensions for the ceremony as well. And we’d always go somewhere out in nature, where it would be secluded and quiet. And yeah, we’d run these ceremonies and just get so much out of them, we’d have liked. It just is such a good mix of fun. So it wasn’t all just like, “Oh, let’s self develop,” because we just kind of let you just let the mushrooms do what they need to do is just like the medicine is a lot more intelligent than we are. So we just jump in, we have like a whole, the whole lot of fun. We try to notice everything that comes up. We self-reflect, we ask big questions, we allow each other to express in ways of, however people want to express whether that’s singing, dancing, like whatever it is. It’s quite profound. 

Some of the experiences that we’ve had and how it’s really helped us to literally be better versions of ourselves and have a more positive outlook on life and make and make better decisions and do things like ask for help or not feel so shy about sharing our talents. I grew up through my childhood singing, dancing, and acting, and I got really nervous about singing my whole life because my mom was like a singing teacher. And I always have a fear of judging from my mom, “Oh my god, see, I’m a good singer.”I wasn’t too on- our last mushroom journey, where I basically like sung in front of everyone to cut the story short, and ever since then, I’ve sort of been really comfortable like singing in front of people. And I was like, it feels great. Now that absolutely not. On the podcast, I was more making noises with like my throat. It was quite weird. Like channeling some sort of light energy, some sort of sound healing ceremony that was happening but yeah, in terms of just like being around people not over a podcast but being around people in my space that I know I’m comfortable with like I’d never sing, but I can sing now which is fantastic which can sort of coming out of that okay can actually like sing-along them life people judge me for my singing.

Well, you can work on that; your next step is to sing on your podcast.

The next step, sing on a podcast with Stephan.

That’s right. What is a cacao ceremony? For somebody who’s not familiar with that, is that cacao, it doesn’t sound like an illicit drug or anything.

No, it’s not, but it’s really quite fantastic to explain cacao. Cacao is just chocolate in one of its most raw forms. And it’s essentially the way chocolate is made now, as I think it was an old company. It wasn’t Nescafe or something else that started with a V. Essentially, Nescafe and this other company figured out how to pound sugar, pulverized milk, then they made that with chocolate before cacao was actually made. Before in a very ancient experience like with the Aztecs and had this weird swinging like a pot thing that they would make. And they get the cacao bean and sort of just do a little bit of like cooking or something to it. So it would go brown. 

Begin with a solid ‘why’ in mind, let that serve as the foundation for everything I do, and be inspired by those who’ve already made it.

But the old school Spanish, like settlers and boat, people would literally they’d say things about the cacao like this miracle wonder food that you don’t have to eat once a day, and everyone would be in their best energy. And we figured out recently that cacao in its in that stage, and like ceremonial grade, cacao is like the highest form of antioxidants you can get out of any food period. It’s insane. The amount of flavonoids and stuff in there, it’s amazing. And it’s like extremely high in all your minerals like it’s including like cacao butter, and different like the fats and healthy fats in there as well. It’s just fantastic. It’s like this superfood of just essential vitamins, minerals, and just a whole bunch of other good stuff. But it also has a few things in there that are only found in cacao, and I can’t remember the exact names they something like.

And essentially, what they do is they sort of literally open the valves and things in your heart and then release these chemicals in your brain. And then they sort of get you this really weird, high feeling, if it’s done properly. And obviously, if you’ve known a little bit about the chakras like the cacaos is right in the heart chakra literally like it opens valves in your heart like it’s quite insane. If you do a proper cacao ceremony, where you have a decent dose of cacao, and it’s the most chocolate thing that you’ve ever tasted in your entire life. And to be honest, a lot of the things that have manifested you use the word manifest in my life come from one cacao ceremony that I did in Bali. I’d say when I was 22-23. And it’s crazy. We’ll get into it if you like, but it did I say already there. And everything that I figured out in that ceremony is like happening in my life at the moment, insane.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces by
Joseph Campbell

Essentially, once you drink the cacao, it takes like 5 to 10 minutes. Usually, you do a little meditation, like a little bit of visualization, and give a lot of appreciation. Post drinking the cacao. And then you just go through meditation, sort of seeing what comes up. And it’s really interesting because you do get visuals like what you get on mushrooms. When you close your eyes sometimes, and you think, and you can clearly see pictures that you’re thinking. The cacao works in a way where things will just start popping out. But it’s really profound. And I like to call there’s one thing that happens has happened commonly among people that I know and people that have coaches, we call it the cacao flashes, where you’re that’s just people that you just really love just pop up, and you’re like, “Ah, God, I love you so much.” Or may you just be so happy? And people just sort of pop up in your own mind. And you’re like, “Wow, this is really cool. I love all of these people.” This is quite fascinating. Or you just start to come up and be overwhelmed with feelings of love. So it’s a really good thing to do. 

Like I found with some girls that I have seen before, that works well because they just get into this real intimate space which is really well. But every single girl that I have done it with has cried not for the sake of crying but just an overwhelming I’ve just like I feel so much love right now. As a guy, I didn’t cry but also felt like, “Yes, I feel so good and so happy and so positive.” But you feel warm and fuzzy in the chest. Like it’s really weird. Like it’s an actual sensation. It’s not warm and fuzzy, isn’t like, “Oh, like I feel the love right now,” and it’s like a physical sensation. Like what’s going on here. And then when you start meditating, it’s just a really beautiful, positive experience. It jacks up your parasympathetic state right up so that you have more sympathetic tolerance. So when you’re doing things like training really hard, going to the gym, trying to crush goals, trying to deal with as much stress as possible. You’ve just trained; I like to say that the cacao ceremony is the best way to get into the gratitude gym. And it’s like super gratitude training. It’s basically what it is because you can practice gratitude every day. And three points of gratitude equals 20% happier if you’re doing that every day consistently, which is a little fact that I really like shout out to Brian Johnson for that one.

So when you’re getting calcium or you’re getting like really grateful. So that’s sort of like getting into the gym by getting ready to do a really big lift but for gratitude, which is quite fantastic. Because it does play out later on, like in your entire life, it’s not like you just do it one day, and it goes away. Once you’ve had that experience, it’s there forever, and it’s very easy to draw back on.

How often do you do cacao ceremonies? And you do them with shamans? Or do you do them on your own? Or just with friends? How does that work?

I microdose mushrooms quite regularly, mainly to get really creative, or to enhance my reflective ability.

So we just do them on our own. Well, you do them by yourself. We do them with friends. We do with a group of people. So what I did in Bali, we did sort of with a shaman, but I wouldn’t call it a shaman because you’re not exactly going on a crazy journey. I’d say they’re more of a facilitator. And like the one we did in Bali, we essentially bless the cacao, which is a bit weird woo-woo cacao a little bit much as I need to bless it but okay. But they didn’t talk about where it comes from; the origins and stuff are interested in that and what I dive into is the science of it to understand what actually like what chemicals are in there specifically. I have had an article and a podcast on this for people who were listening as well; I’m sure link that below but I found it super interesting. And I wanted to make sense because I like physical stuff. 

Obviously, being in the gym, I like science; I like whatever makes sense. And I can feel it in my body and do stuff with it with my body. So there’s not exactly a massive need for Shaman. But the guide and the facilitator, basically just if you go to any normal meditation facilitation, is basically what it was, but using cacao puts yourself into a state of gratitude and taking advantage of the minerals and some of the really good chemicals to get you into a really good positive headspace. But there are people who do cacao ceremonies for a little bit like every day, and they just have a small one instead of a coffee every morning. And some people take them before bed because it has like theanine and some other things in there that can help you get a good sleep, which is interesting if you are caffeine tolerant because there is a little bit of caffeine in there as well. 

However, if you do them in a group setting or a personal setting, it depends on where you use it for. So I like doing cacao ceremonies  when there’s a reason to do them. So I like doing them when, for example, we’ve all got a group of friends, or I’m coaching a group of people, and everyone’s talking and everything sort of starting to synchronize, and is that okay? I think at the moment it would be really good for everyone is if we jump into the cacao ceremony, see what everyone thinks and then cool, let’s do one. And then we do it super positive for gratitude. And then the next few months, everyone’s just kicking goals happy in the best light heart space and good energy. Same if you’re either talking to someone or if you want to escalate a relationship in terms of an intimate relationship, or you just want to get close to a partner, or if you just want to get really close to a friend and have a deep conversation. Cacao ceremonies are also really important for that as well. Or they can be like a really good tool that you can use to actually use those. So I like using these tools that sort of instead of using weights or whatever machines in the gym, using all these different little other tools in terms of enhancing life, good energy, positive energies or getting closer to people saying like that.

Finding something that resonates with you can be extremely important and can bring a whole lot of benefits.

Some of these things you can microdose, like Ayahuasca, you can microdose, and I think –

Have you microdose Ayahuasca?

I have not even done any of this.

You know a lot about yeah.

I’ve experienced a psychedelic trip just from breathing. 

Breathing.

Yes. From breathwork in India. And that was amazing. Everything. No, actually that the first time I got a like a trip like that was actually just getting touched on the head by a monk. I was a Deeksha. I wasn’t doing any special breathing or anything. 

Yeah, I remember you saying that. I’d encourage the cacao; the cacao one’s very mild; it’s not psychedelic at all. There are no psychedelic properties, but it does have a very awesome touch. But yes, in terms of microdosing. I microdose mushrooms quite regularly, mainly to get really creative, or to enhance my reflective ability or the space, especially if I’m in a social setting. Once you’re comfortable in a social setting, I wouldn’t ever recommend doing microdosing mushrooms at all if you haven’t done them a few times in a social setting beforehand. But sometimes, if I just want to sort of like read the energies of social setting to figure out who I need to be, and show up as a better version of myself because I can read things a little bit better. It helps. And one of the best things that I find about mushrooms is if you do those and microdose in those situations, is after you’ve done them a couple of times, you don’t need it anymore, which is great. You’ve done that a few times, and you’re like, “I don’t need a microdose here, and I needn’t do anything.” I can just read this really well because I’ve experienced this beforehand, which is fantastic. 

Very cool.

Myself personally, anyway.

I have an episode of this podcast. It’s all about micro-dosing Ayahuasca.

Whoa.

Denis Notten

Link it below; I’d love to listen to that.

I will. Let’s talk about your cacao ceremony in Bali and how all the stuff you came up with in that ceremony has manifested or come to pass.

When you start to see results and you are more determined to keep going, that's when you know you're on the right path. Click To Tweet

Yeah, so that was really cool. So remember, I think what’s really important that a lot of people take for granted is just setting a space like to think or to figure a whole bunch of things out themselves. And there’s not until because when I’m traveling, because I was traveling at the time, and I went there, just like by myself to sort of uncovering all these things out about myself, that was the intention. But even just that, I was just noticing throughout a day of just getting a coffee, worrying about what’s going to eat, about what’s going to do during the day like moving around. You’re going to write here, you’re going to do some work on your laptop here, or whatever it is, you’re not setting any intentional space to reflect or work on yourself. 

So I find that sometimes the people who struggle to meditate, going to and doing something like a cacao ceremony, or sound healing or meditation, you got to find which one likes or resonates with you. Finding one that does resonate with you can be extremely important and can bring a whole lot of benefits. So I did just that for like a whole bunch of breathwork. And cacao ceremony when I was there, I was super open-minded. I was just like, “Yep, and I’m down for anything; let’s just see what happens.” 

I realized that I should be blessing my food. And everything I consume supplements, water, everything.

So the first thing is we get there, and there’s a whole bunch of everyone’s like hugging each other. I’m like, “I get a spiritual community in Bali. I’ll chill over here. I’m good.” And then we went in, and everyone, we all sat there and talked about cacao. And then we did like this crazy blessing of the cacao. And I was like, “Oh, gosh, this is weird. I’ll bless it too. Let’s do it” And after we drank, we just lay down, and the facilitator guided us through a meditation. And when we’re there, which was quite like profound, was it took a little while for it to sink in. But because there was – it was like a 15-minute meditation was that things, obviously, we’re going to come up within like the 10 minutes of just sort of unraveling my brain and sort of everything that was happening on the front end and went on to say all the fear parts of your brain. Everything sort of just like, we just figured out and then when allowing me to get into the high-performance part of my brain, and start to think about things that are extremely important things, that are really want: things that are I really want to like manifest or have, and goals. 

And I remember, writing down at this time was like, ‘So I want to be a professional athlete, I want to be one of the best in the world, and competing for what I want to do, I want to have a tribe of people that I work with closely that are entrepreneurs that are making an impact in changing the world. I want to do something like run my own podcast or do something like that, where I’m going to, again, make an impact. And also, which challenges me to be the best version of myself and learn as much as possible in order to continuously grow.’ And it’s just a few other little micro goals in there as well. And I remember, thinking about all these things, and I was 20 minutes in, and I’d sat up, and I was like, “Oh my goodness, I just feel all these things out.” This is exactly what I want to do. This is what’s making my heart like; this is what I’m feeling so energized right now because this is it. This is what I’ve wanted to do.

 I’ve been unclear about my goals and my purpose, and everything. And this is it. Like I need to go and write this down. But I couldn’t because we’re stuck in this meditation; everyone’s laying down with their eyes closed, like having a good old time, like in the meditation. “Ah, gosh, what am I gonna do?” So laid back down, closed my eyes, and I was like adding another link onto the end of the chain. I just dropped back straight into that part of the meditation. And then went through and figured everything out. Again, I went through and just went deeper and deeper of like more details for how I wanted to do it. And then I’ve got up 10 minutes later and, “Oh my gosh, I need to write this down.” Like I can’t forget like these are my goals is what it is. I figured it out. I can’t forget it was still meditating had to lie back down. This happened another two times. 

I’m getting up being super frustrated. Like okay, “I can’t forget this.” So I’m just like running it through. Like in my mind, the whole story of what I was thinking about, and as soon as we finished and like we propped up, everything was getting ready. The facilitator was up on the side because he was like walking around. And I remember everyone was getting up to go, and I basically like to race straight to my shoes. The facilitator looked at me, put his hands together and bowed and stared at me in the eyes. I put my hands together, bow and then sprinted out of there as quick as I could jump on my scooter went back home. I wrote out two pages of exact goals, of exactly what I wanted. And they’ve just slowly started happening. Like every year, every three months, all the things in there have started to happen. 

It’s all mind-muscle connection.

And I couldn’t exactly rattle off exactly what I’ve put in there right now. But if I went through because I think the last time I went through was halfway through, I thought maybe eight months ago, 8-7 months ago, and I was like, “Yes, this is good.” But before that, I was like a year and a half ago I went through, and I went, “Yes, this is good.” Like on track. So it’s just like really quite a beautiful thing which you know, setting that time. And having that cacao, being in really good energy and giving your body and your brain the best chance as possible to really reflect on you, and what you want, and what you want to create, who you want to be, and what you desire. Really letting it do that was just really powerful, especially for me, and I’ve just been sprinting since. I am having a blast on it.

It seems like you connected with your higher self and collaborated with your higher self. Because your higher self has the bigger view like your higher self is up above the treetops and in that ceremony connect really well with your higher self and collaborate, and come up with these incredible goals, missions, values, visions, and all. Really cool.

Yeah, 100%. That’s a really good way of putting it. It was more like my highest self was like, “Here’s all the stuff we’ve been asking for.” Thanks.

Yeah, high five. Quite beautiful.

Yeah, high five. Thanks, mate.

Let’s for a second about this, this blessing of the cacao thing that you mentioned a couple of times. I think it’s kind of funny because I’ll tell you I did not bless my food or drink prior to this year. Except on – like my wife is Jewish and so Friday Night Dinner, Sabbath, you know, there’s a blessing over the wine and over the bread. And other than that was just like, chow down—kind of mindlessly. But then after the veil was thin for me after that experience of – my listeners are sick and tired of hearing it, I’m sure. But you know, that whole thing happens, and I go into it other episodes. I realized that I should be blessing my food. And everything I consume supplements, water, everything. 

For two reasons: One is it transmutes it. It doesn’t just transform it; it transmutes it. And so, even if you have a Snickers bar, you can make it a healthy Snickers bar with the power of your intention and blessing. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Dr. Emoto and how he would do these experiments on water and form crystals out of the water. And water that had an intention placed on it of love or forgiveness, or compassion, or whatever would have all these beautiful crystal structures to it. And then negative thoughts or feelings that were projected onto the water would create these horrible, ugly crystals. It’s wild, really, really wild. And this is repeatable. It’s legit. So that’s one piece of it; you actually make it healthier. 

One of the beautiful things is the respect that you have around food.

And the second, which is as important if not more, is to have gratitude for where that’s coming from, like you’re alive. That is a gift. If you’re good-looking, that is a gift; if you are financially well off, that is a gift. If you have great friends, great family, if you’re, you’re smart. Yes. You didn’t necessarily earn these rights and so having gratitude for that Snickers bar that you’re about to eat or whatever it is because you’re alive and you don’t have to beg for handouts on the street like some people do. That’s important.

For sure. I actually dived into some of the research of it with Paul Chek and Ben Pekulski because I remember with the cacao that was like the first time that I was introduced with people blessing food. It was not even food was just like blessing the plant but is instead of just doing like a normal blessing. It’s quite physical qualities that everyone was screaming like, “Go work!” Yeah, that was insane. It was a bit much. But diving into the research was a blessing a little bit, and I was looking into Paul Chek and Ben Pekulski. And I think Ben Greenfield we’re talking about literally just setting the intention before, like biologically before you eat your food. And take a second as your whole body gets into a state where it removes the sympathetic stress allows the parasympathetic to come up digestion, like enzymes, hormones, gut health, everything like juices liquid, or just sort of pour into the body and get it really ready before eating. 

When you’re eating, you get the maximum amount of absorption as well and nutrients out of the food that you’re actually eating. And I believe it to be very true, like back to the fasting thing, again, is every time that I do a longer fast because the only time that I really blessed food for myself is when I do them as it is at dinner time. Because I think like coffee I’ve had the day I’ve gotten through my stuff for me, it’s like, the way that I like to eat with things and do stuff structurally at the moment is like a sort of making the excuse that for myself is like, “Hey, get the best food every time.” But dinner really works well for me because that’s like cooked, prepared food that I’ve put time, and energy, and effort to. So before actually eating, allowing that time and setting that intention, which I think is quite fantastic, is to get your body completely ready. And it absorbs everything, which is biologically fun. Insane.

Nice. All right, well, we’re about out of time. So I want to switch to lightning round mode here, where we just quickly go through a bunch of questions and see how far we can get in the next few minutes. Sound good? 

Okay. 

All right. Awesome. So, let’s start with, is there a difference between bodybuilding and weightlifting?

Yes, for sure. Okay, big time. How far do you want to go?

Just a couple of seconds’ explanation.

You got to work your way up to that; you can’t just do.

Okay, so bodybuilding is generating a stimulus in your muscles on resistance for the purpose of making it grow, while weightlifting is your body’s ability to generate force and actually move weights. So in terms of – I know bodybuilding has ruined like the stigma because everyone thinks alike, “Bodybuilders big weightlifters.” But essentially, I want to lift like the lightest weight amount possible and still generate a stimulus within my muscle in order to make it grow that I don’t get injured and still grow, and then use a heavier weight once that stimulus is no longer enough.

Awesome. And how do you avoid injuries? What are the two or three most important things to do?

It’s really. It’s all mind-muscle connection. The most important thing you can do is learn about your body. And the more you learn about the body, the more fascinating it is. And then like the more you learn about the body, it’s actually more fun you have in the gym, it’s really weird every person has to learn about the how their body works, when they get in the gym, “I got to have like more fun here.” And that’s literally it, learning how your muscles work and contracting them in a way that is extremely specific. In order to obviously generate a response or a stimulus is the best way possible. But the more you learn about your body, and you see things that will prevent you from getting injuries. 

Also being aware and attune to your body. That when you start to get little niggles or anything is when you have to go over and rechange your exercise routine. Because bodybuilding prevents injuries, but like any sport, if you’re a runner, you’re a sprinter, and you’re running all the time. Eventually, because you’re making the same movement pattern every single day, something’s gonna go. If you have had the same bodybuilding routine for years, it’ll something will start to move, but it’s basically perfecting your routine. And then if something starts to niggle, you just change a little bit and then just constantly slowly change it and adjust it to how you are with your injury routines. 

And when you get injured as well when you do get a little bit injured, don’t stop training; learn how to train a little bit differently, and that’ll prevent it. I’ve had like little niggles and stuff, but I rarely get injured now, and when I do, I manage it effectively really well when I’m back in the gym a week later.

It sounds like it would be beneficial to work with a trainer or at least a coach to help you do this all correctly, and strict as well, and with the right repetition and all that sort of stuff so that you get maximum benefit with the minimum amount of injuries happening.

For sure, having to work with a trainer or coach.

Do you have a trainer or coach?

“I’m a non-smoker is an identity.” Whereas “I don’t smoke.” Until when?

No, I’ve learned everything myself ended up creating a training program for that exact reason; that’s what I’ll link up. But I created a program for someone to learn all of those things and solve all those problems because I actually learned in a shed. I had a little gym in the shed at the back of my house when I was like growing up from like; I was like 17-18 to 21, where I built most of my body in a shed. I didn’t join a gym till I was 21, and because I didn’t have a trainer, I didn’t learn anything else. I was just learning everything myself intuitively for how my body would train. So I just learned my body really well. 

So by the time I got to a gym, and I had all these other fancy new machines, I was like, “Oh my goodness, I can do all these different things like,” like, I can do ten things in one different machine because I just learned how to change and move things with slight directions, This is fantastic. And then, like sort of my body progression just really grew after that because there are all these different ways to stimulate myself. So I think understanding what’s really important, and just paying attention. So if you ever see a physiotherapist, or you see a chiropractor, or you see someone else, ask them things, ask them, “Okay, how’s my bodywork? What’s going on here? What’s going on here.” And one of the beautiful things is the respect that you have around food as when you’re blessing the food, and how after a fast, if you haven’t eaten for a very long time, and you break the fast, you always sort of – like for me, I eat really slowly and mindfully like every single bit in my tongue in my mouth. And this is like the most fantastic thing ever. Food is absolute.

It is the best Snickers bar I’ve ever had. 

It’s the best Snickers bar ever. I get that little crunchy bit of peanut in there. Oh, baby. Yeah, it was the same thing. I think around your body, having that reverence and respect, like when you actually get to go into the gym. And the way that like, squeeze the muscles train, your body. I have this amazing, beautiful body that everyone can choose from. It’s something amazing. It’s like if I’ve done it naturally and had it consistent for like, ten years. Like anyone else can do it, I go to the gym, 40 minutes to 45 minutes a day, four to five days a week. And it’s just in there and just paying attention to this is what my body is, this is how it’s feeling. This is what it’s doing. This is how it’s moving. And then appreciating them, sending some love towards your body in the gym instead of going to the gym out of my body sucks. I need to lose weight, I need to get fit, I need to get this girl, and you go into the gym as a sort of punishment. It’ll never last, and you’ll never get the results you want. And you’re more likely to get injured. 

But if you go to the gym out of appreciation and love for yourself, out of respect, how you would for food and things like that. It’s just the results and how much you’ve learned about yourself and your body in this thing that we’re wearing is just fantastic. I’m like, this is a machine, this is what we’ve got. And like am I age at the moment. I’m like, this is my Lamborghini right now, as far as like success wherever it goes. And I want this to be as best as possible on it running on the highest quality fuel. I want it to be able to go down the track as fast as possible. I want it to look fantastic and be absolutely shiny. I do everything is possible to make sure that this vehicle that I have is in its best condition. And to do that, I’ve got to show it some love the same way people show their fancy cars or whatever they’ve got some love when they clean that every weekend and every single day, and that was making it super fantastic. And like do that for yourself and see how the quality of your life improves. And it does. Like it really does.

Well, the difference is you can’t just take your body and check it in somewhere to get detailed. You actually have to do the work.

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

Yes. You can’t go, “Can you just detail this for me?” I’m not sure. I think you might have, haven’t had that little bit of doing with these stem cells. You did a little upgrading.

Yeah, I did do a little therapy.  It was pretty cool. But yeah, most of the hard work has to be done by yourself. Now the last question real quick is relates to the tools and resources that have been most impactful for you. And you’ve mentioned a few different technologies while we’ve been chatting, like infrared saunas, DNA testing, and so forth. Are there any particular vendors, or companies, or supplements, or tools that you want to specifically call out as some of the most impactful for our listeners?

For sure. So I think Oura Ring is very important. I know that like a lot of people have them just tracking sleep software, but Oura Ring, for me, has just sort of been transformational to understand what to do throughout the day how to get my body back into a parasympathetic state if it’s too sympathetic. What the trends are doing, because a lot of people have had Oura Ring and ended up not using them anymore. And I’m like, ‘Why?”, it’s just a beautiful technology that you can understand that properly and deeply reflect, and it’s not just the physical stuff. So if you’re on the right path, I’m talking about beforehand, if you’re on the right journey and supernatural aids happening, and you have a really good conversation with someone, or you have a clearing moment with a cacao ceremony. Or you do something that you were like sort of scared to do that needed to happen in your business, or whatever, and then the success happened it reflects in your Oura Ring, broth in a very long method and you’re like, “Wow, this is fantastic.” 

I also really like Bone Broth, and there’s this company in Australia called Best of the Bone. We’ll put a link because they have the website, theherbaldoctors.com. They have a like a bone broth here which is all from like organic grass-fed pasteurized cows here, and they cook the bone broth in a very long method, and the bone broth that they have hasn’t had heat therapy, and it hasn’t had high-pressure therapy, and it comes in a goo, it’s not a powder. The Bone Broth is not a powder. I sort of stay away from the powder ones. And I just get the goo ones because the goo ones just have a whole lot more high quality with just all the nutrients in them. It’s fantastic. 

And then also a Eternum Labs. Eternum Labs have a whole bunch of different anti-aging products and a whole bunch of different antioxidant products that I really like to use and also doing and learning; for me, some really awesome things have been I did Jordan Peterson’s self-authoring program, which is really good. I like using the Waking Up with Sam Harris app. And I think that was really good as well. And then also reading for me, I find any chance that I can do to get into the gym in terms of what are you going to call the gym, right. The gym for training I do so in terms of reading, I’ll get into the reading gym. And I’ll read a difficult book as well as reading like easy books; I’ll read a difficult book so increases my ability to think, increases my ability to learn new words, increases my ability to actually really read on a higher level and get through some stuff. So read old books, like Crime and Punishment, or The Hero with a Thousand Faces, or some Frederick Nature books thing like that. Which is like difficult reading; I find it can be extremely beneficial as well. And then what else can be really good as a couple of other things that are on the top of my mind, but they’ll go obviously sauna and ice bath, I love doing a frosty Fridays and get into an ice bath for eight to 10 minutes at zero degrees, which can be quite cold and quite shocking to the body. I find that been really fantastic as well.

You got to work your way up to that; you can’t just do. 

You got to work your way up to that. Yeah. Don’t do that for your first time, that’s for sure. I’ve had some people do it, and afterward, after they’ve done that, they’ve just been like, “I regret this.” And I’m like told you not to get in there. That’s probably a few of the things, though.

Yeah. And when you did the DNA testing, what was it, the DNA company or some big?

No, I just went through basic and simple; I just did DNA Fit. And  I liked that that dashboard that they gave me at first because I’m using it for a like a gym optimizing a point of view. I didn’t need to see a whole bunch of other things and research into it. I was like, “I’m just going to try this one because I like the dashboards that they looked at.” And for me, it was very easy because I went through seeing the dashboard, then looked at the causeway, adjusted my diet, my lifestyle, my routine to reflect what was in the dashboard. And then I got a whole bunch of like blood tests, and I got a Dutch test afterward to see everything. I just wanted to see absolutely everything. And it reflected quite well. I was like, cool. So things that I’m doing here, like working quite well, but there are a few things that I do need to get on top of and get on the track of, and a lot of it was more like, well, a little bit more meditation would serve you really well Corey, that’s for sure. Get around that.

Find what suits my lifestyle and preferences best. It can be walking, yoga, dancing, running, Crossfit, weight lifting, etc. Keep moving and make it enjoyable.

And the Dutch test, that is a hormone test.

Yeah, the dutch test it’s real; it’s like a high-quality profile test where you have your saliva and a urine test. And you do it throughout the entire day. And it tells your how your cortisol and melatonin work perfectly. But then it also has all of your different testosterones, all your different adrenal hormones as well, and like your thyroid hormones. Then it also has like, all your minerals, and all these other different tests, there’s a very comprehensive test that tells you quite a lot, and actually teaches you quite a bit as well. So teaches you how different things work and how different things convert. Because you might have a lot of testosterone, for example, but you may not be converting it into the testosterone that you need, which is very interesting. And being a natural athlete, I need my testosterone to be as high as possible for as long as possible. And like it wasn’t converting, I was like, “Ah, damn,” but it was turning to instead was cortisol. So stress hormone. 

So just putting a little bit too much stress on myself to get a whole bunch of work done or something like that at that time, at that period of time that I got it tested. So it’s very interesting to understand those things were cool. So let’s make sure that now this shows up and reflects in my Oura ring to make sure that I’m doing everything every day and making sure that you know, my deep sleep is high and it’s very restful, and my heart rate variability is nice and high because that’s going to reflect someone who’s in a destress state, which means that my testosterone should be going up.

Good stuff. Wow, this was fabulous. I appreciate you so much, Corey, and I am very appreciative to James Schramko, who introduced us to each other, and I really enjoyed being on your show. And you’re just an exceptional guy.

Aim to be better versions of ourselves and have a more positive outlook on life. Make better decisions and don’t feel shy to ask for help or share our talents. Click To Tweet

Thank you, Stephan, and you are too. Thanks so much for having me here. It’s always a pleasure to connect with you. I think we always have really good chats on and off the camera as well. And you’re super inspiring and motivating and thank you for helping me out with some of the things that you have done beforehand as well. So yeah, big love to that. And yeah, man, thanks for having me on.

Yeah. And now, where would our listeners or viewers go to learn more from you, take your courses, maybe get coaching from you, get the supplements from the supplement company that you’re a Code Director of. All that.

Yep. Cool. So essentially, you can follow any other social stuff on Instagram. It’s just Corey Boutwell; you can also look at all my podcasts. I’ve got one on like the Fast Ceremony, the Fasting Optimizing Yourself as well, a whole bunch of different myths and mythological spiritual stuff in there too. And that’s just Corey Boutwell’s podcasts. If you type that into any podcast and, in general, come up with Corey Boutwell podcasts on Google, that will come up as well. I have a website if you would like to get in contact with me at coreyboutwell.com, or you can contact me on Instagram as well. 

And then Eternum Labs is the company that I’m co-founder and co-director, and we have a website at eternumlabs.com which is spelled E T E R N U M, Eternum, which means eternity, eternumlabs.com, which is really cool. And if you’re in Australia, it’s eternumlabs.com.au. So yeah, any of those should be able to reach out see all of our stuff. Eternum Labs has an Instagram as well, so you can follow us on there. And yeah, we’re just sharing all the good stuff, and the good vibes, and everything that’s really good. I also have been mentioning beforehand that I have a training course and a fasting course. And I have like a high-level coaching thing that the people are interested in; they just have to message me.

Awesome. Well, thank you, Corey, and thank you, listeners, and go out there and do something outstanding. Do something for others, make the world a better place, and take care of your body and soul will catch on next episode. I’m your host, Stephan Spencer, signing off.

Important Links

Checklist of Actionable Takeaways


?Make optimizing the brain and energy a priority. It’s better to start small and work my way from there than do nothing about my health at all.


?Visualize my success. Begin with a solid ‘why’ in mind, let that serve as the foundation for everything I do, and be inspired by those who’ve already made it.


?Commit to at least 30 minutes of physical activity every day. Find what suits my lifestyle and preferences best. It can be walking, yoga, dancing, running, Crossfit, weight lifting, etc. Keep moving and make it enjoyable.


?Get into Biohacking. Try out some activities or hacks that can take my overall health to a new level. Biohacking aims to promote longevity and vitality inside and out of the body.


?Fast every now and then. It’s important to be on top of my nutrition. A regular schedule of fasting can help reset and regulate my digestive system. Although, make sure that it is something my body can handle.


?Stock the pantry with foods that are rich in antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. Incorporate these ingredients into my daily diet.


?Make time and space to reflect and meditate. It’s impossible to achieve a healthy body when the mind isn’t performing its best.


?Change old habits that don’t serve or benefit me. List what I want to change about myself and start with one habit a day and then level up as I begin to master it.


?Associate with like-minded individuals. Choose my core groups wisely. The people I surround myself with have a lot to do with my success.


?Follow Corey Boutwell’s journey, podcasts, programs and events by visiting his website and following his all work listed down on this Get Yourself Optimized episode’s links and resources.

 

About Corey Boutwell

Corey specializes in helping people to activate themselves. He steps in and guides people over the trials they face when they reach that stage in their life where overcoming themselves is necessary. When they need to turn inwards, listen to the signals and invest in themselves. Corey coaches people to use philosophy, relationship skills, health hacks, aesthetics, intellectual and business success to make a positive impact on the world.

Disclaimer: The medical, fitness, psychological, mindset, lifestyle, and nutritional information provided on this website and through any materials, downloads, videos, webinars, podcasts, or emails is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical/fitness/nutritional advice, diagnoses, or treatment. Always seek the help of your physician, psychologist, psychiatrist, therapist, certified trainer, or dietitian with any questions regarding starting any new programs or treatments, or stopping any current programs or treatments. This website is for information purposes only, and the creators and editors, including Stephan Spencer, accept no liability for any injury or illness arising out of the use of the material contained herein, and make no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the contents of this website and affiliated materials.

 

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