How we can all learn to relax with Craig Goldberg

(45 mins) Learning about the power of vibration, how to avoid overwhelm and ultimately how to calm the minds of Type A over achievers.

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High-Achievers Struggle to Relax

Many people, especially Type A personalities, find it difficult to slow down.

Society glorifies busyness as a badge of honor, making rest feel unproductive.

Overachievers often push themselves to burnout before realizing they need to relax.

Stress and Anxiety Are Deeply Embedded in Modern Life

Whether you own a business, work a 9-5, or balance family life, stress is unavoidable.

Living in big cities increases exposure to stressors like traffic, deadlines, and digital overload.

The body stays in a constant fight-or-flight state, making true relaxation rare.

Rest and Relaxation Are Just as Important as Productivity

Resting is not wasting time—it's essential for long-term success and health.

Good sleep, mindfulness, and intentional downtime are key to maintaining balance.

Learning to be kind to yourself and let go of guilt around rest is crucial.

The Nervous System Can Be Retrained to Relax

The body only has one response to stress, whether physical, emotional, or mental.

Chronic stress keeps cortisol and adrenaline elevated, affecting digestion, immunity, and mental clarity.

Using breathwork, meditation, and vibroacoustic therapy can help shift the body into a parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) state.

Sound and Vibration Help Break Stress Patterns

Vibroacoustic therapy shakes every cell in the body, promoting circulation, detoxification, and deep relaxation.

It acts as a "pattern break", helping the nervous system reset and release tension.

Listening to specific frequencies can guide the brain into meditative states, reducing anxiety.

Meditation and Breathwork Are Powerful, Even in Small Doses

Meditation doesn’t have to be complicated—it’s about slowing down and creating space.

Breathwork techniques (like 4-4-8 breathing) can instantly lower stress levels.

Short, consistent relaxation practices rewire the brain to handle stress better.

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All right, team, if you are a little bit type A, struggle relaxing, want to learn about vibration and how everything is interlinked, and a few breathing tips as well, then you're going to love this episode with Craig. It's so good. It's so good.



It starts a little wackadoo, but we get into it. This is Pretty Depressed with Craig. All right, so let's kick things off.



I'm here with the amazing Craig Goldberg. Now, I've been following a little bit of your InHarmony interactive journey selfishly, and we're going to go in a few different tangents here, but primarily to talk about relaxing, your tagline is that you help people relax. Now, this is something I have struggled with, and so many of my audience like myself, these overachievers, perfectionists, busy lady syndrome, keeping busy, don't deal with the yuck as long as I'm moving forward, I'm achieving.



And so relaxing is really difficult to me. It usually comes with, it takes me to get run down or burnt out, or alternatively, it's riddled with the side of guilt of not achieving. So I wondered if you could kind of like, we'll just get straight into it and tackle that because a lot of the work you do and the apparatus you have feels like works with people.



Yeah, look, I predominantly, first of all, thank you for having me here. I'm honored. I'm grateful.



I'm so grateful to get this message out to New Zealanders and spread around the globe. And I'm grateful that you've been following along. Look, overachievers are overachievers.



And frankly, we are the people that make the world go round. That's what I want to hear. Thank you for your time.



I'm fine. Nothing's wrong with me. Right.



Also, yeah, he said, look, we're the ones that get shit done. Look, not for nothing, but Elon Musk, right? Elon works seven days a week, sometimes upwards of 20 hours sleeping in his offices. He literally came to the United States with a backpack, a backpack, no cash, no money, $2,000 in traveler's checks because that was the thing then as he tells the story.



And look, love him or hate him, he works his ass off. And he has built six empires and huge companies that are leaving the globe and doing all the things he's doing. He's got a little bit of stress and anxiety.



I'd love to have a conversation and sit down. If you know him, you can make that introduction. I'd love to talk to him about what we're doing here.



Right. I'm no different. I own, I'm an entrepreneur.



I've been working full time since I'm 19, I'm 44. I have been pushing myself and pushing myself. And that's where my story begins within Harmony, much like it starts with so many of our followers on Instagram and YouTube and TikTok and everywhere else.



They're looking for ways to relax. That's for folks like you and me, the A type personalities, the go-getters. Unfortunately, I don't think it's any better for, look, if you choose to work for somebody else and you choose to work for a government job because it's a reliable paycheck, all the power to you.



I don't think life is any easier for you in that situation either, right? There's traffic jams, there's running late, there's deadlines, there's working eight to 10 hours a day and then having to deal with your family and then having to get your home in order and then have to... We've co-created a pretty spectacular society. And unfortunately, it is riddled with stress and anxiety. And that's just if you're being a law-abiding citizen.



And obviously, that's different state to state, country to country. But the reality is, I think the further out of the big cities you move, and I don't know if this is the same in New Zealand, but the further you move out of the big cities, the less connected you are to the internet, the news cycles, the negativity, the less stressful life is. And unfortunately, 80% of the world's population live in major cities.



Hmm. And that's before you even get into entrepreneurship and a side hustle and putting together this labor of love, which is a podcast, which is definitely not easy and takes way more time than people think. But yeah, I guess a follow-up question to that is... And I appreciate that.



So it's not easy for most people to kind of relax. How or what would be a practical tip for myself or other people that when they sit down to relax, that racket or that noise of, I should be doing this, I should be doing that? Because I struggle a lot with any non-guided meditation, like any form of silence, I struggle to get past that kind of to-do. Yeah.



So as you started asking that question, I started to smirk. And the reason I started to smirk is because my wife and I have the same conversation over and over again, right? Like literally last night, we were laying in bed at eight o'clock, feeling guilty that we were laying in bed at eight o'clock. And I looked at her and I went, just close your eyes and go to bed.



And she was like, but we have so much to do. And I was like, it'll still be there tomorrow. And our daughter slept through that.



We have a four-year-old. She slept through the night last night too. So not only were we in bed sleeping by 10, because we wound up watching a show and whatever, but sleep is really important.



Rest is really important. So the first thing that I'll say to that is be kind to yourself. You've earned it.



You deserve it. And it's okay. And that's not just to you, Kim, that's also to the entire audience and everybody else that's out there.



We wear busyness as a badge of honor. How are you? I'm busy. It is a big part of my identity, being a hard worker.



That's what I like. Look, mine too. It's funny.



So there was, and I don't know how old you are and I'm not going to ask, but there's a meme that was going off on the internet that a friend of mine forwarded to me because I started working full-time when I was 19. And we used to go out and we used to drink. Thursday Night Happy Hour was a big thing here in the States, particularly in New York City.



And I would literally have been drinking alcohol until four o'clock in the morning. Now I was 19, 20, let's call it 21 years old. Sorry, here in the States, it was 21.



Okay. And I would literally be consuming alcohol until four o'clock in the morning. And I'd be in the office at six 30, the next morning, ready to crash it.



Most of the time still drunk. Right? That's the mentality is that, look, I can have my fun tonight. And I get that I might pay for it tomorrow.



Granted at 21, you rebound a hell of a lot faster. You handle it a lot better than I do now at 44. But nonetheless, the work ethic is I got a job to do.



I'm going to get up and do it. And largely I still live that way today. My daughter's up at six 30 every morning and I'm gladly up with her, regardless of how late I stayed up last night.



It's a mentality. It's a mindset. And unfortunately, I think a lot of people don't maintain that same, that same concept today.



They get tired, they get a little rundown and they don't show up for work or they show up late or they're not there entirely. And I think the stressors today are the leading indicator as to why that is. I think when you're stressed and anxious, when you're in fight or flight, which by the way, I wasn't when I was a kid.



And when I was younger, I wasn't in fight or flight all the time. I didn't have a care in the world. In fact, I was happy to go lucky and I was stoked and ready to rock and roll, which I think is one of the reasons why I bounced back so fast today with everything that I think about the business, my relationship, my wife's wellbeing, my daughter's wellbeing, my own wellbeing, that of the business and all of our customers and all of the stressors that come along with that.



There's good reason to spend. And that's before you even get into the new cycle, which by the way is horrific. Forget about what happened with the pandemic.



World war three looks like it's going to break out. I don't even know if the power grid here in the state is good. Like these are very real concerns.



I'm not making anything up. I literally was talking to my wife last night about what happens if the power grid goes down here in the States, because I don't trust our government. I don't trust the background.



And I don't know what's going to happen over the next, between now and January here in the States. I actually have a lot of concerns about, I've never talked about this on a podcast. I don't really necessarily want to talk about it, but.



No, but it's right. You're so right. Like there's so many things to keep you up at night if you allow your brain to.



Right. So you brought up something very keen. And the advice that I had for you was to be kind to yourself, right? Because we are our own biggest critic.



We all have, I literally just put a post up talking about the negative self-talk that is, uh, that is happening within our heads. It's a defense mechanism. It's designed to keep you alive.



And it's a very good thing that we need to embrace and we need to be talking to it. We need to be teaching it and we need to be keeping it in line. Why can just give you a very real example.



You have these beautiful cliffs in New Zealand. Yeah. Right.



Why is it that somebody can walk up to the edge of the cliff and look down and then look back at everybody else and be like, it's no big deal. It's fine. And somebody else is like cringing 20 feet away from the cliff.



Like I can't go any closer holding onto a rope or the car or somebody else like, no, no, no, no, no. And you're like, you're not even close. And you're why, why does one have that fear? And the other doesn't it's just training, right? Whatever reason the person that could walk next to the cliff, maybe they rock climb, maybe they ski or downhill, right? Maybe they're just accustomed to being there and they've just trained their nervous system that, Hey, it's no big deal.



I got this. We need to train our nervous system to do the same. And for many of us, and I say us, because I am that person.



I love this example, by the way, because that, yeah. Right. Yeah.



Why can somebody climb half dome here in the States without a rope? And I can't, and I rock climb and I can't go 10 feet on a boulder without being like, this is too high. I'll break a leg. Right.



And he can literally climb hundreds of thousands, if not thousands of feet. So it's just training it's conditioning. And when we start to talk about our nervous system for many of us, our nervous systems are completely dysregulated.



Our nervous systems are so triggered and out of whack in some cases for good reason, because we have stressful things happening in our lives. And in other cases for not good reason for things that really aren't life-threatening might be emotionally threatening might be relationally threatening, but we're not in a life-threatening situation. And when you start to think about the nervous system and the body, and this message, by the way, is good for any human on the planet.



When you start to think about the nervous system, we only have one reaction to stress, whether it's physical stress, somebody threatening our life, emotional, relational, nutritional. You mentioned gluten-free prior to this, right? That you've only just gone gluten-free. That is nutritional stress on the body, spiritual stress, mental stress, which is the most powerful, I think, in a lot of ways.



The body only has one reaction to that stress. And that is the sympathetic nervous system response, otherwise known as fight or flight or being in survival mode. And when you're in survival mode, your body literally says, I need to save my own life.



Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to release cortisol and adrenaline into the bloodstream. The cortisol makes you hyper-focused on whatever it is it's life-threatening.



Somebody threatening you with a pistol or a knife or a gun or to rob you, you want to be hyper-focused on what's going on. You want to relax. Your body says, focus on that threat.



And then I'll translate this to mental, emotional, and the other threats as well. But that cortisol keeps you focused on that threat. The adrenaline actually diverts energy from maintenance tasks in the body to the large muscle groups in the body so that you can protect yourself or run.



It's literally in life-saving mode. In order to divert that energy, it has to say, well, we're not going to do this so that we can do that. The thing that it chooses not to do is digest your food, operate your immune system, rationally think, because thinking, your brain takes up the most amount of energy in your entire body.



Second is digestion. So it turns off rational thinking, turns off digestion. Now it doesn't matter how clean or gluten-free your diet is, how great the supplements are that you're taking.



It turns off your reproductive organs. I don't know about New Zealand, but here in the States, I know people that are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on IVF trying to get pregnant, when in reality, it just removed the stress and anxiety and the functionality will come back. Digestion, immune system, reproductive organs, rational thinking off.



I need to save my life. That's great if there's a man with a gun trying to take my bag. It's not great if I'm under relational stress, duress, or emotional stress, mental stress, spiritual stress, which is a dangerous one because it comes up from nowhere.



Look, even just guilt and shame for religious affiliation. I talk to young people all the time who are like, I just don't see it the same way that my parents do. I was raised in this spiritual practice and I'm really under duress of how I have this conversation with them, or worse, they don't.



They compartmentalize it and deal with whatever they have to deal with. That stress is a very real thing. There are lots of different undertones as to how and why the body would perceive something as a stressful situation.



For many of us, we are triggered. For some of the listeners, me saying the word trigger will trigger their nervous system. It's part of an emotional growth.



Just this awareness that I hope we're bringing to these scenarios gives you an opportunity. Now, you can even hear my voice as I'm talking about these things. What's the most powerful thing that you can do when you're starting to feel emotional stress and this has nothing to do with in harmony and everything to do with the human body? Take a deep breath.



I have a lot of resistance to breathwork, which is really interesting. Let's take care of that. I'll give you a very simple- It's like, I don't know why.



I've just noticed it's the same thing with meditation. There's a fear there or something, or it's like, yeah. Meditation.



We didn't even get to the word meditation yet. That word is intimidating for people. We're going to take care of that too.



Listen, when it comes to breathwork, to breath- That's what it's all about, right? It's about opening ourselves up. I haven't shared the stuff that I just shared with you. Yeah.



Here's the important thing to breathwork. Breath controls the mind. Mind controls the body.



Breath controls the mind. Mind controls the body. One of the easiest things that you can do to regulate your nervous system and your nervous system response to stress is to take a deep breath.



In fact, quite the opposite. You'll notice if you're taking short breaths, mainly through your chest, that you are stressed. When you open up your diaphragm and take a deep breath through the belly- That made me yawn.



Sorry. That's not a reflection of you. That's me putting more oxygen in my body.



It's fantastic. Look, take a deep breath. Your body needs oxygen.



Hold, and then exhale for twice as long as you inhaled. The science and the research is really significant coming out of Stanford here in the United States, that a four-count in, a four-count hold, and an eight-count out, scientifically proven to slow your heart rate, make you more relaxed, and to bring you into a parasympathetic nervous system response. Even my voice changed, and that's not me trying to emphasize that my voice changed.



I'm actually calmer. That's just from one breath. The reality is, breathwork doesn't have to be like a breath of fire, all this crazy stuff, which works.



I'm not resistant as in a non-believer. It's just one of those things that I know I should be more aware of, yet I'm a brat sometimes. There's a bunch of stuff.



Look, my wife and I have a long list of foods we know are good for us that we don't eat or don't like the taste of. There's a long list of things I know I could be doing every single day that I'm not doing every single day. Look, sometimes that's just getting outside for a walk.



I've been sitting in front of this desk. It's 10 to three in the afternoon. I've been sitting in front of this desk since 8 a.m. Two breaks to the bathroom.



That's it. Let me give your advice back to you, which I watched this morning, which was that you change tasks all the time. Keep it fresh.



Da-da-da-da. 100%, right? But there are some days where I'm stuck here, to a point. Yeah.



That's so good. I had a few aha moments when you were saying that, because I do feel like sometimes I even struggle to pinpoint why I'm in fight or flight and those 10 pillars or 10 fundamentals, which I wrote down, of health, which I'm assuming are the pillars of health. Would that be correct? Physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, environmental, financial, intellectual, nutritional, occupational, social.



Is that correct? I mean, those are pretty close. I look at the seven pillars, which is spiritually, financially, relationally, nutritionally, mentally, emotionally, and physically. That's seven.



You can certainly add occupation for work. Those seven pillars are something that I used to teach when I was working actually in network marketing, teaching and training people on how to understand and evaluate their life. And that was shared with me by Michael Zapie.



I'll give Michael a shout because he's amazing and a really powerful tool for us to explain very clearly to people that we have these seven pillars of health that you need to be focusing your attention to. Now, separate of that, I started talking about these 10 things. Somebody asked me on a podcast, like, what three things can I do every day to maintain my health? And this is actually me taking a step back from what I do at InHarmony.



And I'm actually, I mean, I'm a biohacker through and through. I'm focused on optimal human performance. My company is focused on vibroacoustic therapy because I believe vibration of all of the modalities, and there are many, cold plunging, red light therapy, sauna, exercise, right? Like nutrition.



I could be a nutritional coach, life coaching, and just mental coaching. I mean, there's so many different things that I could have chosen to do with my life. The reason I chose vibration is because I think it's so fundamental, and we'll get into that, I'm sure.



But just looking outside, exposure to sunlight, exposure, having your feet on the ground instead of through rubber shoes, exercise, skin-on-skin contact with other humans releases oxytocin and releases serotonin. These are important hormones. Cold exposure, heat exposure, meditation is absolutely a piece of that.



That's a really important pillar, which is another one that we focus on it, obviously. So yeah, there are lots of things that we can be doing. Drinking clean water, truly drinking clean water, which is even more and more difficult to find with all the shit that they're spraying in the sky in the name of weather formations.



And of course, access to clean food, truly healthy, clean, organic food without pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, and shitty chemicals that the body isn't designed to absorb. So there's a lot of different pillars to health. And look, here's the other aspect, especially given my topic of relaxation and what I do here is don't let yourself get overwhelmed.



Make the best decision that you can make. I'll tell you, for a long time, I used to do a talk. I used to teach people about the efficacy of essential oils.



doTERRA was a company that we represented. I would travel all over the country, teaching, training, and educating the efficacy of essential oils. And in that talk, I would talk about the toxic load that we're exposed to every day.



And here I am talking to moms and dads that I would literally watch go into tears during our calls because they had during our meetings, because they had no idea what they were exposing their children to. They just didn't know. And it's the same message that I have for folks that are hearing this for the first time.



It's like, you don't know what you didn't know. Now, you know, you can make better decisions. You're not going to change everything overnight, but I hope you can start to change a couple things.



And I hope you can start to move the needle towards better health. Now that you know, some of the things that we just talked about, look, some people have no idea that they're spraying stuff in the sky and that they talk about it. They think it's a conspiracy theory.



They think it's bullshit. There are agencies that actually talk about this. It's not anything that's like, maybe they're doing it.



They're doing it every single day. And that is tainting our water source. So you can't even go to a spring here in the United States and drink water because it's got all this stuff in it.



And it's, and it's legit there. You need to filter it first. Anyway.



How do you feel about, and I, and I only say the word overwhelmed because I do think sometimes when people start to do this work, and I know I certainly felt it, um, you know, when I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety, I felt a little overwhelmed about having to now manage my negative thoughts because I, that in itself feels overwhelming. And I know before, like a solution to some of this is also like take baby steps and don't feel overwhelmed by it. If you do find yourself in a season or a pattern of overwhelm, whether it's about learning about what's in your food or your water or what, like, it feels like there's these rabbit holes that can actually, like it is overwhelming.



If you find yourself there already, even though we're trying not to, and we've taken our deep breaths, what would be a tip that you would advise? So look, this, this life is relentless and it doesn't, it doesn't slow down. Um, there are ways to slow it down, of course, but generally speaking for me, and as a go-getter and any type personality, it doesn't tend to slow down. Um, being at peace with that is, is first and foremost.



And frankly, when the overwhelm starts to come on board, I go back to the same message that I had before, which is be kind to yourself, cut yourself some slack and give yourself a break and let yourself know that it's going to be okay. And find that calm. I'll tell you, I had a business partner, uh, not too long ago who I was just talking to a couple of days ago, who told me of a horrific week that she had.



And, um, and it was pretty bad. Lost a couple of employees going through, right? Like she was getting kicked while she was down over and over and over. And, and at the end of the day, by the time I had spoken with her, her week was already over.



She already had a great weekend, right? Like, and, and she said, you know, Craig, in the thick of it, when I sent out that text, yeah, it was really rough. But at the end of the day, that day I sat down and I reflected on what happened. And I went, I know this is all happening for me.



And I know that it's what's best. The employees leaving is always a good thing because they're not always fully engaged. They either have one foot out the door or right.



So she knew in hindsight that it was the best thing for her. Now she needed to look forward and figure out what that was going to be. So when we're in that situation, overwhelmed for whatever reason, it it's, and this seems counterintuitive, but for me, it always helps to take a step away from that stressful situation in some way, shape, or form.



Sometimes, excuse me. Sometimes you can't. And I get that.



However, that's where the breath comes in because for me, taking that deep breath, closing my eyes, allowing me to hear the words, even if it's just in my head that says, this too shall pass. That's nothing is permanent. And that I know I'm going to get through this.



And I have that confidence. Sometimes it's to talk to a friend or a family member to be like, Hey, I'm going through it. I just need to vent to you right now.



And allowing yourself to be heard. And that feels good. Other times it's, it's putting on the television or putting on a YouTube video or listening to a music meditation, which is why we created our company and our business.



And we can certainly talk about the solutions that we provide. But the reality is when you find yourself in that overwhelm, I look for a pattern break. I look for, which is why I chose vibration because our technology, it does create a pattern break.



It changes the way your cellular composition and what trajectory you're on and gives you a clean slate that you can come back to. Our music meditations do the same thing, which everybody in New Zealand could go into the iOS app store or the Android app store and download our app right now and find our music meditations. And you can go to YouTube and you can stream live our extended music meditations that are on our YouTube channel.



They're ready to go. I'm streaming one through my Sonos sound system all day today. I listen to it every day.



Sound and frequency helps me to rest and relax. It allows my brain to be distracted so that I can focus. This is the biggest thing for meditation and why so many people find meditation so intimidating.



But the same reasons that you started at the very beginning of this call, if eight years, we started this business seven and a half years ago. If eight years ago you came to me and Craig said, Craig, listen, you're a go-getter. It's your personality.



You got to sit and meditate. I wouldn't have laughed at you. I would have been like, you want me to sit there and do nothing? The whole time I'm just going to think about, right? Like you out of your mind.



I got too much to do. I don't have time. But the reality is that rest is as important as your go time.



There's a great book. It's called the power of full engagement. And I recommend it all the time.



I have no affiliation to it whatsoever, but the powerful engagement, it basically talks about our downtime is as important as our uptime, right? Rest time downtime is as important as go time. This is why sleep. Oh, by the way, sleep, I left sleep off the list of the 10 things that you need to focus on in health.



If you're not getting good sleep, it's all out the window. Just like if you're not managing your stress, it's all out the window. So there are these foundational things that you need in order to optimize your performance.



And meditation is just like sleep. Meditation, what is sleep? Sleep is a conscious recognition of a slower brainwave state, just like meditation. We have synapses in our brain, these electrical synapses that are firing.



They fire at a certain pace when our eyes are open. They fire at a certain pace. It's called an alpha beta brainwave, then alpha, then theta, then delta.



And above beta is gamma. We can test this using scientific equipment, just how fast the synapses in your brain are firing. And it has to do with different thought patterns.



It has to do with different levels of rejuvenation and rest. We know this science. So people ask me all the time, can your technology help me sleep? And I always follow up with, well, it depends on what types of issues you're having with sleep.



You're having trouble falling asleep. You're having trouble staying asleep. Do you have a four-year-old that keeps waking up at three o'clock in the morning like I do? I'm not going to help with the latter.



I can help with the first two. Sound and frequency is a great way to retrain the nervous system to spend more time calm and relaxed, less time stressed and anxious. And sound and vibration is a great way to invoke and induce those deeper rejuvenative brainwave states, which we perceive as meditation or sleep.



This is my ignorance, so please don't take offense to this. It feels like a little contradictory, and maybe you can simplify this for me, that with meditation and vibration, you're simultaneously trying to shock the system into some way and like fasting, and then simultaneously trying to like calm it down. Does that make sense? Or maybe it's just my ignorance.



It's like the things that are good for you are like hot and cold. So you're kind of shocking the system a bit, giving a bit of electric. Yeah.



Do you know what I'm trying to say? I know exactly what you're trying to say. And it's a great question. And what you're alluding to is something called hormesis.



Are you familiar with the term? Hormesis. No, I'm sorry. I'm not.



H-O-R-M-E-S-I-S, hormesis. When I tell you the concept, you're going to be like, that makes total sense. You go to the gym, you work out? Yes, but I have to do classes because I can't discipline.



Classes are great. I can't get through 50 minutes of a spin class without completely dying. Why are you completely dying? Because as you're riding that bike up a proverbial hill, with max resistance, and you're pushing and you're sweating, you're actually breaking the muscle down.



So you're actually tearing muscle fiber, and then they grow back. When you go to the gym and you're doing a bicep curl, you're actually breaking the bicep muscle down, and then it rebuilds stronger. So that's the concept of hormesis.



What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. For many of these biohacking tools and modalities, it is just that. Cold therapy, releasing cold shock proteins, your body needs to think that it's about to go into hypothermia.



That's not fun at all. Getting into a cold plunge, it's still hard for me. I love cold sports.



I go snowboarding. I like being out in the cold, snowshoeing, snowmobiling. I love it all.



I also cold plunge. I don't cold plunge every day. I have some probably unique philosophies on that, but I don't cold plunge every day, but I do cold plunge when I'm presented with one.



I love jumping into the cold lake, and I love jumping in my pool. I do all these crazy things, and my wife thinks I'm absolutely nuts. My wife gets these shivers that come on.



It's simple. When she's getting out of the shower, it can come on, and she can't get warm. Now, I've got red light therapy.



I have infrared lights. We have an infrared sauna. We've got lots of different tools that we can help bring her back, and we do, but getting into a cold pool for her is horrifying.



That's not even going to happen. When we started talking about this, I was like, honey, you need to do a cold plunge. She was like, no, no, no.



I don't like the cold. You love the cold. I go, no, no, no.



Let me be very clear. I don't like getting in a cold plunge. There's nothing fun about it.



I do it for the mental. This is what's happening, and I'm telling my body what's happening and my mind what's happening. I know it's short-term.



I just have to stay in there for three minutes. I can do anything for three minutes. It seems like forever while I'm in there.



Oh, yeah. I've done a couple. Yeah.



It's not fun. I was like, let me be very clear. I don't love the cold.



Now, she goes, but you do all the cold sports. I go, I know. I'm wearing clothing and layers.



I'm usually sweating, actually, when I'm out there snowboarding and I think. To your point, hormesis, cold plunge, most of the biohacking tools that we have are representative of shocking the system, of creating that pushback so that you can break something down and then come back stronger. Cold therapy is just like that.



Working out in the gym is just like that. Here in the United States, we have something called the biodome. It was basically an exercise where we wanted to ultimately create ecosystems on foreign lands or if something were to happen to the Earth's ecosystem, that we would have these biodomes, these areas.



They're like big greenhouses with full jungle, like four seasons, four sections, pretty wild what they're trying to create. The first biodome failed because there was no wind. It was really interesting.



It's a really weird thing for it to. The trees didn't grow tall. They didn't grow higher than bushes.



Why? Because there was no wind to give them something to push back on, something to build a strong trunk against. With adversity, we get stronger. That's the human body as a whole.



We know when we put the cell under stress and duress that it responds by activating, by coming back stronger, by rebuilding itself stronger as it splits into new cells. Can I ask a question on that? Only because it's coming to me in this moment. How then is putting your body, and also this is not of where I thought I was going, but this is where we are and I love it.



That's perfect. How then is actively choosing a stressful situation to put your body in healthy, yet when a stressful situation happens to you and your body is responding to that, that's unhealthy? Does that make sense? Because it's all about the duration and the intention. When a stressful situation is happening from the outside in, look, if you get thrown into an ocean and you're only in it for three minutes, that's great.



Stressful situation averted. The cold shock protein's triggered. You had a benefit from it, but then you got out.



If you're on the Titanic and you now... I mean, it's a totally different situation. You even smiled when I said it like, well, yeah, duh. Same, same.



It really depends on the circumstance and the situation. When you go to the gym to work out, it's the same as if you were to... Look, we hear these stories all the time of a child that gets stuck under a car and a mom just picks up the fucking car. Pardon my expression.



Just picks up the car and pulls the baby out and then drops the car. And everybody's like, you're 5'2", 115 pounds. How did you just lift that car? The adrenaline is just flowing and it just happens.



She'll feel sore from that, by the way. She will have put her muscles through enough pain, but she didn't recognize the pain because of the adrenaline. She tore her muscles apart doing that.



And they will very often injure themselves in that process. I was wondering if the tissue can decipher the difference between... Or the body's chemistry can decipher between Kim's choosing to have a cold plunge to shock her system versus Kim's being held at gunpoint and we've got adrenaline. I think everything can be picked up on it.



I think the cells have a hard time resisting what's happening when you're in a cold plunge, frankly, or heat. Excessive heat at 150 degrees is also putting your body through stress. I think the body can, ultimately, which is why I don't cold plunge every single day.



In fact, which is why I don't do anything every single day. In fact, quite the opposite. Everything in moderation, including moderation.



So there's some times where I overkill a lot of things and then I'll back off it. Even in my diet, sometimes I'll be eating gluten. Sometimes I won't, even though being gluten-free was a big part of my life for five, eight years.



Now there's a dozen bagels sitting in my kitchen. I never thought that would have happened. But here it is.



And I'm fine. I feel fine. My stomach's fine.



My gut's fine. So I think everything in moderation, including moderation, which is why I don't do anything every single day. I work out every single day.



I try and go for a walk every single day. I try and lift some weights, yoga, stretching every single day, but I'm not working my muscles the same way every single day. And usually I'm breaking up in different activities, different movements, snowboarding, skiing, push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, whatever.



So yeah, I think you need that variety. Sorry, I realize time has been sucked into some weird vortex while I'm talking to you, but I do have two more questions if that's okay. By the way, before we get into too much time, I do want to draw on the last, when you shake every cell in your body, the vibration that we are creating is putting your body underneath a small state of duress.



It's a small level of stress. And it's that very small level of stress, which by the way, feels amazing when you're on a relaxation furniture. It doesn't hurt.



It's not painful. It's not disheveling in any way, shape, or form. It is instead a very calming, soothing, and relaxing.



However, at a cellular level, we are putting every cell in your body underneath duress. And it's the chemical cascades that come into counter that stress that creates the parasympathetic or the calm rest and digest nervous system response. Just to tie it all together.



Yeah, of course. Last main question is about growth. A lot of the stuff we're discussing today, whilst a lot of my audience are very clued in and really eager to learn, some of this stuff is really new.



And I wonder if you had any commentary on the fact that when people start to do this work or explore this work or explore growth in general, or want to better themselves, sometimes results or people fall apart or like things, things almost get worse before they get better. And I know that's a lot of like my journey with depression. It felt like as I kind of uncovered, I was like, Oh shit, I have so much I have to work through.



Oh my God. And all of these new things that actually unpack something. And then you're like, Oh, forgot about that.



We're going to have to deal with that. Yeah. And I just wondered if you had any note on that to like, just encourage Kiwis a little bit more, like that confidence of like trying something, but not feeling like it needs to.



Yeah. We have a term, we have a term for it here in the States. It's called a Herx reaction.



Herxheimer was a physician who discovered that sometimes things get worse before they get better. And even though you're doing the right thing, things get better. My journey, my health and wellness journey, things got way worse before they got better.



The very quick story about 12 years ago, my wife got sick. Nobody could figure out what was wrong with her. In the end, it wound up being gluten.



We removed gluten from her diet. 72 hours later, all of her symptoms went away. That's simple.



It's just removing gluten from her diet. So gluten-free, being gluten-free was actually a big part of my life for a long time. We gave up gluten a hundred percent.



Over the next six months, my wife got better. Over the next six months, I got worse. And I couldn't figure out why.



I had a runny nose, a cough, a low-grade fever, had all of these cold-like symptoms, flu-like symptoms, body aches, pains, sweats in the middle of nowhere. I'd be standing outside, like about to order food. And all of a sudden, I would just start dripping in sweat.



My wife would be like, are you okay? And I'd be like, yes, I feel fine, but I don't know what's going on. What I figured out was that my body was no longer distracted by the inflammation caused by the gluten. And now all of a sudden it could clean itself out.



It could detoxify itself. It could run processes in the body that it hadn't run in years. And because of that, the body had to release the toxic load.



The skin is the biggest organ. So if there was toxic load in the sweat, it would flush it out of the system. And that would happen at random times.



Sometimes I'd wake up and sweat. So I would wake up with a fever. I'd be like, what's going on? So yeah, as you start making even small changes, look, when you're laying on the Sound Lounge, I call it peeling back layers of relaxation because you'll do a Sound Lounge session today.



You might listen to the same music meditation tomorrow and have a much deeper reaction or experience. Or today, you have a much deeper reaction. And then tomorrow it's kind of not as deep, not as light, right? You're kind of peeling back those layers.



And as you start making changes, as you start to shift your awareness towards something you need to work on, you are going to uncover inevitably things that your body and your mind compartmentalized and pushed away. And it's through that growth, and it's through that work, and it's through looking at it through a different lens that now has time. Viktor Frankl wrote an incredible book, and he's got an incredible quote that I'm going to butcher, but it's something along the lines of between a stimuli and the reaction, there is a space.



And it's in that space that you get to decide how you're going to react to that stimuli. And think of it, right? You have a bad breakup. Well, how are you going to react to that bad breakup one minute after that breakup? You're heartbroken.



10 minutes, one day, one week, one month, one year, 10 years? Huge difference, right? Because you will eventually move on and you will eventually realize that it wasn't for the best or whatever. So we get to decide how we're going to react to all of these different situations. If you recognize that what got you here won't get you there because it's time for you to make change, then you can kind of almost sit back and enjoy the ride.



You can almost look in the face of this to say, I've done my research. I know these decisions that I'm making and these changes that I'm making are for the better. I recognize that it's going to be a little bit of a rough ride, and I'm along the ride.



I'm knuckling it the whole way. I'm just holding on tight. And I know that this too shall pass, that tomorrow will be a better day, and that I'm going to make it through this and survive because what doesn't kill you doesn't make you stronger.



And life is really about a series of choices. It's a series of habits that you start to identify, breaking old habits that aren't serving you and replacing them with good habits that are helping you to feel better tomorrow than you did today, better today than you did yesterday, and so on and so forth. The trajectory hopefully starts to turn for the better.



And it's not to say you're not going to have rough days. You'll have less and less rough days. You'll have less and less difficult days.



But there's plenty of times where I'm sitting down, going to the bathroom or doing something, whatever, and a thought pops in my head, and I dwell on it for a second, and then I just shut it down and be like, no, that's not today. Not today. Yeah, yeah, yeah.



I like that. Oh, that's so good. My final question, something I ask all my guests is, what does your brain look like? It's just a fun question to give you an opportunity to reflect on what it might look like.



Some people have a garden. Some people have a haunted house. I'll tell you what.



I'll tell you what's really interesting in that question. My brain, here's something that I've recognized in understanding what my brain is. My heart is a bigger brain than my brain.



And I try and live through my heart through love, gratitude, and affection in every way, shape, and form. And I'm still working on that too. I think we all are as compassionate, empathetic, sympathetic beings filled with love and gratitude and abundance.



My brain is actually sitting in a black hole, processing electrical signals through my five senses every single day. And that is just my perception of this reality. And I am constantly manifesting, shifting, and changing that reality by the thoughts that I think and the experiences that I have.



And that's how I think of my brain, as a little pulsing electrical signal box sitting in a black hole. Yeah, I hear this little like zing, zing, zing, zing thing. Totally, right? With synapses firing and look, it's magical.



I mean, we could do a whole other podcast on altered states of consciousness and exploring what consciousness actually is. Craig, I don't doubt that we could sit here for 10 hours and we wouldn't have even scratched the surface. I can't believe we're 45 minutes just went by.



I know, I know. That's why I'm like, shit, sorry. No, I'm so grateful for your time.



And if people are obviously curious about the work you're doing with the InHarmony interactive stuff or some more of your speaking and- Yeah, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, you name it. I am highly searchable, Craig Goldberg, InHarmony Interactive. I'm the human being on the other side of the comments.



I'm the human being on the other side of the DMs, as of right now. That might change, but as of right now, I'm the guy on the other side. And I very much look forward to meeting, connecting, answering questions, being a resource.



I'm happy to share resources and make introductions. And really, if there's any way that I can provide value to you or your listeners' lives, I'm all ears and I want to help everybody. Already done that.



That's without question, but yeah, may it continue. And hopefully we'll be able to maybe connect again at some point down the track. I feel like there's just, I haven't even got to my personal question.



I would love it. Look, you want to have me back? I want to come back. Let's do it.



I would love that. Craig, thank you so much. Have a great day.