Full transcript: Stephen Russell on London Real
0:47 Good afternoon and welcome to London Real. My name is Brian Rose. Joining me as usual is Mr. Nick Gabriel. And today with us in studio is Mr. Stephen Russell, AKA the Barefoot Doctor.
0:59 Hello. And we are actually all Barefoot today. I don’t know if that’s a coincidence or not. Because it’s hot outside. Unseasonably hot.
1:07 You know, I actually walk around Barefoot a lot. Yeah. I just feel comfortable that way. You do too, right? No one’s walked, spent a day walking on London Barefoot, which was a false move.
1:14 Really? Yeah. Did you get? I probably have hepatitis B from that experience. Honest was disgusting.
1:21 Really? people black and had a piece of chewing gum on them it was horrible why did you do that I don’t know I think it was at someone’s house and I forgot my flip flops or something happened it was one of those crazy nights you know Wow is there a story behind your name and also could we just tell it could you tell everyone about yourself I’m curious about the name as well it seems to suit you what Steven no comment well the barefoot doctor is a an old Chinese metaphor for a humble healer and they were mostly Taoist and they were mostly women and they were like medicine women who walked around the countryside. Their job was, as well as giving acupuncture and herbs and doing stuff to fix people, was actually to keep people in good spirits and they would sing songs and tell stories and do magic and do spells and all kinds of stuff like that. So they were really responsible for the well-being in general of people and And they did it out of love, so they were looked after wherever they went.
2:19 Because me, I’m a, you know, I’ve been a martial artist since I was 11, and study, I’ve trained in psychotherapy, and then trained in Chinese medicine, and I’m a musician and a writer and a lyricist, and a storyteller, and a magician. So I always used to work barefoot, and about 1989, I’d just been bankrupted by, well, I would say why it’s irrelevant, but I got bankrupted by my first wife and Behind all great men is a bankruptcy And I couldn’t my record deal with Polygram I was about to sign a new deal and I couldn’t do it with my name, so I needed a name a performing name and I was actually treating the rock critic from the observer at the time and I used to work barefoot because it’s traditional to do that You know, you can climb on the table and press people’s backs and it’s respectful to the patient to not wear shoes actually Okay, is this massage or acupressure acupuncture acupressure healing and always barefoot. Okay. Yeah. Yeah Traditionally and also it stops your feet getting sweaty if you’re standing there all day, you know wearing trainers all over and he said well barefoot doctor You’re the barefoot doctor and it was like yeah, man, that’s cool. And that’s how it began. What year was that?
3:36 1989 okay, and it started out as more of a music handle And the name of you as a as a performer. Yeah Well, actually really that’s kind of always been what my things being mean that the healing was always just a day job for me Although I am you know, it’s a great gift and I’m incredibly grateful to have it and I’ve helped, you know Who knows how many people but I treated about a 200,000 people in my life I calculate roughly because you work it out by how many a week. I stopped doing that as a job about 10 actually 12 years ago because the book writing and the music stuff and all that was just taking out too much time. My interest, although I love healing people, it’s a beautiful thing to do and it’s a service, you know. It’s frustrating because my thing has always been I want to help the whole world. I love it here so much. I just so I find the whole experience so potentially incredibly exciting and I love people potentially. I mean because the science I really get pissed off would be, as we all do. But generally my love for my fellows is so great and that the joy that I naturally default to is something that I know we all can and I see so much suffering around that’s so needless and these tools that I’ve learned over the decades are so powerful that my thing has always been to teach them to everybody. But then because I’m not, I hated school and I can’t bear organised situations and so I’m a rebel and an
5:03 Anarchist basically by nature and I felt that the kind of people I would appeal to would be like that as well and that wouldn’t be the kind of people that would want to go to a workshop or a regular class in anything. I mean I’m just lucky I started Martial Arts as a kid because I’d never have had the discipline to do it as an adult. What did Martial Arts give you or what do you think you would have been like if you didn’t have that? Well, they keep me alive that’s for sure, both physically, mentally and emotionally.
5:31 It gives me a stability of mind, of physical health and flexibility. It gets rid of all the aches and pains and the stiffness. And, you know, like I’m 57 and I’ve lived it pretty hard my life. And I’m doing all right. You know, I’m not suggesting that I’m a paragon of health.
5:49 But considering how I’ve lived it, I feel good. And it could change any moment. I could die tomorrow. But as it stands, I’ve got amazing amounts of energy. And I’m able to focus and do things that I would not be able to do otherwise work wise It takes my fear away or rather it enables me to walk through my fear into doing anything and no matter how big I’m not I’m not I mean, I’m afraid of doing big things of course But it doesn’t stop me and that’s definitely the martial arts That’s definitely you know, because you you walk into a competition or a street situation I mean, I don’t know about you, but it’s fucking scary. Excuse my language But it doesn’t stop you doing what you got to do You just you do it because you know how to do it, but there is fear Usually just before actually I know I’m going off on the tangent sound interesting But it happened actually just around here fairly recently. I was you’re calling my neighborhood bad. No, no There’s no good and bad. It’s all relative Goswell Road on about 12 o’clock at night. I’m walking down the street. It’s sort of wintery It’s dark. It’s cold. There are two guys of about 25 about a hundred yards away way, 150 metres away, going at each other on the side of the road and they were good, you could see they knew how to punch, they weren’t just doing like that mad flailing street fighting thing, they were really punching well and I thought they were just messing around
7:07 But as I got closer it was quite clear that they were having a proper fight and the voice that I listened to, there’s this deep voice that comes from somewhere and it just said you’ve got to go and stop it and I went, me myself, the local mirror, oh please no I don’t want to say I want to cross the road. There’s some statistic like it’s the peacemakers that always get hurt You know in that situation, but are you in in any way? Well? Yeah, but just before I got there What was really fascinating before I walked up to them it said to me watch out for the mobile phone the cell phone and About a second after that that message came through the guy who was losing Dropped his phone out of his pocket onto the ground So I kind of walk up of it like piece of fork in Colombo like really like a dodgy old guy And I go, excuse me, that’s not really going at each other.
7:51 Excuse me, you dropped your phone and I held it with the phone. And they go, what? I said, look, you dropped your phone. As if they weren’t fighting, do you know what I mean? Yeah.
7:59 And they’d stop there. Then as soon as they stopped, I rose to my height and I said, you guys are all right now. And they went, bleh, bleh, bleh, bleh. It was some kind of pat spot thing and they went off in different directions and that. Oh, that’s a cool story.
8:08 But there was fear. There was fear, you know? There was fear, definitely. Me, the local me, it was a coward. I didn’t want to do that.
8:15 I didn’t get into a fight. But you know that thing comes in and if it doesn’t come in I wouldn’t do anything. I’d walk away, but it comes in recently in a club in London I was with my friend Spencer, and he was DJing and I got up in the booth with him and this guy started on me They come and dance with us down here like who you to get up in the DJ booth You know come and dance with the people I said no man. I come here to you know do this and He turns the monitor the speaker in my ear, and it’s really loud in it her And I turned it around, I said, easy, and then he starts prodding me with this toy rubber saxophone thing, which didn’t hurt or anything, it was pissing me off.
8:53 And I didn’t think I was going to do this, because I was in such a sweet mood, I was so calm and tranquil, suddenly, and I don’t know how I did it, I honestly don’t, I just went like that with my hand, like a snake, and I had his fingers in a lock, and I honestly don’t know what I did, I don’t know how it worked. And I’m just saying to him, now just stop, just stop. And the voice was like a volcano coming out of the ground and he went and I kind of let go and he fell back in so I never saw him for the rest of the evening and I said to Spencer, did you hear that?
9:19 And he goes, yeah. I said, did you hear that voice? He goes, yeah. I said, who was that? He said, it was you.
9:24 I said, man, I don’t know where that came from. I don’t know where it came from. That’s crazy. You spoke earlier of you said that there was a lot of suffering in the world that you perceived as needless. Could you explain some examples of that and also why you feel that they’re needless?
9:40 Well, look, I know that everything operates from a kind of animal instinctual level and it’s all about power and control in one aspect of life. What’s going on in Syria and has been going on in Syria for about a year now, there’s at least 10,000 people that died from it and thousands of people being imprisoned and tortured and there’s like stories of 16-year-old boys screaming in prison who’ve just had half their face sliced off in torture and it’s stuff like that and their families and what goes on and that’s all because of one guy having to uphold the family name, the family honor, probably for his mother’s sake because she’s still alive and she’s a very powerful woman in his father’s memory and who knows what other reasons are guiding him to be that way and I’m sure as a guy who was trained as a doctor and I doctor in the UK he must have compassion he must know that this is really like crazy but he’s gone for that okay we’re sticking in there we’re not letting the people take this over we’re gonna put a firm foot down that to me could have been avoided I mean that you know it could have been avoided it was somebody could have possibly gone in there and say look you could get out now take the money and run go live in Argentina or something and we work on they live the problem with the example like Gaddafi in Libya is there’s no way out for a lot of these guys unless they go out early very early
11:02 Fight to the death they’re gonna be fine by like a war tribunal or something And so like, in this case, in Syria, I think he’s just going to try to hold out until Yeah, it’s bad there. It is bad there. Do you believe in karma? Yes, I don’t know that we any of us really understand what it is properly because I don’t I don’t think it’s just a simple punishment and reward system. I think that’s a bit of a simplistic way of seeing it because the way the tradition comes from that is the belief in multiple lives.
11:30 And so somebody does something really bad this life and does seem to get away with it and where’s the karma, but that’s not taking into account what happens in the next life in that system. Same with kids who get born with horrible illnesses and just have an awful life and die young. It could be that something happened in the life before. Who knows? I had this really wise friend who’s dead now, alas, a really beautiful man. I went to him once I was in my late thirties, and I said to him, Frank, he goes, yes, I, what do you think at my current stage of spiritual development, would it be bad karma for me to have an affair with a married woman? Because I’ve met this woman and she was really hot and she really liked me and blah, blah, blah. And I was sort of playing with it. And there was this long silence and he looked at me and he goes, how do you know it wouldn’t be bad karma not to?
12:23 And it was like, hmm. And that kept me, that still kept me thinking, I was still thinking about it. Because it might well have been that that’s what their marriage needed to make it spark back into life. You know, who knows? Who are we to judge?
12:35 I’ll just put it out of its misery. Yeah. I mean, the moral thing is the Taoist tradition that I work with doesn’t actually believe in morals. It believes in a set of natural ethics of the decency that arises from within as you develop through your practice. Can you talk about Taoism? Because I don’t know much about it. And I don’t know if many people do.
12:52 Yeah, well, Taoism is the original life system or philosophy from ancient China, predates Buddhism and Confucianism, it’s approximately about 12,000 years old. And it’s a very simple but profound philosophy, a philosophical template that says that everything in this universe is basically one consciousness expressing itself in myriad forms. And everything that we see, everything manifest is like the cloak of it, but it is operating on the subatomic level.
13:29 And it does this because it’s bored. It’s going to sit for eternity as one presence. You want somebody to play with. So it creates stuff, things and people to play with. And it puts amnesia into them so they forget that’s who they are, because otherwise there wouldn’t be any game of hide and seek to play.
13:46 As soon as it has this urge to create stuff, there’s not just one, now there’s two, because there’s the one, and then there’s the urge and the stuff it’s creating, so you get this duality. As soon as you get duality, you get a play of opposites, the yin and the yang. and these cycle around each other, the yin refers to everything that’s contractive and difficult and dark and yeah and the yang refers to everything that’s expansive and easy and beautiful and bright and these two cycle around each other at every level of existence so you have your seven years of famine and your seven years of plenty you have your your easy days and your difficult days you have day and you have night and so on and so forth you have the in breath and you have the in-breath and the out-breath, and then out of the friction that occurs through the cycling of the yin and the yang comes what they call the five elements.
14:44 And then the five elements give rise to everything that we see, the god particles that they found at CERN, they’ve been looking for the one god particle that makes things exist. Did they find it? Well no, so far they’ve found five, that’s what’s really interesting, they have found the five says everything in Taoism is really corroborated with quantum physics as there was a guy called Fritschhoff Capra who wrote a book called the Tao physics he was a physicist in mid 70s it’s very interesting and it’s fascinating because it really is that the mystics of those thousands of years ago seem to know all this stuff already anyhow when you know that everything cycles you you you stop investing so much in the good times and then if If anything, you invest more in the bad times because you know they’re going to swing around to the good times again, but basically you stop identifying with that part of you that suffers or is elated.
15:35 So you observe more with serenity as things unfold, not necessarily good, not necessarily bad. Isn’t that so difficult to teach in someone in modern day? Because Nick and I talk about this a lot on the show and we try to have that theory, but when you’re down in the dumps, it’s really hard to be like, okay, this is just going to be a valley and I’m going to have a mountain because of it. Yes, it’s hard but it’s not impossible because I mean I’m able to do it and I suffer the same throws of ups and downs as everybody else.
16:00 So you’re not affected by the everyday events in your life anymore? Have you reached that point where, I don’t know, you get a call saying your aunt’s got lymphoma or whatever and that just, are you just completely level or do you still respond to the emotions that arise or what is happening with you? Well no, what my experience of it is, yes of course I’m affected by news, good and bad, But my ability to get off the panic or the shock is much quicker.
16:27 It grows all the time. So I’m able to stabilize again much faster. I’ve noticed that with meditation as well, Brian. It’s helping out. Yeah, I’m not as emotionally volatile as I used to be.
16:37 Do you have other tools that you use? Yeah, well, that’s interesting you said meditation, because really the Taoist practice is all really hinging around how to meditate, and they have a very, very clear pragmatic approach approach to meditating, sort of quite a systematic approach to setting your mind in the right position inside your brain, getting your breathing working in a certain way, holding your posture in a certain way, and that elicits the optimal state. And then the Tai Chi, the Xingyi de Bagua, they’re the three martial arts side there, and Chi Gun, which is the kind of exercise version of those, are really just meditation in movement.
17:10 Interesting. So you learn, the whole training is how to be meditating all the time. So as I’m talking to you, I’m aware there’s a personality and it’s speaking. But I’m also aware of what’s behind it, and I’m coming from that, which is the sort of the love, the spirit, whatever you want to call it, the Tao, really. And when I look at you, and when I look at you, I’m seeing the Tao in you, I’m seeing the surface, and you’re both very handsome men, so it’s hard to miss that.
17:34 I knew it wasn’t just us that thought that, gosh, man. You can come back anytime. Yes. Thank you. But I’m seeing your spirits, I’m feeling your spirits, so we’re connecting.
17:43 That means that we naturally will start connecting with each other at a deeper level and then what arises will be more profound and valuable for us and for anyone who’s watching this. And that’s kind of what the Taoist thing’s about. It’s like doing magic all the time. Do you teach a lot of this? Is this at the core of what you teach?
17:58 This is, yeah, this is what I teach. I mean, my sensible side of my work is doing workshops and writing books and running for you quite big websites with online trainings and stuff. That’s my sort of responsible, sensible side. And then the entertaining side, which is the bit I really love because it’s, I mean, I love the other as well. Don’t get me wrong.
18:17 But the excitement of doing events is where, especially where there’s music and dance and chanting and sound, because sounds might, one of my biggest things, uh, that is just, that’s what I love. Yeah. That was really shocked because I went to, well, barefootdoctorglobal.com. Is that what you would call more of your workshop book side? Well, yeah.
18:34 And I’m actually, that I have to say is in the process of being totally rebuilt at the moment because it is a mess. I know. Okay. My first experience with you was kind of more of this spiritual guy and then I saw the whole music thing into it and I was just like, whoa, this guy’s really flipping the script. I didn’t even know about the music side until you told me 30 minutes ago.
18:53 And then I saw the ad on YouTube for, we might as well talk about it, is it Omfest? It’s called the Big Om. The Big Om, sorry, the Big Om, although Omfest sounds cool. And then you brought this whole kind of musical thing into it which it wasn’t an obvious segue to me and I was wondering how you could explain that. Well actually in terms of Taoism, the Taoists use sound to heal the organs, that’s one of the things I teach, that’s what I’ve just been in the Black Forest teaching a workshop in sound healing for the organs, it’s an ancient technique of like, for example if you want to boost the energy in your spleen and make your blood stronger, you’d make a particular movement but while you did it you’d make the sound, and you’d visualise that sound wrapping itself around the organ of my spleen, and it does, at least it gets your mind to go there and your mind goes the blood follows which is half the bottle or more or more yeah well everything really so it’s a self sound making you so yeah sounds on your own not not external sounds not not necessary you can I mean I can use it to like just then I can put sound into somebody and that will help heal but anyway I actually when I was six I was lying on my bed one afternoon here in London looking at the clouds go by and for no reason whatsoever and I I honestly don’t know why I was chosen for this to occur to that I heard the what the physicists called the background radiation wave
20:16 Which is the what the Indian yogis called the on and It’s it’s operates at 50 octaves below human hearing and it’s the sound that the existence is built on So so according to which God created the universe exactly Yeah, you know in the first line in Genesis is God spoke and said let there be light So there was sound and then there was light And this is common to the Taoist tradition as well. In fact, all the ancient traditions sound is really important. That’s why they, the yogis go, they do that because it elicits the connection with the real sound, which is much deeper than that.
20:51 And I heard it. I heard it for how long it was, a split second or so. And it was like, I wasn’t surprised. It was because I was always been quite awake to the invisible world. But it was like, oh, a six-year-old mind is like, oh, that’s God talking.
21:04 And in a way it was saying, but it was a sense of like, We all have this connection. We all have this connection through sound. Your mission in the world is to remind everybody. And I really had that really clear at six years old. That’s what I was here to do.
21:18 So my dad also, he was a really great jazz drummer. And I learned to drum when I was like two years old. Picked up a guitar when I was four, piano when I was five. And I just started playing music from a very early age. So it was kind of a music bringing up with a lot of alternative thought or a lot of?
21:34 No, just music. There was no alternative towards, no, I was the alternative thought. Because you’re English, you’re British, and you’re a Londoner, but you’re not very British. It’s quite unusual to find a British or someone from London known. I saw an interview with someone on YouTube and the first question was like, okay, how did you become this guy?
21:52 Because you’re not what I would expect. You’d expect some hippie from California to do something like this, right? Yeah, okay, true. Well, I mean, look, there is, I have to point out is that there is a tradition in England of what they call the English eccentric. So England does actually spawn quite a few real characters, but we tend to get our snapshot of the culture from the general population, which isn’t really that indicative, because some amazing people have come out of England. Think of the Beatles, for example.
22:18 David Bowie. David Bowie, the Stones. I mean, all sorts of people. You know, some really fascinating people. So I would, you know, I don’t want to be arrogant or anything, but I would include myself amongst them, or I’d like to think I would be included among those kind of And I have traveled. I mean, I’ve traveled pretty much all my life. Well, all my adult life.
22:38 I’ve been mostly living in other countries. I lived in New Mexico for four years with the Native Americans. I’ve spent a lot of time in Central and South America, in Australia, in South Africa and India. Is that a big part of who you are, your travel? Yeah. And you know, and I was, I was, my first real love was a Colombian girl as well.
22:55 So I was introduced to that Latin American culture quite early too. and that shoulder-shaking thing and that joie de vivre and spent a lot of time in France and Spain and I’ve lived in Ibiza for four years and in Catalunya for which so you get to like learn that you’ve got to come out of yourself and be passionate I’ve always been passionate anyway so the English thing is to not be passionate right or if you are passionate you do it with set piece emotional gestures like yes and all that sort of stuff that they learn off American movies really um but but it’s not natural for English people to express their feelings genuinely Because for some reason this island makes people pretend not the Celts around the edges in Wales and Scotland and Ireland But the English this I think it’s the an imprint from the Norman culture the feudal system There’s a sense if you’ve got to keep pretending all the time even today with the emancipated Time that we’re in people still pretend a lot Yes natural to repress your emotions until you have a few drinks and then it almost goes overboard to the other side exactly That’s why it’s a country of alcoholics. Yeah, I almost see it’s a lot like the Japanese in that way They’re just very repressed socially But when they have few drinks they go overboard almost to where they express themselves over the top to balance the dough almost the same With the English. Yeah, you see the Italians seem to be emotional all the time
24:06 So when they have a few drinks, they don’t seem to get it out that release I’m not saying that’s a bad thing No, I know I served about was just I was just gonna say that it’s not a criticism in any way because I think there’s Something really special about the English culture now somebody travels a lot and pretty much come here really as a visitor most of the time. I do really miss it a lot when I’m not here. It’s nice to come back. Yeah, it’s amazing culture.
24:28 It’s very dynamic. The people have a quality that I’ve not seen anywhere else. Something a friend of mine says that is one of the first things that springs to mind whenever I think of England is, he says, if you think about what they actually did, these guys on this little island pretty much got on ships and went and took over the whole world. And come on, there’s got to be something special to that. Yeah, and the Industrial Revolution, I mean, they’re just this whole island.
24:51 This is just just so impressive the things that happened, but it is interesting culture You said you said when you spent time in Ibiza in the south of France You said you have to come out of yourself. Is that what you said? Yeah. Yeah, could you explain what you mean by that? Well, first of all, I had to learn to speak Catalan when I was living in Catalonia in Spanish as well for when I was in South America for example and Had to get into a different way of being cuz well anyway No, it wasn’t like I had to it was just a relief to be able to you know You hang out with people from Argentina and you just it’s like wow what a bliss I can actually be the natural person that I am and say I love you man you’re beautiful you know you can’t do that anything so well I remember it’s funny I I worked I worked in the city I came here in 97 I worked there for a couple years I came back in 2002 and I walked across a dealing room floor and I hadn’t seen a buddy of mine in a while and I hugged him in the middle of this dealing room floor in front of 500 city traders and they almost stopped on their phones they were like what the what do you guys think you’re doing you know it was just a hug like two guys hey I haven’t seen you in a few years and it was just stop the presses that’s not cool but it’s just I guess it’s just indicative of the culture it’s just that expression of emotion is not encouraged it’s not encouraged it comes from the parents and the parents parents but it’s
26:01 Changing it’s changing people are becoming a little bit more loose here I think Stephen how would you respond to a scientific materialist that would challenge you by saying you know this is all on your head there’s no proof for any of this. There’s nothing that we can prove except what we can touch, hear, feel and taste. Yeah, and sounds don’t heal, it’s not been proven, all that stuff. What would you say to those? And again, I’m not challenging you because I’m personally of the belief that what you’re saying is true. I’m just, I’m quite interested in how you deal with people like that. Well, so they could well be right. I don’t care. Anyway, it might be true.
26:34 I mean, I often think to myself, maybe I’m totally mad. And the thing that usually the answer is, yeah, you probably, it’s good fun. It’s kind of working. So it doesn’t matter I mean for me it works it works for me that much I know I’m not really interested in in feeling like I need to justify it to anybody so I’m when I present this stuff I always say look I don’t know if this is true or not but I work it works for me such you try if it works for you then great if it doesn’t doesn’t matter however however that’s me being like kind of you know the simple Taoist there is proof that meditation changes the structure of your brain that we know that that’s now been proven there’s also proof that sound excuse me sound chanting does create some change in the electromagnetic field.
27:12 This has been proven as well. And I think you’ll probably find that whether it’s been proven yet, or it’s about to be proven, most of the stuff that the Taoists talk about generally seems to be provable. And, but like I say, it’s so obvious when you try the stuff out. I mean, you know what it’s like when you’re doing your own practice. You know, if like this exercise strengthens the arm, you do the exercise, you feel your arm stronger.
27:34 And you don’t have, you don’t need proof. It’s the same with this stuff. It’s just like try it and see and everyone’s entitled to that position. It doesn’t make any positions. Anyway, really so I don’t mind I I’ve never been a proselytizer or or or I’ve never been on a crusade with any of this stuff Okay, that’s a pretty good answer. It’s a very good answer And I think it’s true once you do it yourself like meditation we found and once you see the impact it makes on your life It’s it’s pretty profound. You know, it’s funny I have a lot of people especially in this age when it comes to constantly being online constantly simulated with YouTube and Facebook that people that say I just can’t meditate I get there and I spend 30 seconds and I’m thinking about the laundry and everything and obviously I know I know that you can get through that but what do you tell people when they they come to you with something like that like I can’t do it I’m thinking too much how do you do with something like that well I what I’ve done is I’ve broken it all down to an eight-step process which I could run through really quickly here basically it starts off that you you’re we’re held in thrall to the external world the people who can’t stop thinking are held in thrall by the what’s going on out there and what they’re perceiving to be their position in the game of life in relation to what’s going on out there and it’s constantly this dialogue we all
28:45 Have it in the front of the brain and it’s not just you’re watching it it’s your position in it your position in it yeah that’s why you’re constantly vested in it okay yeah and and that elicits feelings and the feelings come up in your belly and your chest that’s where we feel the feet like the fear and the anguish and all that excitement it’s all in the front of the body and we tend to be in the front of our bodies. We’re sort of held so in through by all that we’re all up in the front. So the first thing is I tell people is just tilt your body back a bit and feel yourself tipping into the back of you and people can feel that and now you’re occupying your back and feel your shoulder blades the back of your head the back of your your pelvic area and now you’re in command of what’s going on in the front you’re presiding over it you can see the feelings are happening now you can see the thoughts are running there but you’re not in them anymore. So now you’ve reclaimed yourself that’s the beginning. Secondly I tell them think about your belly button just because that senses you that’s in the middle of your system at your physical body anyway.
29:39 So you just organize your thoughts around your belly button for a moment and then stop holding your breath because people do that all the time and let the breath flow freely and if I’ve got time with them I’ll tell them how to breathe properly by letting the belly swell as the breath comes in and pulling it back to the spine to push the air out otherwise just breathe slowly and softly because what I explain to people is that when you slow the breath down you slow your mind down and when you soften the breath and make it like silk it makes the mind like silk and then when the mind’s like silk the thoughts become nice and bright naturally. Nick is doing all of these things and I just noticed him he was like… and then you you expand your posture. I am too. You expand your posture because we tend to cramp ourselves a bit with the posture so you visualise the crown of your head being lifted by an invisible thread you drop your shoulders and broaden them you lift your breastbone a bit you broaden your hips just with your mind and suddenly your frame is a bit bigger and then your consciousness is a bit bigger as a result. Next is you soften all the muscles from your head to your toes because if you soften the muscles the mind goes relaxed. So you just look where you’re holding the back of the neck, the face, the heart, the shoulders, the buttocks, wherever and you soften it. Next you sink your weight because we’re pulling away from the ground
30:52 All the time because we’re bipeds and we sort of evolve that way. We don’t like the messy shit of life. So we kind of pull away from the ground to be in the lofty sphere of the intellect. But this is like saying, don’t stop doing that and just surrender to gravity because your spine is elongated. You can afford to let the weight sink. Then you got gravitas. You’ve arrived on the planet. I love that word too. And then you tilt your head back again, just tilt the head back a bit and feel your mind slide back along the floor of your skull as if it’s a cave in there. And now your mind is resting up against the rear interior wall of your skull. Your eyes have to be closed and you’re looking into the big dark void there. And there are no thoughts at that point.
31:32 The next thing is, is to connect you to all of creation, to all your fellows, because you can’t do this stuff in isolation. It’s weird that it’s not going to help really. Ultimately, we’re all connected and you’ve got to feel that. You open your chest up, you just visualise your chest sliding open like a pair of sliding doors. And there at the core is your beautiful, gorgeous heart, the innocent you, that is just naturally Exuding your love your innate goodness and receiving that of others as well So you’re now connected in a nice beautiful kind of loving way to everything around you, but there’s no thoughts You’re just sitting there with your mind in the back of your head and as thoughts do come out Which they will like look at me sitting here with no thoughts You you watch them go like clouds in the sky from one side to the other each one You don’t follow them You just see them go past and it’s a discipline and if you can manage about I tell people to do that for four minutes No more don’t try and do more and if you can just manage one second of no thought that’s enough to keep you going 24 hours It’s like you’ve rested your mind then and that’s it and then that grows it becomes addictive and you want to do it more And more and eventually the better you get at doing that you you find yourself able to do it pretty much all the time Would you say you’re in a state of no mind like most of the most of your waking life?
32:42 No, I would I don’t know. I have not quantified how much of it is spent that way. No, I think most of my waking life I’m thinking but what I’ve learned is over from the practice. I’m not involved with the thoughts that much So I watch them happen more. I don’t get caught up in trying to work it out so much So I know the stuff comes up and I go. Oh, well, that’s interesting That’s interesting. I must do something about that. Yep, and so on because I’m working a lot. Yes detachment and That kind of fear of how am I doing in the game of life?
33:11 So that’s the big one am I winning am I losing and winning am I losing? That’s everyone’s big. That’s everyone’s big one. Yeah, like when I think I’m losing it’s like well Okay, they talk about invest in loss in Dallas and just invest in loss So just let go if the worst comes to the worst the thing doesn’t work. So then what you know, okay So I get really ill. I’m on my own. Nobody loves me and I die. Okay, so so what it’s not yes Do you’re just one individual it’s happens to say, you know, so many times there’s so many people throughout history It’s just the way it is. It doesn’t matter. There’s no point living in what inferior that can I deal with that?
33:43 Yeah, fuck it. I can deal with that and then I can move on and it happens really quickly all that process now That’s what I get from it rather than being I think getting caught in the panic Which is you can’t operate when you like that Brian. Did you ever watch that? Did I send you that movie too easy by Gus Van Zandt? No, I don’t think it is. There’s a maybe you’ve seen it Steven there’s a Filmmaker called Gus Van Zandt. Yes, you know but one of his first projects was a short film called do easy was I think maybe 11 minutes long and and is in a black and white truck in the 80s and follows the story of this retired colonel who lives alone at home and the whole point of the film was that everything you do in your physical life, the most efficient way to do it is also the easiest way to do it.
34:34 So the whole thing is a metaphor for being present so when you wash the dishes you wash them in as an efficient manner as possible using just enough water and stacking them nice neatly as opposed to just like flopping them down in the in the drying rack or when you open a door you open it just as far as you need to to walk through and then you reach and grab the exact spot you need to hold and close it with just enough force and it’s interesting you recommend you do this in everything in your everyday life and I’ve been trying to do it you don’t always catch yourself doing it but when you do like life just so much more fun You do so much more in the moment and aware of what’s happening. And you can also suddenly see just how inefficient you are when you’re not doing that.
35:15 Like when you just get out of bed and your mind’s in another place completely and you just stumble like down the stairs of your apartment or you just, you know, you’re somewhere else. It’s just, it’s a completely different experience when you approach life with that do easy mentality. Is it similar to the dial? Is that? Yes, I would say that’s the perfect expression of it.
35:33 There was this old story of the King’s cook who had the same knife for 19 years, the same carving knife, and had never had to sharpen it, and he was asked why. He said that he was able to find the spaces in between the ligaments of the cow’s joints and just do four incisions without meeting resistance, and the whole carcass would fall open. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it’s a lovely metaphor. It’s just that you just find where there’s no resistance at all, but that does require incredible sensitivity.
36:02 I’d done my practice yesterday morning in Freiburg. I’d worked really hard and I’d done two days of workshops in German and I felt steam-rolled. But nonetheless, I’d done my Shingi, I’d done my meditation. I was there. It was a beautiful sunny day.
36:14 How long is meditation for you? What do you try for every day? Oh, no, I don’t even time it. But I mean, my whole practice session is about an hour and a half. I could get it done in half an hour if I’m really rushed, but an hour and a half is what I like.
36:28 Daily, if you can. Yeah, no, it’s got to be a daily, I will never miss it, but it’s about half an hour, 20 minutes of meditating, of standing still. I don’t sit, I stand and go through the various internal processes. But I know I walked out of the hotel to go somewhere, came back in and the glass sliding doors, the automatic doors were closing and I thought, well, they’ll open. I walked in and they didn’t open, they closed right on my head really hard as well. And it was like, woof, I’m still feeling it today and that was like kind of wow, you’re such a bumbling fool, but that’s okay too You gotta laugh at that. Wow. Is that a metaphor somewhere?
37:04 Must be must be right Is um, is diet a big thing for you? Nick and I have just been on a big diet for the last couple weeks before we did an ayahuasca retreat But do you do you think about diet a lot and is diet part of or is it completely separate? No, they do, you know, there are there’s a daoist whole sort of daoist diet thing But no i’m this not i just doesn’t interest me that much I mean the basic rule is get a nice healthy balance of the different color foods, the different taste of foods, the hot and the cold and so on.
37:30 And generally go for what your body feels like rather than your mind. And if you do the Tai Chi and you do all that stuff every day, you tend to not want to eat too much rubbish anyway. I mean I don’t want to eat a McDonald’s, I don’t want to because I know that I’m going to feel ill a day or two later or my energy is going to flatten from it. So I tend to get drawn to good healthy energy. Is food with energy in?
37:50 Okay. Talk about the big home. It’s at Wembley, right? Yeah, when the arena is big, right? It is relatively. Okay. Yeah, talk about it It’s it’s coming up in December, right? Yes 12 12 12 Wembley arena the big home and it’s basically that’s not the Mayan calendar That’s like the 21st of December, right? Yeah, that was the reason we did it on the 12 12 12 Well, because it looks much better We were gonna sit on the 21st, but 21 12 12 didn’t look good 12 12 12 look beautiful So we made it so I mean then we figured as well that if everybody’s gonna is thinking that it’s the end of the world They’re not going to want to be in London that day So we thought we better do it before the end of the world Do you think it’s a bit of a lot of negativity going on for that month?
38:25 I don’t subscribe to any of it. Do you think there will be It doesn’t seem to be it seems to be last year people were into it more this year It’s not going to be the end of the world. That’s bullshit. Well, it could be but so what anyway
38:40 Is y2k Yeah, no, I think that like they’re gonna be planes falling out of the sky and traffic lights That’s where I’m gonna work, what a load of crap. True, made a lot of money off of it. Do I think that, I mean, there is, yeah. I mean, there’s people invested a lot of money in safe places to go to. There’s a place in the Pyrenees that people have been buying and renting places ready and stop planning food there.
39:02 And there’s places all over the world where people are doing that. So it’s not like people aren’t into it. There’s a lot of people invested in that possibility. And they might be right, who knows? But my thing is, is like, let’s do everything we can to make it beautiful until the very last moment anyway, whenever that might be.
39:17 Because we’re all going to die at some point, anyway. So it really is a celebration of human evolution, this. And it’s a way of doing, it’s something I’ve, since I heard that on when I was six, it’s something I’ve wanted to do, is to get large groups of people chanting, but not in some boring, hippie, new age way. There’s the best electronic music playing. We’ll have the best electronic acts, including my own one.
39:40 You know, I’m not going to say the line up yet, because we’re still in the process of confirming it all. But, you know, I lived in Ibiza for four years, I know the scene pretty well. It will be the nicest tech house and up step. I don’t want to go to this thing. That sounds cool.
39:53 Yeah. And the company we’re using to do all the production is like, they’re amazing guys and the lighting and the visual effects are going to be pretty unprecedented. What we’re working on, I mean, once the budgetary realities sit in, they probably have to be pared back a bit. But the thing, the vision that we’ve got is pretty amazing actually. The experience will spirit. And there’ll be gurus and Tai Chi masters with Tai Chi troops dancing and street dances and free runners and a guy who makes people laugh for five minutes and all sorts of little interventions over the beat. And I’ll be intervening all the way through to my own set at the end.
40:32 The idea is it’s like a shamanistic journey because I live with the Native Americans for the four years and that was my thing. I was learning how to be a shaman in New Mexico but I then translated that into the Western idiom into the modern idiom so it’s a kind of like an electronic version of that and you know I’ve done it in amnesia in Ibiza with 6,000 people but only very shortly only momentarily because it was part of somebody else’s night so like what 10 minutes or 20 minutes no no I mean I was on for about overall an hour in over the course of the night okay on the mic with beats and stuff but I to get actually get people chanting for like about half a minute because it’s Ibiza man and it was my night so it was just real risk and getting doing it and then out and so I know it works you know it’s an amazing sensation you get a lot of people making the sound and then a great club by the way yeah and it used to be really big right yes to be the best club or one of the best well it depends what nights on there is the same with all of them now it depends who’s on at the time and and so this will be this will be that kind of celebration but it will be a guided narrative there’ll be a shamanistic kind of direction to it and it will result eventually in 12,000 people being in the same intention just for that while and with the same kind of vision of sending out a sound wave to heal the world and I mean even if you get 20 people chanting together, chanting anom it’s so it’s so
41:53 Beautiful it’s so beautiful and you get 12,000 people doing it it will be amazing. I mean it really would be amazing and and so that’s the the idea for the Big Om and then the next thing will be stadiums because I want to do it with a hundred thousand people I want to do that all especially in America I want to do it Madison Square Gardens and so on and so on you know. And is it purely a show or is there interactivity? Oh it’s full interactivity I mean there’ll be like qigong moments where I get everybody just to stop with the beat and start swaying in a certain way and feel the qi in of hands and there’ll be there’ll be a lot of interactivity yeah we should go right absolutely no I like the whole idea this how would people find out more about it so go if you go to the big om.org the big om.org and then you watch the animation and I’ll tell you all about it and you can get tickets now if you want as well. Wow. And can you tell us more about what Ibiza was like when you were there? And then I want to hear about the Native Americans. When were you in Ibiza? I left there pretty much about 15 months ago actually. Okay. So you were there for four years recently? Yeah. Wow. That is a proper vacation. Four years in Ibiza. In your fifties? Yeah. Well it wasn’t a vacation. I mean I was pretty well. I was doing two gigs a week, all night gigs in the summer season. So when you say gigs like DJ? Yeah and on the on my things on the mic I used to work there with a guy
43:20 Called Hoffa66 he’s one of the DJs there and we used to do our nights two nights a week and so that that was work plus I’ve run my online business from there and traveling around the world doing my workshops so it wasn’t like I was just I wasn’t actually on holiday it would have been nice I was working really hard there but it was interesting time because it was it was the tail end of it be through as people knew it when it was really innocent and it was happening in the really fun. Just before it started getting very VIP, now you mentioned VIP, that whole VIP culture then kind of came in and swamped it, so that it is now really dominated by the super rich kind of party people. Right.
43:56 And that’s fine, I mean it’s a lovely reality. It’s lost that creative, it’s actually like around here you know like in Shoreditch in the in the early 90s it was a really cheap part of town, so you had a lot of creative artistic people living here. And then because that was a cool place to be people with money started moving in, the prices went up, the artistic people couldn’t afford to be here anymore. Now it’s just guys on podcasts. No, but yeah, I mean there’s extremely good-looking guys. Extremely good-looking guys. Thank you.
44:23 But yeah, I guess Ibiza, I mean like Pasha, Ibiza used to be, I guess in the 80s and 90s, kind of something that you kind of had to know about and know people to go and now it’s a place where people in London will book the VIP tickets and they kind of go in and it’s just changed a bit, right? Well the whole world I think that’s the truth of the whole world. Where’s the new Ibiza in your opinion? There isn’t one, there is nowhere like Ibiza. There never will be. I heard IONIPO was supposed to be like… Yeah but it’s not Ibiza. Have you been to Ibiza? No I’ve always wanted to check it out. I never saw it in the old days, I think I first went there five years ago but I went there with a buddy of mine from New York and he was expecting like this, the things you used to see on TV like you know British people in Ibiza on you know San Antonio or something falling down the streets and when we both got there we were just surprised by like this good vibe, like kind of just happy hippie energy.
45:11 Like it felt like something like the sixties or seventies. It, it wasn’t like everyone trying to just get completely messed up. It was just, I don’t know. The whole island has this really good vibe about it. Yeah.
45:21 But you weren’t in San Antonio. No, I wasn’t. Yeah. Well, that’s why. Okay.
45:24 But it wasn’t, it was really different. And I felt like a lot of love in that place. And I don’t know if you could replicate it. I guess it’s like the, it’s this ultimate, uh, it’s like Disneyland for grownups, right? That’s where I think of a beef.
45:36 That’s where people can just go and forget their drudgerous everyday life and just party. I’d say that’s what you think it is, or I’d say that’s what Vegas is, but I would guess I think it’s something different. You live there. I mean, what is it like? Well, it’s really, the people who live there, it’s an island of black sheep.
45:53 So it’s people who were similar to me, or I can imagine you two as well, kind of vaguely anarchistically minded and not really conformist, all go and live together on an island. And it becomes quite conformist, because there are no more black sheep. So it’s actually quite a moralistic society, I found, strangely. It’s not as liberal as it looks, but in a formalized way, there is liberalism, there’s swingers clubs, and there’s this and there’s that, but it’s all quite structured, really.
46:21 But I think the whole world’s become like that, really. But it is beautiful. It’s a beautiful island. It’s only a very little bit of it that’s built up relatively. Most of it’s just quite gorgeous.
46:30 It’s a gorgeous place. And there are very, very lovely people there, but they’re busy. I mean, in the summer, everyone’s pretty busy doing the season. And in the winter, everybody’s completely steam-rolled or leave the island. So it’s kind of a funny place.
46:44 It’s extreme. So it’s either really quiet or really noisy. But Maytime is my favorite there. It’s just when things are just about starting up again, and it hasn’t really kicked in yet. The season hasn’t opened yet.
46:56 Space opening’s on the 20th, roughly. And then the weather’s beautiful, and it’s not too crowded, it’s not traffic jams everywhere. May. Oh, it’s gorgeous. I love May and Ibiza. That’s what I’ve learned from living in different places. There’s certain months of great to be in certain places. Yeah, I think that’s quite a cool viewpoint. I think Nick and I were talking about that. We were talking that January was the one maybe not to be in London. Yeah, tell me about it. I’m not going to be here in January. I’m just telling you now, buddy. Okay, fair enough. You know, um, Stephen, somehow I want to ask a lot of successful people I meet sometime and I’m just wondering, I mean, you know, you’ve done a lot of things. You’ve lived a lot of places. You’ve written books and you know you’ve obviously done a lot with your healing medicine but you know do you ever get to a point where you’re like where do I go next I know you’re about to do the big home and you said this is probably one of the bigger things you’ve done the biggest biggest I mean do you find you you’d like to keep pushing yourself or how do you find you you deal with it on it we wake up in the morning and you’re like okay I’m the barefoot doctor you know how do you go from there well I mean the thing is that the big home is the biggest thing I’ve ever done and so I am and I’ve been building up to it for 30 years. I had the vision for it 30 years ago and I mean that just is all
48:00 Consuming and so there’s no question about being motivated. I want to run away sometimes and just disappear but most of the time I’m just totally motivated and that’s well that’s it I just want to do that. I have fantasies about what it might be like after I’ve gone around the world doing a few stadium events like this which is to disappear into the mountains and just sit there very quietly and then get involved making you know just making a bit of music and getting involved with collaborative projects and not caring very much, but I doubt it would be like that because I’m on a mission.
48:29 You know, I want to make the world happy. That’s my genuine question. Cause like what the work, the work that you do is almost the dissipation of your ego, but yet you almost have to have an ego to take on a project. Such an interesting viewpoint, Brian. Because you must think about, okay.
48:43 I mean, I said earlier, wow, you’ve got time until this happens. And you’re like, no, it’s around the corner. And it’s nine months ago from now. And, but it’s your reputation and it’s everything about yourself. And Brian and I were just speaking about this at lunch today. I’ve said to Brian You know, there’s a there’s a time to let go and just Flow with the dow and there’s also a time to to hustle, you know There’s a time to make things happen and for me something that I’m struggling with in life I think you might be similar Brian is that I’m trying to figure out Maybe that’s the ultimate thing that you have to figure out in life is when to do to do which one And do you have any tips on how like how do you mix that because obviously this is all about you on the 12th to a Certain extent, but maybe it isn’t well. No, it’s not it’s about the people who’ll be there. That’s who’s it’s about the event It’s definitely about the event. The event has a spirit of its own and it’s about serving the event I’m just the guy who’s serving it. I’m not it’s not about me. So you don’t want to let down the event really?
49:38 Yeah, absolutely. I know and also all the people I’m gonna be working with as well well. But yes, I also am constantly looking at this, should I be pushing now or yielding, sticking to it or yielding? And the Tai Chi Mesophores, very interesting, because they talk about four ounces or 110 grams, that is, of pressure applied at all times. So you know what you want, you’ve got an intention for a particular outcome, and then you let go and you allow the doubt, the flow of things, to bring you the people and opportunities you need to make this thing occur, which invariably does in its strange, higgledy-piggledy way.
50:15 But you stick to the events as they’re happening with four ounces. You’re never pushing it with more than four ounces. You don’t put five ounces on and you don’t put three ounces on because that’s not enough. You’ve got to be making love with it basically in a really beautiful way constantly or dancing with it. And then sometimes the pressure builds up against you, which inevitably will at times, and then you yield to it. So you don’t it impacts on you with more than four ounces. So if it like if a punch is coming to the right side of your face you turn that side but your left hand’s already coming around to punch them back you use that force to that you’re yielding with to stick back to it again but always with four ounces so you never kind of get like that with ease try and keep it really light and that gives a bit of a better indication about when to push and when to yield because you know like if you’re on the mat with somebody and you’re fighting that the force is coming at you at times and And you know instinctive, you’ve got to yield to that, you don’t kind of resist it because it wouldn’t be, and you know when it’s time to take advantage and move in and do your thing.
51:12 It’s just, it becomes instinctual after a while. That’s something martial arts is all about, isn’t it? Yeah, it’s knowing when to yield and when to resist, right, yeah, exactly what you said. Wow, that was a cool metaphor. Yeah, that’s a very good metaphor.
51:27 And what are the other challenges for this year besides that production? I’m rebuilding my main website at the moment, barefootdoctorworld.com, which I’ve been putting off for eight years now, and it’s like when you’ve got a room in the house that you just keep putting stuff in and you never tidy it, you hit one day I’m going to have to tidy that one. And this has been the year that I’ve actually had to do it, I just couldn’t stop. Anyway, I’m doing that and it’s a huge job going on behind the scenes of this because it’s a massive website.
51:59 So that’s quite a big challenge because it means a lot of concentrating. It looked very intricate, but I couldn’t get the message in 30 seconds from that website. Well, that’s the problem with it, yeah, it’s messy. And yeah, so it’s probably eight years, it’s a long time to even have a website. Well, it’s been since 1997 originally, my first website, the first version.
52:14 We just found out today that YouTube’s only been going since 2006. You did. Oh, you knew that already. I didn’t know that. Wow.
52:22 And the thing is, it’s so ingrained in our everyday life, it just feels like it’s been there forever. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. congruent with the culture. Because being like the shaman type figure, you can’t really be with the herd. It’s the way of the shaman to be the weirdo, the freak or whatever that’s somehow away from the herd. It has to be that way. You have to come back and go, look guys, try this way. Hey, you call from a distance. Come over here. Look, this is good. And eventually bit by bit the people start coming and then you have something to offer. And that’s kind of what it’s like for me now. I suppose this is the time for that to be happening.
52:57 And it’s being congruent and having the compassion and the empathy to feel into what people are going through so I can really give it and really serve properly. It’s hard that. I mean, wherever I go, I’m doing workshops and stuff. People tell me their stories. There’s so much suffering.
53:13 There’s so much pain in the world. There really is. Everyone’s got a story going on. And it’s like always finding the key that will unlock that to make it more beautiful for everyone. That’s my challenge.
53:24 And so that key is? I think firstly, well it’s everything we’ve been talking about really, it’s the knowing that we are not this, we are actually what I would call divine beings, and you could say we’re like fallen angels, you know, in human form. And to know that, to know you’re not this local personality, to know that if you let go and trust the universe will support you, that if you’re original in your thinking, if you’re bold enough to make life into an adventure and not try and live it to please other people, that the universe will support you, life will, it’s like a fairy tale and it will support you. And I think most importantly is that we are all in this together.
54:01 We’re all brothers and sisters, spiritual brothers and sisters on this planet and it’s not a finite resource and we need to learn to trust each other a bit more and to play with each other a bit nicer really is what it is. And so it’s like learning and everybody has a beautiful aspect to them And it’s just somehow letting that come through, not being afraid to let your beauty shine, your kindness, your caring, because we’ve all got it. And the more we just a little bit, I mean, 5% difference will change the whole world.
54:32 Maybe it’s just to relax more, maybe it’s just that simple if everybody relaxes a little bit more. It is a cumulative effect. I mean, if everyone just does that little, that 1% or that 2%, or if everyone did a bit of meditation, it would be cumulative and it would change everything, wouldn’t it? Yeah, and I think it’s happening. I do think that’s actually occurring.
54:49 Yeah, there’s a shift. I wanted to ask you, you lived with the Native American tribe, is that correct? Yeah, yeah. And you did a bunch of shamanistic practices, did any of those involve peyote or any other psychedelics? Yeah, I mean, I have taken pretty much every psychedelic there is, yeah, and I have lots of those experiences.
55:08 I don’t recommend them, especially not these days, because they don’t seem to be relevant somehow to me now, necessarily, but that’s just me. Maybe you’ve transcended them. Yeah, for me, I’ve got the message and I couldn’t speak for other people I just worry for people taking stuff unguided because it can be dangerous For sure, but I owe a lot personally to those experiences and yeah, they were very profound I don’t have a feelings. I think it would make me puke to take any psychedelics now I just don’t want it. I’m living in a psychedelic reality now, you know, yeah, I believe that by talking to him Guys, we’re all we’re basically almost up here Brian. Should we tell the people about yeah, we’ll give a Shout out to Onnit Labs, which are our sponsor.
55:49 Actually, Steven had one. I’m sure you haven’t felt it yet. No, I have actually. I’m trying to, yes, an enlivening effect on the brain. Well, that’s a great one right there.
55:56 But it’s a new Tropic Alpha Brain. Yeah, I take it I’m on two a day right now. And yeah, it just kind of lavens things up a bit. There’s no caffeine in this. There’s no crash or anything.
56:04 But yeah, those are the makers of Onnit at onnit.com. If you go there and use a codename London Real, you get 10% off. And they’ve also got something called Shroom Tech, which I use for heavy workouts, martial arts works. It’s a, it’s the quarter steps, a mushroom. It’s a really, you’ve been taking some straight quarter steps as well, right?
56:23 I’ll never stop taking that. It makes me feel so good. I might, yeah, give some of that to Stephen on the way out, but that’s that. So they just make a few supplements that we really like and check them out. And yeah, I don’t know what else, do you have any closing comments?
56:38 This has been- That was one cool cat, right? This is some, science has been dropped. Science has been dropped. I’m taking some things away. I love the eight steps for meditation.
56:45 I think a lot of people can take, I’m already was like thinking about them in the four ounces. I’m gonna be thinking about that. I was thinking yeah That is great. I’m thinking about the party on 12 12 12. Yeah, that would be good So um, it’s the big home org. Yeah, and we’ll flash it on the screen. Um, check it out There’s only there’s limited seating with only 14,000 right or 12,000. You got a hurry and they’re going fast I believe you well all the best with that. Thank you. And yeah, thanks for coming in. Thanks for having me It’s been beautiful. Fantastic. All right It’s about the journey. It’s about the journey man. Take care guys Yes.
