Irene & Seth Lyon Nervous System: Parenting & Relationships

[Speaker 3] (0:00 - 0:07) You are now listening to the Here for the Truth Podcast, hosted by Joel Rafiti and Yerasimos. [Speaker 1] (0:11 - 1:31) What's up everybody? Welcome to the Here for the Truth Podcast. And no, this isn't Joel doing the introduction, this is me. My name is Yerasimos. But yes, I do have my co-host Joel Rafiti with me today. This is episode 104. We have an amazing episode for you. We have special guests, both of them have been on the podcast before, Irene Lyon and Seth Lyon. For this episode, we do another deep exploration on the nervous system, exploring its relationship to parenting and relationships. And we cover a lot of other subjects as well. So please enjoy the episode. Also want to let you know that we do have our monthly membership community, Friends of the Truth. It's really just an amazing community of individuals, sincere truth seekers that are looking to uplift their lives in so many different ways. And the conversations that have been going on in the Telegram community have been amazing. So if you're curious about that, if you're curious about getting on a live community call a month, being part of a workshop with one of our previous podcast guests and getting another live teaching, check out friendsofthetruth.co. Other than that, I guess that's it. [Speaker 2] (1:31 - 2:24) You have anything to add, Joel? Just that, yeah. Our guest expert this month doing the workshop is, in fact, Irene Lyon. From this episode, we'll be diving deep and our members will get the chance to ask her questions related to the nervous system or anything else really. So if you're keen, like Yerasimos said, friendsofthetruth.co. Without further ado, here is Irene and Seth. Please enjoy this episode, guys. All right, everybody, welcome back to the Here for the Truth podcast. This is episode 104. We have our two amazing friends and former guests individually, both very popular episodes. We have Irene Lyon from episode 68 and her husband, Seth Lyon, who joined us in episode 72. If you want to learn more about them individually, go check out those episodes. But we're going to have a really fun conversation here today with both of them in the house together. First off, let's check in, guys. How are you doing? [Speaker 1] (2:25 - 3:19) Good. Yeah, great. Thanks for having us on. Yeah, we're doing well up here. Yeah. Awesome. I have Seth locked in the basement. I actually wanted to know, where are you doing the interviews from? Who's where? So I'm literally in the garage. I built a room for myself when my son moved in with us for a getaway from people in general, which was a requirement for me for a long time there. I still like to have my little pod for like... Man cave. I think it's important. It is, yeah. So yeah, I'm in the garage in my little chamber, and Irene is above me almost directly. Kind of. I have the sunlight, though, so that's the turn off. [Speaker 2] (3:19 - 3:21) Okay. Awesome. Awesome. [Speaker 1] (3:22 - 3:22) Yeah. [Speaker 2] (3:23 - 3:52) All right. I mean, there's so many places we could really start this conversation. I'm sure we're going to go across a broad array of topics here. But first of all, I'd like to start, I guess, talking about the ill effects of dysregulated parenting. This is a hugely hot topic. I think the nervous system in regards to parenting is coming more into the threshold and gaining much more awareness now than ever before. So how do we, I guess, begin broaching this topic in a basic way? And then we'll go from there. [Speaker 1] (3:53 - 4:47) Well, I'll start and then Seth, you can tag. Sure. Basically, humanity, as we know it, is a result of dysregulated parenting and all our problems. The end. Yeah. War, you know, struggles, sickness, psychic problems, mental problems, chronic illness, all the medication we tend to need, addictions, resistance, sabotage, getting into bad relationships, hitting our kids, hitting our dogs, cats, abusing animals. I mean... The list goes on. So it's like, as a general macro, dysregulated parenting creates all that and more. Yeah. One could say to create regulated parenting could change things quite quickly. [Speaker 2] (4:49 - 4:49) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (4:49 - 4:51) That's my... Those are my two cents. [Speaker 2] (4:52 - 4:54) All right, guys, that was episode 104. We'll see. [Speaker 1] (4:54 - 9:22) I love that you started with that, though, because I was saying this in a comment the other day, like, all you have to do is look around you at the world that we're living in right now to see the evidence of the dysregulation that's occurring within individuals. Yeah, and I think it's important to... I mean, we want to say for the parents out there, like, it's not... It didn't start with you either, right? Like, it's not about blaming parents, but we do have to recognize the reality that parents are the ones that shape the little people in terms of their nervous system, their emotions, their empathy, their ability to be socially engaged with the world, to read social cues, to be productive, to be connected to themselves, their creativity, all the good stuff that happens when you have regulation on board isn't happening so much as is fairly self-evident. And it's because of not just our parents, but the long line of stretching back into ancient history of trauma being passed down and down and down and down without knowledge of how to fix it, right? So I think it's pretty radical what Irene's been saying lately, which there is a right way to raise a human baby. And just that notion that there could be a right way, one right way, that actually is what you need to do, that's going to trigger a lot of people because I think a lot of us are coming from a reaction to places where our parents were told what was the right way, but it was not. It was absolutely wrong, right? So I think we can understandably get our hackles up every time someone says there's a right way, but there really is. And that way is regulation. Yeah, yeah. I think this topic also, again, I'm not a parent, I think it triggers a lot of vulnerability in parents too because they hear this new information and maybe it's like, oh, I wasn't doing it that way. Does that mean I've done something wrong? And I also don't think it means like wrapping your child up in bubble wrap. I think it's also how things are going to happen. We're human beings. We're going to have emotions. We're going to have experiences. It's how you repair that I think is one of the most important things. So I don't know if you want to comment on that at all. I'll just say one. I mean, so I'm not a biological parent, as you guys know, as Seth obviously knows. And there is this thought that if one has not had kids, that they shouldn't be giving advice and they don't know how to parent. But let's just talk, say it as it is. There's many parents who don't know what to do and abuse their kids. So just having a child doesn't by default make you a master and know what to do. And Seth, maybe we could talk Seth about our little, our little friction when I don't, you know, choose how much you want to talk about your son. I suggested some things that were completely verboten to him, to Seth, based on how I, thankfully, was raised in some really good ways. So, you know, and where that came from with my parents, you know, my mother was raised in the Philippines. It was a much more nurture. Babies are with their parents. They're not coddled. They, you know, it was just different. And for whatever reason, you know, my dad was raised well as well and really didn't have any trauma when he was a kid. So and he was a veterinarian. So he knew how to care for beings and mammals in a way that Seth's parents did not have. And then that funnels out into how you parented your son. So I just want to say that because sometimes there's people say, oh, I'm not a parent. So I shouldn't be talking. It's like, no, we're humans. By default, we're meant to breed, especially women and have children and babies. And it is in our DNA on how to take care of them. But again, like Seth said, there's just been so many thousands of hundreds of thousands of years that's really bleached that knowing and that intuition out of so many people. So that's just my little hit on that. And then if you want to talk about Seth, the friction that we have. Well, that's a super important point, because Irene, I know, gets angry comments every time she posts anything about parenting because she's not a parent. But it's like, you guys, it's like it's getting better. [Speaker 3] (9:22 - 9:23) I'll say it's getting better. [Speaker 1] (9:23 - 12:22) That's true. Yeah, it is. Yeah. Because I mean, when my son moved in with us, I certainly had that response. Like, you don't know. Right. I think what we're saying as parents, when we say that we have that response is that what we're really saying is you don't know what it feels like. Right. You don't know as if you're not a parent, you don't know what it feels like to challenge those things within yourself. But that doesn't mean that they're not that you're not right. Right. And it's because it feels like death. Like it can feel like death to challenge the stuff that you are trying to either compensate for or go against in reaction to. In my case, I received a lot of criticism, just a lot of stomping down on my authenticity, a lot of being shut down, physical violence, verbal violence. Just, you know, so my reaction was to go the other way. And just like, I just have to get out of the way. Just got to let him be who he is. And just like, not try to interfere too much and just honor his authenticity. All of which is great, because like, that's true. But you also need like, and right, learn how to fucking clean the dishes, wipe the counters and, you know, clean up after yourself and be organized and organize your time. And like, so there's all this stuff I was in reaction to that was pushed too hard. So when my son, who is great, I mean, he's an awesome guy, turned out great. But there was some things where he was struggling when he moved in with us that Irene could see that to me, it was just like, oh, it's, you know, whatever. Right. And like, drove Irene crazy, because, you know, she was coming from a place of understanding how some of these things were really important. So for me, we had quite a few fights about that at the time where I was like, you don't tell me what to do. And then, but you know, what I had to eventually come back to every time is that she was right. Because she's been wrong 14 times, maybe 15 times in our relationship. That's a pretty good portion. I think sometimes too, is that like, a person who's not directly involved can look at things potentially a bit more objectively, especially if they have training and education and knowledge in a certain area. Especially if you're an expert in the nervous system, human development and traumas. So yeah, it's a really, I think Irene has a very accurate lens on what needs to happen for babies to become regulated, healthy humans, even though she's not a parent. And I'm on the same page with that as well. I mean, it's, we've gotten to the point now where it's pretty clear of what like, what those things are, you know, and they're hard to come by, because it means parents have to do their work, right? The conditions to really be in place. And it may mean repair of things where we screwed up and challenging ourselves and changing patterns that we have resistance to, right? [Speaker 2] (12:22 - 12:44) Yeah, before we get into what those right ways are, I just want to pose a question to you, because do you think there's a possibility that people can take these concepts and these ideas and potentially receive them as a way of avoiding responsibility? Or there's so many generations of parents that screwed up, which is why I am the way that I am, as opposed to using it to take responsibility? [Speaker 1] (12:46 - 15:55) Yeah, sure. Go ahead. Well, it works, but yeah, it works both ways, right? It's like, oh, I'm this way because of what was done to me and what was done to them, what was done to them. So what's the point? But it's you, but epigenetics is real. Like you can change, you know, you can change all of that. So it, but yeah, absolutely. I think that happens. And the thing too is, I mean, it's quite, dare I say, miraculous. If we think of someone like Seth, whom has only had one child. Um, and in a matter of the time we've known each other, because us getting together is how he got into the world of somatic experiencing and all that stuff. Like Seth has shifted, um, light years of his generational trauma in a matter of seven to eight years, we'll say 10 to round up. And so if you really step back and think about that over even two of his generations, you know, to his great grandparents, like that's monumental that you can shift an entire way that a generation works in a, in a dozen or so years. And, but it takes the work of doing it. And, um, relationships are interesting because I have seen that if the two people, um, who are raising that child are not in agreement of these things, there is a lot of problem because then you have friction. And the moment there's friction, it's not, it's just not safe. And even if it's like a disagreement on one little thing, like I want to reward little Johnny when he gets an A and the wife is like, are you kidding? Like, what does that mean when he gets a D, you know, do we punish him and send him to his room, which a lot of that kids that happen. So even those little tiny things, um, all the way down to, you know, how you treat a baby when they're young, which we'll get into, uh, they have to be aligned. And I've seen in our programs and read of stories were sorry guys, but it's usually the woman who's wanting to change things. And the dudes just, it's like, that's not my problem. Or you figure it out. You're the mother, you do it. Um, it's not always that case. Um, but there really needs to be alignment in both parents looking in the same direction. And then you think about you, then you give those kiddos to a babysitter or grandma or grandpa or the school, and then they get fed a totally different narrative. And there is a recipe for anxious little Johnny, you know, to not know what the hell is going on because they're getting, he's getting all these different, um, uh, signals of what it means and how it is to be in the world. And so that's, that's where I go back to. If we could all just agree on how to raise a child and we could say a toddler and they just get that solid foundation, um, everything would be so much easier. But, um, that's a lot of things to align, right? Yeah. Yeah. So what would be, yeah, what would be some of these things? [Speaker 2] (15:55 - 15:58) What does create a solid foundation? Give us the case to the kingdom, Irene. [Speaker 1] (15:58 - 28:53) Yeah, well, we're talking about the first three years, really. Yeah. I mean, this is where it's the most important and there's some things that really must be in place. Um, you know, both parents need ideally themselves to be not in survival mode. At the very least, there needs to be one caregiver who is not in survival mode, um, who is not themselves chronically stressed, who is not themselves traumatized. Ideally both parents, right? So there's your first stumbling block is that almost everybody is to some mode degree in survival mode. And so that's where it's like, okay, you know, how many, you gotta get, how many, we're not gonna get too many people who want to be parents to go through 10 years of, you know, intense trauma training before they had, yeah, before there, we give them their certificate to have a kid. So, you know, right now we're talking about a lot of this needing to happen on the fly of people needing to adjust. Right. Um, but I think if we do need to agree, and so that's step one is there needs to be at least one attuned caregiver who is not themselves in survival mode. That's, that's step one. And I'll add not, I mean, acute survival mode. Yeah. So you can still have some unprocessed old trauma and be attuned to a baby. I mean, I, I was the baby whisperer when I was 20 years old and I was still in functional freeze. So I want to be, you don't have to be this pristine regulated human. Of course that would be perfect. Yeah. But you can, you know, if you are really being guided by your intuition and you have some street smarts, yeah, you can pick up a baby and know what is right and wrong. And then there's maybe little nuances, um, that would be important to teach, which I'll leave that for now. Let Seth continue with those, the basics. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not about being perfect. It's just about not being chronically stressed, um, and having the ability to be attuned, right. Which means you can feel within yourself what's happening with your baby. Um, when a good example is, um, you know, I was fortunate enough for the first three years of my son's life for, to raise him in Hawaii. He spent a lot of time just running around naked. Um, because of that, it was very easy to start to be able to sense like when he needed to go pee. So like he was totally potty trained, like super, super early. He spent hardly any time in diapers because you would just be hanging out outside and like, Oh, you just start to feel it like, Oh, he's got to go pee. And it's like, you gotta go pee. And then he would go pee. Right. And that's because I could feel in me. So that's a very simple example of attunement, but that's, what's necessary is that ability to really feel your kids at that young, young age, where it's like, that's how you teach them about their physiology. And so, for example, with nursing is another huge one. Um, when mama is nursing and there's that beautiful connection and lots of eye contact happening and there'll be faces and smiles and all this, like, that's how you're teaching about expressivity and, uh, joy and emotion and connection. All these beautiful things happen in that moment through this attunement that's being built. That's also how you're building that ventral vagal system, how it's getting myelinated, um, which is our social engagement system is through that kind of attunement and that attention. So that's, uh, I'll say that's the baseline, the basics, having it within yourself to attune and feel your child rather than coming from any sort of mental idea about this is what I should do. This is what they should like this at this stage, they should do this and this, right? There's so many imposed mechanical techniques that are just, there's no substitution for actually just being able to feel in the moment what is right. And do you think because parents are getting information from so many different angles that they're bypassing that connection to their intuition of what they innately know because of generations and generations and generations. And I could see why parents and I've heard it before many times they feel overwhelmed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, one of the things to just, I want to just put a bow on what you said, Seth, about the attunement is, um, to really remember. So our nervous system, um, is huge and it is responsible for survival, right? Listen to our other episodes. And then it's also responsible for, um, all the stuff that happens in our insides. So digestion, immunity, circulation, temperature, regulation, hunger, cues, sex, satiety, cues, sleep, wake cycles, all that stuff. And so when you have a little one that's new, the way you attune to them and teach them self-regulation is by giving them what they need when they're too cold or too hot or they're hungry or they're tired. And the story I always tell, um, when I'm teaching about this, and it's a good one is I remember being in a pharmacy, a drug store here in Vancouver, and it was the winter and it was so cold outside. And, you know, you walk into this place and it's bright lights, the heat is cranked, the scents are terrible. And I went to the back to get something and there was a mother there who was clearly not well mentally, um, with her child in a pram and a stroller. And the kid was maybe six months and just wailing and crying and crying. I looked at the child and it was beet red in the face. So what was going on? It was hot, it was overheating because it had the hat, the gloves, the jacket, the blankets, and, you know, it had just been outside and now in this heat. And she was, in a sense, kind of screaming and telling this little baby to stop crying, but she couldn't make that connection. Like, here I am, like taking off my clothes because I'm overheating because I have my big parka on. So that, as simple as that is, that is the kind of attunement that we need to have with our little ones. But if the mom is in her own shutdown and dissociation and stress, she's not even feeling that she's overheating. So she's definitely not going to see that little baby is overheating. And so a lot of the ways that we learn that with kiddos is through ourselves. Are we even aware that we're hungry, that we need to go potty, you know, that we are tired and how much do we push through these things? And that is like the essence of what you need to do over and over and over again with a newborn baby. And it's quite simple when you look at it from that way. But as you said, Yerasmus, there's all these books and ways of manipulating feeding schedules and sleep training. And it's just, it's a mess, right? When the baby really does know and we have to trust that. Can you comment a little bit on the sleep training aspect of it and what impact that has? Because that seems to be a really hot topic and I've had conversation with parents and I've seen things online. So I would love some more clarity on that from a nervous system standpoint. Well, we should make a distinction first because there's sleep training and then there's cry it out. Yeah. And they're not always the same. Neither are great. But one is worse than the other. I mean, cry it out is the worst. Yeah. That's where you're teaching a little one to go into shutdown as a response to stress. Right. Yeah. Well, that's what they do is I cry it out. What it is, is it for, I guess, you know, for people who haven't heard this stuff before, you know, your baby isn't upset emotionally and they're not crying so that, you know, then they can get better because they get their emotions out and then they calm down and go to sleep. That's not what's going on. A baby cries because they're trying to communicate. They need something. It's not an emotional experience. It's a direct physiological need. So when they're not getting their needs met and not getting their need met and they're crying and they're crying and they're crying, that tells the physiology, I'm in a life threat. So what's happening is they're going into sympathetic arousal into fight flight mode, but they have no ability to fight or flee. So then eventually the freeze kicks on and they pass out. So your cry it out is putting an infant into so much distress that they pass out. And what that does over time is it teaches their system to default to freeze in moments of stress. So then you end up with someone like as soon as something stressful happens, they just shut down. Yeah. Which is so common, which is so common, right? So that's, that's the worst. And then sleep training is a little bit different. I'm not as familiar with all the nuances of that. Well, it's, it's, I mean, I was in a household where they were doing that with kiddos and, you know, it was hard for me knowing what I know and I didn't want to, you know, Overstep. Yeah. But, um, there's a version of the cry it out because, um, I'll, I'll go back. It's happening because mama wants to go to work usually, or we have to have a schedule because we have other kids that need to get up lunch, dinner, like it kind of defies just that natural rhythm with the biology. And I think, you know, not, I think I know when a baby is that when a baby is young, which they are, they need a lot of energy recycling. They need to, they need to feed. They need to be moving, feed some more and then sleep. And I mean, you know, this Joel over and over and over again, and you know that there's no, um, there's no schedule that they're trying to write out. It's going with their physiology, but because of our domestication as humans and our work world, um, there is this way of training a baby to rise and wake to suit our adult needs. Now, some people have said, I'm so glad I sleep trained because I know other mothers who are up all night, but again, then you have to go into, well, are you co-sleeping with baby? Or are you having to get up and go to another room to feed? Whereas if they're with you, it's just happening naturally. And so you see, you pick, pick one piece and then it just spiderwebs to all these other things. But what I've seen when someone was sleep training, when I was around them is they do go into the room and they're, they're calming them. They're soothing them. But then often what occurs is as soon as mama leaves or papa leaves, they're up again. Like, where did you go? Where'd you go? I'm not ready. I'm not tired. Yeah. It's like, you can't force feed a baby, at least I don't think, um, to breastfeed, but you can force feed a baby to have a bottle in its mouth. Right. And so it's kind of like, again, that's another topic of how we teach children how to eat and not eat well, really young. But the sleep training is really a version of cried out, but it's a little more, seems nicer. Cause it's just called sleep training, but it's basically disrupting. I think from what I know that, that natural neuro neuro biological need. And the thing is, is once they become older, they, and they are with the rhythms of the sun, they do sleep in a different way, but it's that first portion of, of life. It's so delicate and they're building so many nervous system pathways that they really need to be left to just do what they need to do. Um, and then again, go ahead. Well, and it's like, yeah, it's every, every child, every baby will have slight variations, you know, in terms of what their unique physiology is in terms of how, when they want to eat, how much, when do they want to sleep? And again, so it's about attunement and trying to impose any kind of mechanical, anything ignores the innate authenticity of that being right. So, I mean, that's, you brought up co-sleeping. That's another really important thing, sleeping with your baby, tons of skin to skin contact, super, super important. Um, you know, it's, there's, I think maybe not a knowledge in our culture of the amount of sacrifice that's going to be necessary to really raise a healthy human baby on the part of at least one of the caregivers. Hopefully there's two and you can take turns and you're both in a position to do that, but it's a tremendous amount. Yeah. You're not going to get a lot of sleep for a long period there. That's how it goes. [Speaker 2] (28:53 - 29:24) This is, this is the point I wanted to make because initially we started the conversation by saying, you know, ideally the parents aren't in survival, but if a parent is truly raising a baby the way we're suggesting here, they're going to be in survival. Like the amount of broken sleep, the amount of, you know, effort required is going to bring someone to that point. I've seen it firsthand multiple times. So how do you, that's, I think that's what's going to drive someone to contemplate sleep training, et cetera. Not that I've ever done that in my house. Like, how do you navigate that? You know? [Speaker 1] (29:24 - 29:45) Well, now you're, you're, you're bumping into societal problems now, right? Because a lot of this is because of the way our society is set up, which encourages everyone to stay in survival mode all the time. Right? Like, I think that it is totally possible to not go into survival mode. Like there's a difference between being stressed and being in survival mode. Right? Yeah. [Speaker 2] (29:45 - 29:55) But if, dude, if you have a baby on your bed, 24 seven scratching, clawing, you're not sleeping the moment you sleep, they're waking up again. Right. [Speaker 1] (29:55 - 29:55) Oh, no. [Speaker 2] (29:55 - 29:56) I remember. [Speaker 1] (29:57 - 35:42) Like, yeah, yeah. I think there's a reason that when I had a kid, I, both me and his mom had dropped out of society entirely. Like we were living in the jungle in Hawaii, you know, oftentimes in a tent, then we would get a house sitting gig. You know, we weren't working. We were just, you know, living, living off the land, living off of food stamps, like, you know, just being bums. And it made for a really great foundational childhood for my son, because we chose to remove ourselves from that rat race and from those pressures. But yeah, there's, there are, yeah, realities to that, as you say, that are just going to be stressful. Right. And that, again, comes to the need for the parents to build their own capacity to do their own trauma work so that they don't get triggered. Right. Because you can, the more capacity you have, the more endurance you have for stress. Right. But there's no doubt that you're going to get a lot of, you know, stress during this experience because it is intense. Yeah. A lot of people talk about the period zero to seven, you brought up zero to three. Like, what's, what's the difference? And why such a focus on zero to three? Is there some arbitrary thing that one school of thought thought was most ideal? Well, the, the first three years, and what we also haven't talked about is in utero. So I also want to mention that at some point, the, the Seth mentioned it, the ventral vagal portion of the parasympathetic nervous system. So that's where that vagus nerve comes in. It's a part of the vagus nerve. It is raw and unrefined when we're born, right? This is why our little people can't talk freely and know all the things and they can't self-regulate. So that nerve is not what's called myelinated when we're born and it grows myelination through interaction, through good interaction. And that's kind of that window, right? And so that is where that comes in. What's interesting to me is we don't know what it might look like. If a huge populous cohort of babies had that, what happens after age three might be inconsequential because they're so fucking foundationally sound that they develop their brain and their speaking capacity and all these things completely effortlessly because it's just written in them, you know? And so that's the zero to three. It has to do with the vagus nerve and that ventral portion. Of course, our brain is still developing and we're still learning and acquiring skill until like even our 20s, but that is so key. And if you read any of Bruce Perry's work, who wrote a lot about children who are abused and not treated well, you know, he speaks about, and I think his book, Born for Love, how babies in, I think it was Romanian orphanages would just die because there was no one connecting with them. So they were fed from what I believe, but they were just left. And so they weren't building up that robustness to stay self-regulated and have that connection. And yet it's interesting that in our culture, you can have a baby in a very dysregulated household where there's very little attunement and yet they survive. Right? So something is still happening enough to keep that human alive, even though the regulation is, as my ex-husband would say, piss poor, right? It's like, it's just not there. And, but then that's the trouble is then these kids are staying alive, but with so much dysregulation. And then we have the question, okay, well, is this what's causing a lot of the ADHD and autism diagnoses and Asperger's and problems focusing and chronic illness and tension headaches and five-year-olds and tummy problems and all these things. So I kind of went off on a bit of a tangent there, but that's, that's the zero to three. I do believe that if that is solid and in utero is solid, man, we'd be just like in a totally different world. Yeah. I mean, it seems pretty basic. You know, you, you have the foundation of a house. If it's not structured properly, the house is going to have some issues and you're going to have to like touch some things up later on in life and change a window and change this and change that until you get down, you get to the foundation and you, you, you feel it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Another interesting thing about the zero to three age is like when baby first comes in, I mean, him and mom are essentially one being, right? And the process of differentiation really is you around age three is, is generally when that little one is starting to understand I'm my own person that starts in the twos somewhere with the ability to say no. Right. And then by the time it's yeah, but yeah, yeah. Maybe more like around five, but I think by the time you get to three, that's when you're starting that differentiation where like, there's starting to be a sense of like, oh, there's me in the world. And then there's, you know, other people. And I think that's maybe starting to happen around then. Um, I had a thought what, what, um, Joel, you were saying about the stress of 24 seven and with two kids, like I know you and your wife, just like none of us here at breastfeeding moms, and it's true. And then we think about, um, if I think again, I always go back to my mom and how, you know, they have still in, in her old home, there is always someone there who can help that doesn't need to go to work. [Speaker 3] (35:42 - 35:43) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (35:43 - 36:25) And, and I mean, when Seth and I, we've been there twice and, you know, we're the visitors. So they give us the living room to sleep on the couch. And like 10 of the family members are all sleeping in one small room, you know, and there's a baby and there's toddlers and there's teenagers and there's boyfriends and girlfriends over in that room. Like there's always someone to take care of the baby, maybe not breastfeed, but like give mom a break, give mom a break. So mom can make some food, you know, and the baby gets cleaned by, by auntie or by older sister. And because so many of us are living in our, um, pods of just usually two people in the kiddos. [Speaker 2] (36:25 - 36:26) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (36:26 - 36:47) It's tough because we, because then those who have awareness are like, I'm not leaving my child with a stranger. Right. Because we just don't trust. And I get that I wouldn't, you know, and so we have this weird conundrum where we don't have that lineage. Whereas in the Philippines, there is an agreement on what to do with the baby. [Speaker 2] (36:47 - 36:51) What's the saying? It takes a village or the old saying, it takes a village to raise a child. [Speaker 1] (36:51 - 37:04) Totally. So that's, that's the other thing with, I think if I classify us as Western, I don't know if that's accurate anymore, but we just don't have that. You know, house where there's grandparents and aunties and all that. [Speaker 2] (37:05 - 37:13) Um, and then, and then the question is like, do most people who are aware, do they want their parents having that big an influence? [Speaker 1] (37:14 - 37:33) Exactly. Right. Yeah. Because that's the thing where you're now we're running into the fact that, yeah, most of our parents aren't exactly, you know, stunning role models for, right. So no, it is, it's, it's a hard, it's a, it's a solution. It's something that has a solution, but it's going to take generations to really unfold. [Speaker 2] (37:33 - 37:46) You know, and this is simply where I'm like, it's important to understand the context that we live in as well. It's not to take all this information and be so overwhelmed and feel so helpless about it. Like there's an element where we have to just be okay with doing the best that we possibly can as well. [Speaker 1] (37:47 - 39:35) And I think given that, you know, my example of those kids that were brought up and not the best household still survive. And yes, they've got some troubles. It doesn't take a lot to shift things a big chunk. And that's the part that, you know, if we can simplify it, that element that I mentioned about learning about your physiology and following your own biological impulses and imparting that on your children that can go so far. Oh yeah. Because that is the nervous system, right? That is the interception. That's the gut sense. That's the health of the digestion, the immune system, temperature regulation. It really is that unconscious part of our nervous system that if we get that right early on so much can fall after that. And we'll get so worried about, we have to teach them, you know, how to listen to Shakespeare and speak by the time they're too, you know, two months old and all these things. It's like, oh, that stuff I think has really screwed a lot of Western families is because they think that, oh, academic pursuits and intellectualism is important. Yes, it's important. That's why we're here. We're having a discussion. But again, it's that age. It's like, they're so little. It's not important. Their physiology is the most important thing. I can't remember where it was. I think there was a study somewhere. It wasn't, it was a Denmark, but about the reading, like essentially most kids are taught to read way too early. It's like, you're not supposed to have that kind of fine detailed focus, like that close distance. The eyes aren't ready for that. I think it was till around age seven or eight. Yeah, and most people start, you know, their kids reading super, super young. [Speaker 3] (39:36 - 39:36) Right. [Speaker 1] (39:36 - 40:57) And so, and I think there was a correlation they found between that and vision problems. But there's all sorts of just developmental stuff that goes along with that. For a lot of those years, kids really are supposed to be like. Play. Play. Yeah, like engaged with nature, engaged with mom and dad, engaged with friends in play. And there's such a focus on academia, just being drilled in so early. I think that's another big thing that needs to be challenged. Yeah. And also, we've spoken about human design on this podcast. Obviously, it's work that I've been involved in for a long time. And you have, let's say, around 70 percent of the population that are generators that have that gut response. And so even children, that primal. And then parents are trying to like, no, no, don't use words, use language. And this intelligence, this somatic intelligence is kind of being bypassed on some level as well. So it's interesting to see that correlate even with the system of human design. Oh, 100 percent. One really simple thing that I'd love to invite all parents who are watching this. To really embrace his play. Like, let your kids be teachers for you. Like, let yourself tap into that childish childlike frame of mind and join them. [Speaker 3] (40:57 - 40:57) Right. [Speaker 1] (40:57 - 42:52) Like, it's good for you, too. And it's so good for them. You know, it's like, yeah, OK, they're making a funny sound. Don't correct them. Make a funny sound with them. Have a little conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Be silly. Be fun. You know, it's like that that that goes a long way towards cultivating that safety, that connection. Yeah. It's makes me think of that George Bernard Shaw quote. It's one of my favorites. It's like, we don't you don't grow. No, you don't stop growing. You don't stop playing because you grow old. You grow old because you stop playing. So just being able to connect to that within you and keep that alive, whether you're with children or even without it. I think there's a life force there that I think can serve human beings. Yeah, it's and it's so simple. A couple of months ago, maybe it's a year ago now, I was at the park near our house here and there was a dad. I'm assuming it was the dad with a little probably four year old kiddo and boy and lots of trees around. And, you know, the kid went up to want to touch the tree. And I was like walking and seeing this all happen. And the dad came over and grabbed him and like, no, we have to go. We have to go. And I just kept walking and I just play these games. I'm like, ten, nine, eight. So am I counting backwards? Just like crying and tantrum like you should have left. You should have let him touch the tree, dude. Why could you not let why couldn't you wait for 30 seconds or a minute and go up and touch the tree with him? What do you feel? Oh, my goodness. Look at the bark. Look at the things he was clearly wanting to connect with nature. That's his impulse. But then there's again, we got to go. That's dirty. The amount of times I, you know, don't don't play like we have to stay on the path. We can't go in the grass. It's just but that's our conditioning. [Speaker 2] (42:53 - 43:06) For sure. I'm with you and I completely agree. But put myself in that dad shoes. There's a potentiality that that 30 seconds could have turned into 45 minutes. And then no matter at what point he tried to pull the kid away, that would have been the crime. [Speaker 1] (43:06 - 43:50) Maybe. I'll give you that. And then that's where you can play. It's like, OK, let's imagine taking the tree with us. What would that be like? Yeah, you know, and then you get into this game of or, you know, you take a piece of bark. You know, I'm sure the tree wouldn't mind. You just get a little piece. I don't know. I respect that, Joel. So let me know. At the end of the day, it's an experiment. You know, you figure it out. But even just even allow allowing that initial honoring the initial impulse. And then you can see what can evolve from there. And there's nothing wrong with your kids getting upset. Like, you're going to it's going to happen. You're going to like, you got to have to do this. And I know that's going to happen to you for sure. [Speaker 2] (43:51 - 44:07) What was for the parent? Like, what was your relationship with play as a child in your house? Was it OK to play? Was it safe to play for extended periods of time? Because often we try to prevent in our children what wasn't really safe or acceptable for us in our households growing up. Is that right? [Speaker 1] (44:08 - 44:27) Oh, yeah, for sure. Or we go the other way. Like, I like either you it's like when you have bad information and trauma and just bad experiences, it seems like either you recycle them and repeat them or you overcompensate and go the other way. And so the and both neither are good, right? [Speaker 2] (44:27 - 44:36) Both of those are bad. So I read earlier you brought up, you know, the impact of in utero. You know, speak a little bit. [Speaker 1] (44:37 - 50:58) Yeah, I mean, the base level piece is the healthier mother is and her environment and her relationships or support the better baby, you know, little one, however you want to call it will be. And that is the part that I think we, you know, women know, you know, back in the day when women were always smoking and drinking their martinis, you know, all that kind of thing, you know, we know now don't smoke if you're pregnant. You want to have healthy food. That's a given. It's OK to exercise and exercise even vigorously. But the part that I think we could do better with is the emotions, is the trauma, is the toxins, you know, that that mom might be using with what she puts on her body, what she's inhaling, what she's cleaning with, those sorts of things. So that's really a it's kind of simple. It's like be healthy, work on your stuff. Don't overstress yourself. And then there's you know, there is some stress. There's going to be stress. There's going to be things that have to happen. But is mom coming down during the day or is she staying in constant go mode? Which so many women are because they have to work up until like the week before baby comes, usually. So that's the other thing is this ability to really listen and and start the attunement process as soon as you know you've conceived if you know as soon as you can, because that dialogue is happening. Um, gosh, I don't know where I heard this story. Ah, there was someone that I was talking to ages ago. I don't know if it was a client or this was someone else's client. She did not know that she was pregnant until she went into labor. She had been raped as a child as a teenager and completely disconnected and went into labor and got to the hospital. And the doctors were like, um, you're pregnant. And she had no idea. So that's an extreme case to a not realize you're not getting your period. Right. And to notice changes in your physiology, your breast tissue, all these things fatigue. Of course, when you're 16, you have more energy in general to handle that. But I was like, wow, that is intense to consider that. So that shows how disconnected a mother can be on an extreme. But then, you know, there's also being too worried about some things being too perfect, right? Not having a little sip of red wine if you want to with your steak, you know, that's not going to kill anyone. And it'll probably be lovely, right? Yeah, this is where I just think an individual state of consciousness is the most important thing. And a mother's state of consciousness during those nine months is important. Yeah, you want to have eat something that isn't ideal. But what's your view of yourself? You know, how do you handle conflict? You know, how stressed are you? These are so, so important. They're going to impact a child once they come into the world. Yeah. The other thing I'll add, and then Seth, you take over is also the birthing process. So there's a concept called the medicalization of birth, which is a whole other talk in itself. But, you know, I just interviewed a student of mine who's a surgeon. She's a bariatric, so a stomach surgeon, and she just had her second child in the summer. And we just did an interview about it. So it's going to be a fun one to listen to because she had two completely different experiences from first child to second. Her first, she was people pleasing, you know, her mother wanted to be there because her mom had just lost her brother, their son. So, you know, everyone was in the hospital room. She was in a hospital room to begin with, and there was no peace. Everybody wanted a piece of her during this birthing process, and it was traumatizing and it was painful and all the things that happened. Her second one, between her first and her second, she came to a workshop of mine, did smart body, smart mind, got totally connected with her inner voice and her inner wisdom and all that stuff. And she birthed her second baby in two pushes in the bathroom behind the hamper by herself alone. And baby was perfect and fine and all these things. And her water had broken two weeks before. So in the normal medical world, obstetrics, if your water breaks, it's just, oh, baby's going to come. But she's like, no, I learned that actually that can happen weeks before birth. And in the medical world, if you don't, if baby doesn't come out soon, they induce you, but it doesn't have to happen because the amniotic fluid actually keeps recycling and growing even after it opens. And so she, under a lot of people's duress, like medical doctors are like, you could be harming your child. And she would get all the blood, the stats, baby's heart rate was strong. She's like, I'm good. See you later. You know, I'll go back home and shave my legs and have a shower and keep eating tacos and all these things. And so that's an example of many wouldn't stick to their guns with that intuition. And here's a medical doctor, you know, who is like, no, I think I'm going to be fine. And, you know, there's always special cases where you do need to go to a hospital and we need to respect those. But there is this interference that happens with that process. And then the final thing I'll say is I'm convinced. And Peter Levine taught us this, a lot of the struggle with the birthing process is around the tension that a woman just holds in general. And it's not because of being pregnant. It's just from that unhealed trauma, right? This fear of opening up joints and places in the body to have flow. If you're stuck in the chakras of the body, we would call them the diaphragms, like it's going to be hard to get that size of a thing out of something that's like much smaller. And it's like, that is another portion of it is this lack of connection with body and being able to really open it up and go with the flow and listen. So there's so many pieces around that. [Speaker 2] (50:59 - 51:45) Oh, yeah. Absolutely. That's a huge topic, the five podcasts on the medicalization of birth, for sure. But even just one thing, you know, I noticed in the difference between, you know, the birth of my first two daughters, but the first child, you're very, very, very, very excited, right? So you're more inclined to share people, tell people, getting close to labor, etc, etc, etc. That just creates all this undue pressure on the mother. You know, everyone's now expecting a baby. And so the Valley, our first was a much longer labor in that regard. And the second one, we learned our lessons. We didn't tell anyone about anything whatsoever. No one knew the date when she was close. No one knew when she was in labor. Nothing. And Naya was born in an hour and a half, two hours in our home. Yeah. [Speaker 1] (51:46 - 54:46) I was going to just add on to what you were saying. I mean, just one piece that, again, here is an area where we're running into the normalized toxicities, the things that have been normalized in our society that people often may not think to question. They're absolutely harmful. So, yeah, things around medicalization of birth. That's a huge piece of that. I mean, the posture they want you to be in is totally unnatural. You know, birthing is much easier, more easily done squatting. Some women like being in water. I mean, there's walking, you need to be free to follow your impulse. You know, I mean, my son, my God bless my first partner who was game for this. And we did it ourselves. And, you know, there was at one point at which she was in labor and I was like playing the jimbe and she's crawling around on the grass, ripping up handfuls of grass and screaming and I'm drumming and like, that's birth, you know? Oh, yeah, man. Impulses, right? So it's like many people may not think to question what their doctor is saying. And the doctor is not nervous system informed. Your doctor is not trauma informed. And maybe not even really informed about what's really necessary for your baby to be delivered well, even if they specialize in that. Right. So it's we got to question things. I've told this story before, I believe, but my mother's youngest brother, supposedly like her mom was just like working in the field and walking up the steps and he just came out like just came out. So it doesn't have to be a huge, scary, painful thing, is it? Yeah, it's like I'm just going to say one piece and then I'll leave it. You know, if we think about in our culture, people are ashamed to burp and fart in public. The fact that that, you know, if you can't have take a shit with the door open with your partner right there, it's going to be really hard to birth a baby in a way that's easy and not easy. And that's the other thing. It's like there's going to be some pain. And so also the medication and the, you know, the painkillers that they would give. But that again, going back to that basic biology, like there's so much restraint around our bodily functions. And then we're asking this entire cohort of women to birth babies when they've been ripped away from their natural biology. It's just it's insane, in my opinion. So, you know, I'm just thinking when you're talking about your, you know, Jada's mom just ripping like, God, if you were to do that in a hospital room, they think you're insane. Exactly. They'd sedate you. [Speaker 3] (54:47 - 54:52) Yeah, of course. Yeah, in like, all right. [Speaker 2] (54:52 - 55:02) So what's the impact of premature birth in one's nervous system is my first question. Answer that first, then I'll ask the second one. [Speaker 1] (55:02 - 58:26) Yeah, well, I'm a perfect example of that because I was six weeks preemie. And for me, I think there's different things that can happen. I mean, for me, it wasn't the fact that I was preemie that was the problem. It was how that was responded to. All of my systems were developed well enough that I really could have gone home. But what they did is put me in isolation in an incubator for many, many weeks. Yeah. And that was profoundly traumatic. I mean, what that does, that kind of separation. So that's one kind of thing that being preemie can lead to. But then there's also if things aren't properly developed, then you're still going to have that kind of being separated. You may have surgeries you made, which are going to be very traumatic. So, you know, there can be a lot of things that can happen, both primary and secondary with premature birth. There's a lot of ethics around that, too. Right. In the wild, it wouldn't happen. Right. Baby would die. Mother would probably die. Maybe. Who knows? Right. And so there is this element of, you know, we're keeping humans alive when maybe that is not the best thing. I might get in trouble for saying that. But, you know, being raised by two veterinarians where sometimes you don't save a puppy or a kitten because they're going to have a hell of a time trying to live. Right. But we have so much medical intervention that, you know, I do know children and adults who really should not have stayed alive. They're doing well. And what is being held in their bodies, you know, that they're going to have to deal with later on. And that's an interesting one. So, you know, preemies. It just brings up our attachment to life. Life. You know, there's the amount of people being kept alive by machines and medications. Otherwise, you know, that's a whole nother subject. Yeah. But I think, yeah, I wouldn't, you know, premature birth. Yeah, that's such a that's such a tough one. Pandora's box. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, you know, again, you have to ask why. Right. Why? You know, I think for me, it's I don't remember cognitively, but I have a felt sense impression that the reason I was born six weeks early is because I wanted to get the hell out of there because my mom's environment was not, you know, it was like I was ready to leave. It was and she was in a city council meeting when her water broke and she started to go into labor and she finished the meeting. Right. So it's like that's what I was dealing with, you know, so it's like, oh, my God, what's what's the level of stress? What's going on with mom? I mean, there's probably lots of factors, but I think that's a pretty important one to pay attention to is like, yeah, what's happening that there is this premature birth? Exactly. Yes. And how much heaven and earth do you move to try and save baby? You know, that's and what are they going to be left with as a result? And, you know, what kind of interventions are it's it's so complex. It's a it's a messy thing for sure. Nature's solution is much easier, but definitely would seem heartless. [Speaker 2] (58:26 - 58:45) Yeah, it seems harsher for sure. Right. I'm going to ask you, then, in that case, another, I guess, kind of messy question in that regard. Now we talk about, you know, forcing life. So like IVF babies, what's is there any comparison in nervous system development between IVF babies and natural babies that you guys know of? [Speaker 1] (58:46 - 59:01) I can't speak to that. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I wouldn't think so. I think I would I would think it would be more about the environment that that fertilized is developing in. But I can't say for sure. [Speaker 2] (59:02 - 59:18) All right. So for an individual's own healing journey, how important is it to go to the past and discover and find out the stories of one's own birth and those details? How important is that? Is it necessary? I don't know. It's pretty important. [Speaker 1] (59:18 - 59:31) It's helpful if you can get it. But, you know, not everybody can. Yeah, parents are passed and all that. So that's a tough one, because, yeah, it'd be great to know all the details. But some parents don't even have an accurate memory. [Speaker 2] (59:32 - 59:35) And some parents are associated themselves from all the events. [Speaker 1] (59:36 - 1:05:43) Exactly. Yeah, it's I mean, I continue to learn things about my birth that I never knew. And they don't come out because I'm asking. They just come out in these weird instances where, oh, yeah, this happened. Like, holy Jesus, how did I not know that? You know, and so I'm grateful that I get that information. But I don't want to say scare someone who can't get that information because their parents have passed away. It's like if you can really do some good work and trust the somatic physiology to show you what you need to know, you can heal a lot of that stuff. But that then opens up the need to really trust weird stuff that might come up that might not make any sense. And typically, people don't have the training to know how to be with these weird things that might come up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The somatic approach to healing trauma, you don't need to know the story. It can sometimes be useful. What's interesting about Irene's experience that she mentioned is this is something we see a lot. What I've noticed, because as Irene said, she's been getting these details, her parents will just be having dinner, they'll just drop something. It's happening as she's moving through her own birth layers. And this is something we see with somatic healing. It ripples out to affect the entire family system, such that you may not even be asking for information, but because you're doing the work, it organically comes to you. It just gets when you need it. It's like, oh, that's the layer I'm with right now. And then there's that information. So with somatic work, it tends to be more that way. It's not so much that the information isn't important. It can be. It's just that the somatic work calls it in as it's relevant, as it's needed, rather than like, oh, this is what happened to me, and I need to now somehow figure out how to heal it based on the story. It's more just like, I'm moving through what I'm moving through. And oh, isn't this interesting, this piece of information to share. Yeah, and I think it's tricky too, because it all depends on the individual in terms of some people can find the truth out about how their birth was and then hold on to that story and use it as an excuse. I was born premature, traumatic birth, emergency C-section. The doctor told my mom she couldn't breastfeed me, all these things. Now, again, I'm happy to have the information, but if I'm being honest, there's definitely times where I was like, oh, well, that's the reason why, x, y, z. So it's delicate. It's nuanced, for sure. Not being attached to the story is really important, and that's for any trauma, right? And that's where we fall into victim identification. We don't get out of it. And so that, I think, if you have the information, great. If you don't have it, great. If you have the information and you're married to it to the point where you're never going to want to divorce yourself from it, then there's something to work with there. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, this is great. What else? Yeah, well, I feel like somewhat of a natural segue. I mean, we're talking to two people in partnership right now. And so how does a nervous system and regulation and healing come into play in partnership? So like, what do you recommend to people that are married or in a partnership of some kind and triggers come up? Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, how do you work with that? Or maybe one person is more regulated than the other person. I think in any true partnership, there's going to be turns. That's certainly been true for me and Irene. So recognize there's going to be turns, right? So when we first got together, it was kind of like, wow, I'm really the messed up one. Like, I was the really highly traumatized one. And it was obvious because I couldn't deal with society and going into rage that we had to pay a dollar for parking at the park because down with Babylon and all that shit. Like all my belief system about the world being a horrible, corrupt, evil place run by demonic forces. And like, here I am trying to step into it. I'm not going to make a living. What are you talking about? So I had to confront all of that stuff moving into partnership with Irene, developing a private practice, being a professional, making money. Like, these were huge fights that we had. And so we had one recognize there may be conflict. You need to work together to get through it. And like, as I worked through all of that stuff and became much more stable in myself. And then, you know, it's really bad. I feel the past few years, Irene, that your stuff has been able to come up, which is very different from mine in its nature. But like now it's sort of like now I'm the more stable one that's like able to provide support as these complex and deep layers within Irene are surfacing. So there's a give and a take. There needs to be a willingness to be vulnerable. And there needs to be support. Yeah, we try to do it all on their own. It can be really hard. Like we had a really good couples therapist. We would not be here together if we had not had his support. Nope. Or we would be miserable. Or we'd be miserable. Be vulnerable, accept that you need help, get good help. And both people really need to be on the same page, I think, to the degree that they are committed to working through those triggers. And if you're talking specifically about triggers, a lot of that means just shutting the hell up. Like that's the biggest, probably the positive tool that most people could start with. One, know when you're triggered. When you're triggered, stop talking. If you could just get those, so much can happen. We should bring our wives on. [Speaker 2] (1:05:43 - 1:05:48) We should bring our wives on here for a six person podcast. I want to know who this therapist is. [Speaker 1] (1:05:51 - 1:06:23) Well, there's lots of good couples therapists. We were fortunate to be with one who was also somatically trained, but it's not necessary. It's really about someone who can provide the space for you to hear each other. Ask the triggers, right? To someone who is like a third party, they can say, no, you shut up. Let her talk, essentially. But yeah, for yourself, that was my biggest hurdle was one, identify that you're triggered. When you identify that, stop the situation if you need to. [Speaker 2] (1:06:24 - 1:06:26) My hurt is the most important set. [Speaker 1] (1:06:26 - 1:07:08) You're right. And that's so much how it is, right? It's like when you're in that state and you're rehearsing your argument and I should have said this, or this is what I'm going to say. It's like, it's life or death feeling, right? And it's just like, those are the moments when you, if you find yourself rehearsing anything, don't say it. Yeah. Yeah. Never taking a deep breath is good. That's for taking a deep breath is good. That's right. Yeah. I know I could definitely get defensive and accuracy is so important for me in interpersonal dynamics and arguments. And so like, I will debate accuracy and that's kind of my Achilles heel sometimes. So sometimes I just gotta be like, you're awesome. I'll shut the fuck up. [Speaker 2] (1:07:08 - 1:07:24) Yeah. But also like the way we consume reality is so different. So the things you're arguing over, like the stories aren't the same stories. Sure, objective reality happened, but the way each individual perceived that objective reality, just two totally different things. [Speaker 1] (1:07:25 - 1:07:25) Yeah. [Speaker 2] (1:07:25 - 1:07:26) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:07:26 - 1:07:37) Which is of course, an opportunity to discover and like, create more intimacy and like, wow, you perceive it that way. That's so fascinating, right? But that's not often what happens. Yeah. [Speaker 2] (1:07:38 - 1:07:43) So what is the relationship between, I guess, intimacy and regulation within couples? [Speaker 1] (1:07:46 - 1:07:48) I don't know how to answer that question. [Speaker 2] (1:07:48 - 1:07:54) Is more intimacy possible due to being regulated? Yeah, I would think so. [Speaker 1] (1:07:55 - 1:14:16) Yeah. And I think, do we want to define what intimacy is? I would say a level of presence and ability to have maybe some vulnerability, connect and not be in a stressed out fight or flight place. Yeah. I mean, our, if I just, you know, our interactions, Seth and I are quite playful and fun. And I often are like, God, I hope there's not a camera in here watching how we talk to each other and the little skits that we play. Right. It's, it's kind of like, it's fun. It's just, it's like this very creative, mature, but supportive interaction with another human. And it's just so nice and it's safe and it's fun. Right. It has very little to do with, with sex and passion. It's just, this is just a really cool person to hang out with and live with and get support with. And I need help. Okay. Or, or no, I can't help you right now. That's the other thing is knowing that sometimes you're going to be told no. Yeah. And that was something that we had to learn. And it doesn't mean that you hate the person, right. And we have this, I have this joke where it's like, well, what do I say? I'm forgetting it right now. Like, don't, don't hate, don't hate. Yeah. Don't hate me, but you know, like I need this help. Right. And it's like a funny joke, but it's like, no, I really need help. And usually, you know, Seth is very good to help, but there's moments where it's like, he just, he can't and it goes both ways. Yeah. And I also intimacy and regulation go hand in hand in so many ways, because the more regulated you are, the less reactive you are, right. And you can't be intimate if you're in reaction, right. It's intimacy is about receptivity and vulnerability. And all the way down to biology, like, like I literally, like I said it funnily the other day, but earlier today, but like, yeah, if you can't take a crap with the door open and be talking to your partner right there, like there's a problem, like your, your, everything is shared. You know, you should be able to talk about how your poos were this morning. And we do, it's like, we, we, we share about everything, right. That food wasn't very good. We shouldn't order from there again. Irene, Seth, what were your poos like this morning? Yeah. Softer actually. Yeah. We had some Vietnamese food. It was quite rich. Yeah. No, I hear you there for sure. So, and, and there can be like these weird, like, I don't understand how some couples are together. Like, I just don't get it. Like the amount of like repression and walls and stuff they have with each other. It seems to be quite normal or normalized anyways, like all the secrets and games and stuff like I've never understood it myself, but yeah, it's, yeah, it's, it's, it's a very important thing that, that vulnerability, that willingness to be biological and emotional with each other. Yep. Yeah. The biology, the biology is interesting though, because this came to my mind at the of our talk about raising humans. Cause we're not, we're not just mammals in the wild, right? Like the, the, the mammals that live that are in partnership, I can't name them because I don't, you know, birds, but they're not mammals, but you see where I'm going with that. Like some, it's like, it's easier, you know, they don't need to worry about the fact that they're being seen taking a poop, you know, in the Savannah, it's just happening. So it's like, humans have this very different situation because we're not just mammals. We're also humans. And of course, there's that missing link of where did we come from? You know, I can't agree on that either, but it's like, it's so complex that when you are in biological connection with another human and relationship, it's like that thing with the baby, when you're in biological connection with the baby, the attunement is just that much easier and nobody would ever think, oh my God, I can improve my relationship by getting more intimate with how my partner's biology is like what, you know, it's like, well, actually that's, that's like the base foundation. Like you said, your osmosis, like we, we need that. And then everything just kind of falls into place after that. But we're just so, we're so into the rules and the etiquette and this is what you do as a partner. You know, you've got to do this and you've got to do this and you've got to buy birthday presents and bring her flowers when you get into trouble and all these things. And it's just, there's just so much repression too, just the repression in partnership. You know, we don't realize that we contain multitudes within us and the more access we have to these different parts of us in the dynamics of a relationship, it's going to be so much more full. And yeah, there's complexities to it, but it just, it's real. Yeah. You know, yeah, it was, you were going to say something. Oh, just a perfect example. So Irene's been on me forever to start walk, start walking in the morning. And I've been totally resistant to it because I've, I, my old story is that I am not a morning person. You know, I like to stay up late and then I like to sleep in. I like to be lazy. Right. And then finally I started doing it because she was like, she told, she told me like, you know, your breath is really awful. Right. Terrible. Right. Healthy shame. Right. And that's, so there is a point, right there, that'd be so easy for someone to be like, fuck you. You know, don't you, you know, to get pissed off defensive. Right. And you have, and I have, right. For many years, for many years. But, you know, this is why you have to keep at it, you know? And so it's like, okay, fuck, I'm going to try it. Damn it. You know? And so I started and then like, yeah. So now it's been three or four weeks that I, first thing I do is go walk and breath is way better. And I've lost like 10 or 15 pounds and like, feel amazing. And like, I'm starting to get back to like the best shape I've ever been in. And like, it's like, it's huge, huge difference in health. [Speaker 2] (1:14:17 - 1:14:17) Wow. [Speaker 1] (1:14:17 - 1:16:01) Because I was willing to listen to something that was potentially upsetting. Right. You're missing the one piece, which is that, see, this is that thing about two different perceptions. Yeah. It was because my friend was visiting. Right. Savannah also. That's right. And, and we were talking about her and her, her situation with her partner. And anyway, I don't want to talk about that, but we were talking about like belly fat and lymph and how you need to get the lymph going to get rid of belly fat. I mean, I don't know if that's accurate, but there needs to be better lymph moving. And, um, I said to her, I'm like, yeah, I've been telling Seth to get out walking. And then she's like, yeah, no, getting walking would definitely get that lymph moving and, and probably melt that away. And so I said, Hey, Savannah said this Seth, and I kind of, you know, I'm like, and I just sort of left it there. And then it was because someone who he respects, who he just met, who's like one of my best friends said it, it like landed in a different way. So it's like, it was through me, but through another person saying you might want to try that. But the breath thing was like the next morning. Right. Yeah. It was, it was like a compounded thing. Yeah. Cause that, that, that was like the night before that's right. Isn't it funny how in partnerships, like one person could be saying something or offering up recommendations for so long. And then the person goes out and hangs out with a friend or listens to something in the radio that says the same exact thing that the partner's saying. And then you're like, so guess what? I'm going to come, I'm going to try this thing. And you're like, I've been saying this for months. And that's just that, that's that it's autonomy stuff essentially. It's like, you don't tell me what to do, you know? [Speaker 2] (1:16:01 - 1:16:10) Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess this kind of does bridge us into this topic of this idea of healthy shame versus toxic shame. Let's speak on that a bit. Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:16:11 - 1:24:18) Healthy shame is good. It is. This is another thing that we had huge disagreements about. Cause I was raised with tons of toxic shame. So let's just define that first. Toxic shame is when you are told that you are bad, you are wrong, you're disgusting, right? You are not acceptable, which I was told over and over and over again, in various ways. Healthy shame is saying this action is dangerous and harmful and I love you. Okay. So huge, huge difference. Now what the similarity is, is the somatic cue. And this is where, this is why someone like myself can get so defensive because the same thing happens somatically. It's just in one case it's instructive and the other case it's not. You want to take it from there, Irene? Yeah. I mean, not only like we've gotten so much heat around this. And one of the reasons why is Brene Brown's work has really spoken about shame just being bad and it's confused a lot of people. And I think that has infiltrated a lot of parenting worlds where, again, because we're not thinking with our gut and right and wrong, and don't, you know, put your hand in the hot fire, you know, don't pull on the dog's tail, you're going to get bit. We've stopped teaching children, I generalize, this importance of teaching right from wrong. And you need it, like you need it when a little person doesn't understand hot stove, don't touch, you know, or tail of dog, don't pull, even though it's pretty darn enticing to pull on that tail. And you have to express it with a very strong, almost baritone, don't do that. Yeah, but no, no, it's you need to have that that firmness. And what happens in our current society is people see that as mean and aggressive and not nice. But when that happens, usually the person feeling that that's mean, not nice and aggressive in a bad way, they don't have the capacity in their body to have healthy aggression and feel that energy of life force. So this also goes into healthy aggression and anger and expression and boundaries. And so we've gotten into this mess where people have really, really believe that shame is just bad. And then she will distinguish shame from guilt, whereas guilt is I've done something wrong. Shame is I am wrong. And it's like, no, that is not true. Guilt is a much more advanced conscious moral. John Bradshaw, who's passed, who's a psychologist would say guilt is moral shame. Right. If I break Seth's favorite mug, I'm going to feel guilty. Like, oh, I'm so sorry. You know, I did something wrong. Whereas the little it goes back to that three year old, like they need to learn right from wrong. And the ability for a person to admit that comes back to their own health with self and their own ability to admit, I just did something wrong or that's not right. I should do this. But we see it in lots of other cases, you know, to use the example of a dog. So many dog owners have trouble with their pets because they don't know how to admit that healthy shame. Alpha. Like you have to have a strong gank on the leash. No, you can't be like, no, no, no, no, no. Stop running to the child that you're going to bite. Just keep going. And it's like, and so there's this weird thing. I feel so sorry for so many pets because they just like they need that direction because they don't have the higher brain. So it's I wanted to give that example because it's not just about kids and humans. It's just mammals in general. But yeah, we have done so many pieces on healthy and toxic shame. You know, we can link those for deeper pieces. One piece I just want to clarify too, is that like when we're talking about the reason we differentiate and call it shame and not guilt is because it's postural. It's in the posture. Like everyone recognizes the posture of shame, right? Your head's down, shoulders down the tail, right? Tails under the legs. That's shame. It's important for a developing child to get that postural cue. And then it's important to have the connection and the repair of you and the repair. They're both equally important. So to land that message that hot stove is bad. Otherwise, it's not going to land. It's that posture that later in life when they see the hot stove, the somatic system remembers that posture that didn't feel good. And that is, I think, ultimately what gives that information. Oh yeah, that's bad. That wasn't safe, right? So would it be something like they do this hot stove and it's like, no, don't touch that or something like that. And then the child's going to have that experience, right? And then maybe depending on their nervous system, they may cry. They may be like, I got scolded. And then do you then go over and communicate in a certain way? Yeah, you want to connect. You want to pick them up, hold them, hug. I love you. I love you. You're fine. That's just very dangerous. It's very dangerous to touch the stove. You clarify, it's the action that is harmful or dangerous. And I love you. It's really staying in connection, in love with the clarity about the action being wrong. The other thing I'll add too is, because I asked someone that I was being interviewed with, or someone was interviewing me and they have kids and I actually goofed on this. I was like, oops. Because I said to him, so if one of your kiddos is about to do something dangerous, like say the hot stove or a knife, what would you do? And he actually didn't know. And he's like, I'd be like this, stop, stop, stop, stop. And you saw the panic in his face. I probably shouldn't have asked that on air for tens of thousands of people to see, but I was like, okay, there's another level of distinction. So there's a no versus no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, right. There's, there's a franticness. So you also have to have that. No, don't do that. Watch, stop in a non panicked way. Because if the panic comes out, then the kiddo will also get that panic button and they'll feel it, what they really, and then they'll have fear. Fear is different than healthy shame. So it really has to be that postural gut hit. Like, Ooh, I just did something bad. Okay. I see what I'm doing wrong. I'm going to change it. And that happened to me. Like I was, I was not young. I was old enough to be cutting bread one day in my kitchen and the knife was facing my face and my dad was sitting, having his breakfast. And I heard this strong, Irene, you know, the knife, look at the knife, turn the knife the other way. And he just sat there and watched me. Oh, and I just perked up to it. And so even to this day, if I'm being a little uncautious or reckless in the kitchen, and I find the knife in the wrong direction, I will have that memory and I'll change it. And so that's how one strong bout of, of that healthy shame response can last a lifetime for a child compared to a lot of kids who are punished and reprimanded with these loosey goosey ways of talking. And then it never changes. And then parents will often say, how come I can never change this? And it's, I think a big part of it is that lack of force that is connected, not panicked and means business. [Speaker 3] (1:24:19 - 1:24:19) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:24:19 - 1:24:28) It's not angry. Like it's not angry, but it's, it's that just just firmness, confidence, right? No. [Speaker 3] (1:24:28 - 1:24:28) Yeah. [Speaker 1] (1:24:29 - 1:32:04) And so that's where parents got to do their own work if they don't have that. Right. It's like, that's about connecting to your own life energy, your own healthy aggression. Yeah. I remember reading about this at some point about animals and I had an old friend, this is like right shortly after I moved to LA, like 10 years ago, she rescued a dog who was little, but was just a terror, terror, like hated everyone. And one day he just came up to me and I just, I picked him up, put him on his belly and I went, no. Yeah. And from then on it was like licking my face. And I was like the only person he was nice to. It was so fascinating to experience that. Yep. Yep. And it's like, probably shouldn't compare humans, human babies to dogs too much, but like at that age, there's, there's not that much difference in terms of where they're at developmentally. There isn't a higher brain. That's the whole point. Like at that young age, there is not that higher brain really online yet. So very different from a dog, obviously, but in terms of faculty at that point, there's some crossover in terms of like the kind of energy you need to embody. Yeah. Do you want to tell that story, Seth, of when we were in Baja with, with your kiddo? Oh, that's okay. I mean, it's, it's a good example. That's true. That's true. That is a good example. It's quick. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's just, we were, we were walking back from the beach and you know, my son at that point, he wasn't used to sharing me with anybody. Right. It was either he was with mom or he was with me. And when he was with me, it was usually just us. And so to, for me to be in a relationship was new. And so Irene and I were talking and my son interrupted us. And, and Irene, you know, said, I don't remember exactly, but it was basically like, you know, Java, I was talking, right. It was something along those lines. Right. And, and he got really upset and he stormed off, you know, and, and that's not something like, and I got upset. That's not something that was the point, you know, at which I didn't have the ability to lay down those kinds of boundaries either. Right. But then later that evening, he was like curious and interested in Irene for the first time ever, ever talked to me, talked to her. He was like way more like just open. Right. And, and so there that that's the same kind of response. It's like, Ooh, they may not like it in the moment, but it gives them something they need, right. Which is different sometimes than what you think you want. Yeah, totally. I know we're getting close to 90 minutes, but if we can go just a little longer, because this is a subject that I know we've maybe chatted about before offline, and it's something that you've talked about with your videos. And it's, I think, important because they're really trendy, trendy things going on right now around certain biohacks or, you know, plant medicine and things like that. So I would love just a general overview from a nervous system perspective. Even just the benefits of some of these practices and things that people need to be concerned about one by being ayahuasca. I think it seems like everyone these days has a personal shaman and is experimenting with ayahuasca all the time, or they go down and have one experience and then they come back, come back and they're a self-proclaimed shaman. You know, breath work, cold plunge therapy, things like that. We just love to get maybe a more nuanced exploration of this as opposed to like, yeah, it's the greatest thing everyone needs to do it, and breath work and cold plunging. Irene, do you want me to do the plant medicine one and you do the other stuff? Sure. So I've got the more experience with the plant medicine realms. So the thing with when you're talking about plant medicines, ayahuasca, LSD, DMT, ketamine is another thing people have been starting to use in therapy. Even marijuana, psilocybin, right? All of these things can be really helpful, can be really helpful, and also can be really destructive. When you're talking about the psychedelics, what you need to understand, especially with something like ayahuasca, is that it is going to show you what you're carrying, whether you like it or not. And so some people are ready for that, and some people really are not. And the setting in which that happens is super important. The knowledge of the person who's guiding the experience is super important. They need to be able to tell if someone's starting to get overwhelmed. I've heard so many stories of people going into total overwhelm in a plant medicine ceremony and just being left to their, and that's like, and the shaman thinks that they're healing when they're re-traumatizing themselves. So it's really important to have done, I think, some basic somatic trauma work first before you go into any of these intense psychedelic experiences, because what they will do is show you what you have to work on, and then you need to go do that work. It's very rare that a plant ceremony is going to actually cure anything when it comes to trauma. I've heard some things of some physical symptoms resolving through plant medicine ceremonies, but I don't know if I have ever heard or witnessed of someone's trauma being resolved through plant medicine. It's not going to happen. What it will do is show you this is what you are carrying, this is what you need to work on, and then you need to go do that work in a sober setting. Then, if you have that kind of understanding of like, oh, I'm going to do this medicine to reveal this thing to me, and then I'm going to work on it, and then I'm going to integrate it, and then maybe I'll do another ceremony a year from now, and I'll see what is happening then, right? I think that can be really useful. Now, cannabis is really interesting, because I think, at least from what I've discovered in my own use with it, is that it is less psychoactive, of course, than the psychedelics, but the way that it affects the body memory, specifically the areas associated with short-term memory, self-image, it can enable some very profound things that can actually be integrated a bit easier than some of the bigger psychedelic experiences, because what cannabis does is it goes into those areas of the brain associated with our habitual self-image, and it shuts that off temporarily. It's also the short-term memory. So that's why if you're stoned, a concert or a movie can seem so profound or new, because it's not that it's new, it's your self-image that is new. It's your somatic self-perception that is different. So if you apply that in the lens of somatic trauma work, that can be really useful, because a lot of the stuff that we're carrying is habitual self-image stuff, and if you can get underneath that without such a huge psychedelic break, it can sometimes be more easy to integrate that even in the experience with the plant or shortly after. That's been my discovery with cannabis, and I think very few people ever use it that way. It's very different. It's like you smoke a tiny bit, like one little toke, and then you lay down. It's not like doing big bong rips. It's like a whole different thing. Oh, the good old days. [Speaker 3] (1:32:04 - 1:32:04) Yeah, right. [Speaker 1] (1:32:04 - 1:44:40) Yeah, no kidding. Yeah. It's not really about getting stoned. It's about going inside intentionally and using the plant for what I think it was made for. So when it comes to plant medicines, that's the gist that I have to offer. Great. No, thank you for that. Yeah, the other thing I might add is what people don't know, and this is again why doing some somatic trauma work is important, but the trouble is that you don't know how much is stored inside of you on a good day, and so you add in this potent medicine that is of the earth. That earth medicine doesn't know what's happening to humanity right now, so it can rip apart a person so quickly, and there's some pretty intense stories that lead to death in a lot of these popular spaces and places, and I hear about them often where people just can't handle it, and they have a psychotic break, or they do something stupid, and they die, and recently I interviewed a gentleman. It's a great interview for people that want to dive into a story that went wrong, and thankfully he course-corrected, and he's good now and healthier and better, but when I posted this on my social media, someone did a little research, and she, I might have sent this to you, Yerasimos, but she went to Colombia. No, she didn't go to Colombia. She went to the customs immigration form in Colombia. I don't know what made her do this, and you know when you go into a new country, you got to write, you know, yes, I have cheese, I have meat, I don't have this, I have guns, whatever. At the very bottom, it says if you are coming for a ayahuasca, or I think they also mentioned cambo. It's that frog poison that everybody's using. Please be aware, and then there's this list. It may cause death. You may be sexually assaulted. There's this list of all the things that clearly is happening in these retreats, and she's like, just be aware that this is possible, and the fact that that's on a customs form shows how much this is actually happening, and things are going wrong, but we don't hear about it, and so I just, I think that yes, someone can get an aid with these things, but man, so much can be done without it, but most people want that quick fix. Yep, it doesn't exist. So, and then in terms of breathwork and the hydrotherapy, the cold plunging, I've done quite a few pieces on this, but the general gist is breathwork, in my opinion, and my professional opinion as well, personally and professionally, is it's a great therapeutic, so it's good to increase your lung capacity, understand oxygen, carbon dioxide, you know, expand places in the body, but it is not going to heal any trauma. It may be used as an adjunct within that process, but it has really been touted as this thing that's just going to regulate your nervous system, but if you go back to the baby example, which I always do, if your baby is screaming and unwell and not well, just you're not going to say to it, hey, I need you to take a breath of four in, hold it for seven, and exhale for eight. It wouldn't work, right, because what is needed is attunement, connection, what is going on, and so the breathwork piece, interestingly enough, as I post more about it, I get less and less people hating on me for it, because I think what's happening, and I'd love to hear your guys' take, is I think this biohack world has reached its apex, and for those that weren't as screwed up with their dysregulation, it may have helped actually get them into their bodies and feel, and they could release some stuff, but for those that have deep dysregulation, which is so many people, they've tried all these things, and they're like, I still have these problems, blah, blah, blah, must not be working, and so the information that we're putting out is actually finally matching, I think, where people are at and seeing this isn't working, and then the cold stuff is interesting because, again, therapeutically, using cold, hot, sauna, cold packs, heat pads, which is hydrotherapy, it isn't just cold plunges and saunas, is wonderful medicine for the circulation, for the cardiovascular system, for the immune system, for the lymph, for injuries, to promote circulation, but that's very different than restoring regulation to dysregulated systems, and you do not want to put someone into a cold plunge that is near freezing, who cannot feel their body, because they will stay in there to a point of hypothermia, and hypothermia is no joke. Once you go past, the system shuts down pretty quickly, and I remember, Seth, because we have a cold plunge, we sauna all the time, and when you were trying to fix the filter, because our filter was busted, you were online looking at videos, and you found that one guy that's like, yeah, it's just totally cool, dude, I just get in, and I stay in, because my skin goes numb, and I can stay in forever. Yeah, it's like you only have to stay in for a minute or so, then your skin gets numb, and you can stay in there for 30 minutes, it's no problem. Yeah, well, it seems like people are bypassing their body's natural reaction to the thing, and then they're freezing. Yes, exactly. Yeah, there's a distinction here, because there's an initial discomfort that it can be good to get past, yeah, right? I like to get in, there's like the shock, right, where you initially be like, yeah, right, it's okay to stay past that, take maybe three to five nice breaths, but there's a point at which your dive response, your shutdown will start to come on, and you don't want to stay in past that point, and that's what so many people are doing with the Wim Hof method, is they're just, what they're doing is they're entraining their shutdown response, and guess what? It feels relaxing, like it feels... Because you're dying. Because you're dying, right, like you're going into extreme parasympathetic, and if you do that without a lot of connection to yourself, it can feel super zen, it can feel super zen, so it's about understanding the benefit, and not entraining your system to go into shutdown. The other thing I'll say from a woman's point of view is hormones, so men have a much shorter hormone cycle, right? Your cycle is like 24 hours, whereas women, it's 28 days, 21 days, whatever, because of our menstrual cycle, and you need to be careful, because that cold, it instigates a cortisol response, it's a stress response. No matter how calm you try to imagine your kidneys dropping and chilling out, you're going to have them spark up and release stress chemical, and so this is why some people will have super good curative effects with autoimmune illness. I've seen cases of this, and it's because their system is so dampened, it has no cortical response, and so they're actually creating a bit of a cortisol effect, which they need, because they're so burnt out, but you can actually push it past the point of it creating burnout, because you're just doing too much damage to the adrenals that are already tired, and so, because I've been playing with this, I find that if I go into the cold after, say, warmth or exercise, if I find that I'm still struggling to heat up an hour later, it's like, I shouldn't have done that, and so I will shift the time that I'm in it, but I'm not doing it to regulate my nervous system, I'm doing it for my injuries and for vitality, which is completely different. The other thing is the time of day, you know, technically people will say it's better to do it in the morning when you're wanting your cortisol to be higher. Some people say it helps them with sleep, but then I kind of wonder, is it helping them with sleep, because they're putting themselves into a bit of a shutdown response? Hard to know, right? Yeah, well, it's just interesting, and I think it's important to have these conversations, because, you know, as you see on the internet and social media, there are people out there and quote-unquote influencers that present these things as the panacea for all. If you just do this one breath, everything will heal. If you go in cold every single day, and there are benefits, I've had benefits from breathwork, I've had benefits from cold plunging, but I think if you go into it thinking this is going to solve everything, it's going to heal your trauma from when you're four years old, yeah. Not so much. No, therapeutically they're great, but it's not nervous system work at that regulation level, and you need to be able to feel. You know, that's the other thing. One of my friends, Joe Martino, who we talked about this on his podcast, Collective Evolution, he said he went to the first ever Wim Hof retreat workshop that happened in North America. This was years ago, and he said it was really interesting because you could tell they wanted to teach the right stuff, but they didn't have the lingo, the physiology, so they do the breathwork and then be like, okay, notice what you're noticing in your body, but he's like, I don't know what you mean by that, and he's like, I don't even think they knew what they meant. They just had to say it to say something, and then they get into the cold plunge. It's like, okay, feel what you're noticing in your body, but again, there's no direction as to what that means, how to be in the somatic experience, and so again, if you can learn those skills of being in your somatic experience, then these things are amazing because you can use them to benefit, but there's like this missing link in a lot of these biohacks. It's just do the hack, but don't teach the person how to know what's being hacked. It's like, yeah, it's kind of important to notice how to feel your system when you're just sitting there before you put yourself into a plant ceremony or freezing cold water. It's like, learn how to do it from a baseline. Learn how to just be normal, everyday, sober self, and learn how to be in touch with yourself from that place because it's the foundation that we're building for so many of us, and so many people are essentially running around with the physiology of a baby or a one-year-old or a two-year-old in terms of their nervous system development, and it's like, yeah, like you said, you can't dunk a baby in an ice bath. You can't teach a baby breathwork, and so we need to understand that we need to apply that lens to our own inner babies that need that careful, sober, titrated, attuned, connected healing. Amen. I think we've come full circle. I think it's a great place to end. Thank you both so much. What a wealth of knowledge, and yeah, so much respect. Joel, happy to be here. Do you want to, actually real quick, do you want to share anything you got going on? I know you have your online programs, the 21-day course, Smart Body, Smart Mind. I think that, did it just finish, you have more? Yeah, this week, we'll do another round at the end of Febuary, so quite soon, actually, and that'll be a 12-week run of that course, Smart Body, Smart Mind, and then yeah, the 21-day Nervous System Tune-Up, which I know you guys know about. That you can do anytime, so you can start that today. Yeah, for anyone listening, check those out. We'll have links below. There are people in our community that have joined the 12-week program as well, and yeah, the work is so important. I mean, it's just foundational work, understanding of yourself, of your biology, of your physiology, and then how do you then take that into the rest of your life, into your relationships, into child rearing, all of these things. So thank you so much for the work that you both do. Thank you. [Speaker 2] (1:44:41 - 1:44:49) Yeah, absolutely. I echo everything Irasmus said. Such a joy to be connected to both of you, and Seth, I look forward to ripping a couple bongs with you next month. [Speaker 1] (1:44:49 - 1:44:56) All right, let's do it. Thanks, guys. [Speaker 2] (1:44:56 - 1:45:43) All right, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time. Take care. What an incredible conversation. Thank you so much for listening. Just a quick reminder to those who might be interested in diving deeper. This week, this month, inside our monthly membership community, Friends of the Truth, Irene Lyon is actually our guest expert. So our members will get the chance to be in a live Zoom call with her and us and ask her questions directly and receive a live and interactive workshop from Irene. So if that's something that interests you, you can learn more about our awesome community, Friends of the Truth at friendsofthetruth.co. Thanks for listening. If you get the chance before you turn this podcast off, if you feel inclined to help us out, please rate, review, subscribe. That'll go a long way for us. So other than that, be well.