My guest today is a relaxation expert, technologist, and a patented inventor dedicated to helping people experience a deeper sense of calm through the power of sound and vibration. As a certified vibroacoustic therapy practitioner, his work is grounded in more than 40 years of scientific research that demonstrates the benefits of vibroacoustic therapy for stress reduction, relaxation, and overall well-being. In this episode, we spoke about the importance of sleep, what it actually means to be in chronic fight or flight mode, and the simple ways you can reduce stress and reach a state of relaxation in your everyday life without needing any expensive tools or tech.

Unless you want them, and we talk about them too. Enjoy the episode. Hello, beautiful humans.

Welcome back to another episode of the Skin I'm In podcast. I'm your host Chanel, and this is the space where real stories meet radical self-discovery. Here, you'll find peace through clarity, purpose through inspiration, and the permission to be your authentic self through the stories of men and women who've walked the path before us.

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So let's dive in and find the light in the shadows together. Now we're ready to rock and roll. Now we're ready.

Welcome to the show, Craig. It's a pleasure for me to be here still. Yes, fantastic.

Having some tech issues, this is what we do in podcast world. I'm really interested in what you do. So let's start with the how you even came to be here.

Tell me, what was the catalyst, the life event that sent you down the path of becoming a certified vibro-acoustic therapy practitioner? It's a mouthful. I'm like, what is that? All right, so vibro-acoustic therapy, vibro-vibration, acoustic sound. So we're talking about sound and vibration and its impact on your physiology.

Just about any town USA these days has sound therapy, sound baths, especially at your local yoga studio. And they have somebody that's playing the acoustic instruments, the bells, the chimes, the bowl, the didgeridoo, that sort of thing. And I was enamored with this 12, 13, 14 years ago.

And I was going on a regular basis because I was a stressed out human. No other reason why. People ask how I got into this.

And I'm like, I fucking needed it. Pardon my expression. Sorry about that.

I needed it. I did not realize what it meant to relax until I laid in my first sound bath. And I was like, woke up 45 minutes later, and I was like, this feels different.

This is kind of nice. I guess I just got some nice rest. And then, of course, sound bath after sound bath, I became enamored with the experience.

And as an audiophile, I eventually wanted to try and figure out how to do it myself. And what my business partner at the time didn't know when I came on board here, I had my first sound lounge experience in November of 2016. And, and I fell in love because this was a very similar experience to what I would get by going to a sound bath, except I didn't have to have somebody else playing the instruments around me, I could just push play and have an experience.

And I fell in love with the technology. And what they didn't know is that just a few minutes, just a few months before that, I was literally I bought a CD, I put it in my CD player, I took my receiver and my 5.1 stereo surround sound stereo system, and I starfished out in the middle of my living room. And I had the center channel in between my legs, front, right, front, left, rear, right, rear left.

And I was trying to have this experience, I was using the wrong technology. I was using speakers when I should have been using tactile transducers, which is another part of the conversation. But I got into this because I needed it.

And the number one thing I hear, I've done 10s of 1000s of sessions on my technology at various events, and obviously our clients and customers. And the number one thing I hear is, wow, I had no idea how much I needed deep rest, and and how lacking that was in my world. So sound and vibration, I'm on a quest to teach people about the power of sound and vibration, its impact on our physiology.

And that's been my basis of study for the better part of the last 10 years is sound frequency, light music on our physiology and the neurological benefits, the physiological benefits and why it's so good for us and so needed. Well, let's name some of them, because I think that some people don't understand the impact of stress on their actual body and what those symptoms can look like and how sound and vibration therapies can assist with that. All right.

So first of all, I think it's important to note stress by itself is not the problem. Stress is actually very healthy, and it makes you stronger. So living a lackadaisical life, as lovely as that sounds, you'd lack growth, and and you would lack strength.

When you go to the gym, and you work out that muscle, you are putting stress on the muscle and it is building back stronger. And there are countless examples of this in the world. So quite literally, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

There's an entire study on this called the Herxheimer reaction, where a Herxheimer reaction is a bad reaction to something and then and then you get better, you get worse before you get better. And that's typical in just about every stress induced situation. With enough time past the stressful situation, you realize the growth, you realize what good it gave you, you realize what good came of it.

And whether the stress is physical, mental, emotional, relational, nutritional, financial, it doesn't matter. The stress by itself is not the bad thing. It's the reaction to that stress that I want to change.

And you all know when you're cool, calm and collected, you can handle anything. But when you get frayed and thrown off your axis is when everything just seems to go to shit. Everything seems to just be too much to handle.

And I'll give you another example because this resonates with a lot of people as well. When you get a good night's sleep, sleep is the single greatest biohack it's free. And most of us don't understand how to get good sleep or don't give ourselves good sleep or don't protect and garner good sleep.

And it is the single greatest biohack that you can do. And the example is really simple. I got nine hours of sleep last night.

That's pretty good for me, but I was coming off a sleep deficit. I got five hours of sleep on Saturday night because I chose to have some fun, which is wonderful on a Saturday night. But my daughter gets up at 8 a.m. regardless.

So 645 a.m. actually. So I didn't get a whole lot of sleep. But when I can get 10 hours of sleep, four or five nights in a row, making up for my sleep deficit, I feel like a million bucks.

I jump out of bed before my alarm goes off. I'm jolly. I'm happy.

I'm ready to rock and roll like there's nothing that the day can throw at me that I can't handle. You give me a few nights in a row where I'm not sleeping well and caffeine and chocolate can only go so far to keep me on point. Right.

It works in a pinch. It works. At some point when you're not getting good sleep night after night, week after week, God forbid, or month after month, your 100 percent power and peak performance really becomes your 80 percent.

And you're just happy to get back to 80 percent and to be there. Right. So sound and vibration is another way of giving your body the rest that it needs in between sleep sessions and meditation, prayer.

There's lots of different ways that you can do it. But there are there are core aspects to our overall health and wellness, and I'm happy to share them. Most of them are free that that we need to give our bodies every single day.

Sleep, morning sunlight, grounding feet on the ground, the earth, the sand, the dirt, grass, connection with other humans, skin on skin contact, healthy and clean water, which I don't believe there's clean water anywhere on the planet anymore has to be filtered. And then, of course, clean food. And and without getting into the food conversation or nutrition, which is definitely a deep dive and a background for me, which I'm happy to talk about if it comes out of a box, eat less of it comes out of the ground, eat more.

And and then there's hot and cold therapy, which you don't need a sauna and and a cold plunge for. You can find a body of water that's free to jump in. I'm sure that's super cold, especially in the winter.

And you can find a sauna. I live in Vegas. It's 112 degrees outside today.

I can go outside and sweat every day if I wanted to by just standing in the sun. So there's a lot of free things that you can do. Meditation, mindfulness is is up there, but it's in the second half of that batch of 10.

The most important is sleep. First and foremost, when you get into that deficit and if you can't get into a meditative state, if you can't quiet the mind, sound and vibration is a really helpful way to do that. Yeah, this resonates deeply.

Funnily enough, my girlfriend who lives in California was asking me about how to clean up her sleep hygiene because she knows I've been struggling for a good four or five years with sleep. No one can work out why at this moment. Number of tests I've got, I've done all kinds of sleep studies and everything.

But when I replied to her, it ended up being a 10 minute voice note of all the things that I do. I'm like, there isn't just one thing. It's not just about the bed.

It's not just about the pillow. It's not just about what you do right beforehand. Everything you're doing in your day in preparation for rest matters all day long.

And how you handle stress, just like you said, how you handle stress, everyone handles it really differently. And I think our perspective on stress really needs to change because what we experience as stress these days is really not what our ancestors. I come from generations of war.

That was stress. You know what I mean? A hundred percent. You look in a very, like you're in a very cozy environment.

Your puppies are sleeping behind you. It seems pretty safe, right? Like you probably got air conditioning and heat when you need it. Sunshine, good food.

Like we're just not in that safe. Don't get me wrong. There's plenty of humans, many of which might be listening to this podcast that are still in survival mode for good reason.

They don't have a roof over their head. That's consistent. They're moving around a lot.

They don't have access to consistent food or worse. They know about the difference between conventional food and organic food, but it's so much more expensive that they can't eat it. And there's stress correlated to that.

That's that nutritional stress. Don't get me wrong. There's plenty of people that are concerned about life-threatening aspects, but a boss from a job you can't stand, you know, is not life-threatening necessarily, unless you're thinking about quitting.

And that's a whole other decision about food on the table and getting into fight or flight. But you're right. This whole conversation around dysregulation of the nervous system, which I've been talking about for 10 years and is now a buzzword that everybody's searching and talking about, is really about getting out of sympathetic.

Spending more time in that dominant sympathetic state is the problem. And I was literally just looking on another page at the, it's 2024 data, but it's on all-cause mortality. Why humans die.

And this is really worth talking about. So the number one reason why humans die. Global causes of death in world data is cardiovascular disease, which has its roots in stress and anxiety.

Cancers, which has its root in stress and anxiety. COVID-19, which arguably and debatably had its root in stress and anxiety. Respiratory disease, digestive disease, lower respiratory infections, dementia, neonatal disorders, which neonatal can be, right? Dementia, lower respiratory, digestive disease, kidney disease, liver disease, road injuries, which could actually be related correlated to stress in some ways.

And then you get into a couple that I don't think are stress and related, but then you get into suicide. 746,000 people, 746,000 people, 746,000 people, sorry, died of suicide, which is largely a mental health scenario. So you start to think about how stress and anxiety correlates to why Americans in particular, and in the case, humans die of all-cause mortality.

And this is a really major issue that needs to be dealt with. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what do you think is the most surprising research that you've found on how sound and vibration affect the body? So what's really interesting, so we do a lot of science and research ourselves.

I'm the only, so we manufacture, vibroacoustic therapy is the body of research, but we're a hardware manufacturer. We make relaxation furniture. This zero-gravity recliner behind me is one of our pieces of technology, and we have seven in that space in particular, plus red light, plus hydrogen inhalation.

But the science and research we do in particular on vibroacoustic therapy is very interesting because we know what it does to the body. We know it puts you in a calm and relaxed state. But the science and research that we just completed back in February, which is preliminary data, I'm moving towards clinical trials, double-blind, placebo-controlled, which is the hard part, by the way, placebo-controlled.

What's the placebo against laying down, listening to music? Believe it or not, it's an actual challenge for us. But we will create this, and we will finish this. But what's really interesting is blood flow to the prefrontal cortex.

So there's many different aspects of the brain and our neurology, obviously, but the prefrontal cortex is where our fight-or-flight response lives. So when you go into fight-or-flight, the most expensive energetic organ in the body is the brain. It uses about 20 percent of your overall energy output every single day.

And when you go into fight-or-flight, there's a series of different things that happen in the body. So what we usually go in, and a long answer to a short question, but 200 years ago, what were we most worried about? We were sleeping in a cave, and we were most worried about a saber-toothed tiger is the example everybody in my industry wants to hear. Hey, you're getting chased by a saber-toothed tiger, right? Like, okay, I'm not getting chased by a saber-toothed tiger here, right? But that's how our fight-or-flight response has happened, and it's that spidey sense that goes off.

More appropriately, you're walking to a dark parking garage at night, and you see somebody in a hoodie, 30 paces behind you, walking in your direction. Could he be going to his car? Absolutely. Could it be a threat? Possibly.

Your spidey sense starts to go off. That spidey sense is your sympathetic nervous system response. It's the alertness to a life-threatening scenario, in this case, physical.

Somebody's walking past you. Now, he might just dip out and go to his car, in which case you should return back to a parasympathetic nervous system response, rest-and-digest, or maintenance mode. Now, let's say that is an attacker.

How much of your energy, out of 100% of your energy, do you want to fight off that potential attack? How much do you want, out of 0% to 100%? How much of your energy do you want? Fighting or running? Both. Either one, right? I'll give you a better example. All of it.

You want 100% of it. Okay. So, since your body has these maintenance functions happening in it over the course of the day, it has to shut those processes down to divert 100% of its energy to saving your life.

So, basically, when the sympathetic nervous system response, you identify your nervous system, identifies danger. The sympathetic nervous system response kicks in. Adrenaline flows through your blood.

It's released by the adrenals. Cortisol levels increase in the body. The adrenaline in your body turns off internal processes fast.

You don't think about it. This just happens as a reaction. And all that energy gets diverted to the major muscle groups in the body so that you can fight or run.

And you have all of that power to do it. Now, in a healthy response, when that threat is neutralized or disappears, or that guy does just dip off into his car, or he's so, once he gets closer to you, he's so confronted by your strength and that he decides you're not a victim for him, a target, and he just dips out and leaves, right? Which happens. Or he's actually just going to his car and you misread the situation.

A few deep breaths. Or better yet, what does your dog do after he goes into a stressful situation and goes back into a calm? What do they do? Do you know? They shake it off. That's exactly what we do with fibroacoustic therapy.

We shake everything off your body, just like a dog shakes it off, right? So it's a really powerful tool. So what we see in the science and the research is we can actually put a band on your head that tracks blood flow to the prefrontal cortex. And when you're in a stressful situation, the brain pulls all the blood out of the prefrontal cortex because you don't need to make decisions.

Prefrontal cortex is where we make most of our logical decision making. And it gets taken away because the adrenaline, the cortisol is driving that experience. The cortisol keeps you hyper-focused and the adrenaline keeps all the muscles, you know, well-fueled.

But you can only do that for a short period of time before you have adrenal fatigue, right? So like we hear all these things, oh, you have adrenal fatigue. That's because you're in this chronic state of fight or flight. You're in this chronic state of survival mode.

And most of it is not legitimate. And we don't even know it's not legitimate because we're so hung up being in that sympathetic nervous system response that we can't think our way back into a parasympathetic. You got to shake it off.

I was going to say, I'm like, how do I get back out of the fight or flight mode mentally? You recognize that you're in it and then you literally shake it off, right? Or you get on our technology and you listen to a music meditation and that helps too. Yeah, that's really interesting. I've actually trained my dogs to shake it off.

I can sense when they're, especially the oldest one, his name's Enzo, he gets really nervous and anxious. It's really, really interesting. So if I physically shook it off or even is humming, does humming do the same thing? Cause I've heard that humming creates that vibration.

It's just talking. So I had a podcast this morning with a music therapist and that's what he does is music therapy. And we got to talking.

The oldest vibratory tool on the planet is the throat box and the larynx. And if you take your hand and you put it over with your thumb and your pinky finger on your clavicle and your palm pressed against your upper rib cage and your sternum, you can feel vibration. Even with your voice, which is slightly higher pitched than mine, you can feel that vibration.

As you move lower and you get to your rib cage, I can still feel that vibration. But as I get to my stomach and get away from bone structure, I can't feel the vibration anymore. So your throat and your larynx is exceptionally good at vibrating the upper torso.

But you're right, humming and toning. And I recommend people hum along with their music meditation as they're laying on our bed or listening to our music meditations. Absolutely.

You can hum along. It's even better that you're in headphones and you can't hear your own humming. So that's always nice.

So you're not judging yourself either. I find I find I sleep a lot better, or at least I fall asleep a lot quicker when I listen to Reiki healing music. Sure.

Rather than just nothing, because then I start making my to do list. Yeah, you know, music. So here's the so here's why.

So music brings you into a theta brainwave state. Okay, this is before we even get to vibro acoustic therapy, which is the harmonization of what you're hearing and what you're feeling. But when you're laying in bed, so I have a six year old daughter.

And we she has been listening to the same two music meditations now just one. But when she took her nap in the afternoon, we have five hour music meditation just off YouTube frequency music that we like. She has this 10 hour version for at night because she sleeps 10 hours, she goes to bed around seven, eight o'clock 745 eight o'clock.

It's usually wakes up about 645 seven. So 11 hours, she's in bed. And the last hour, she doesn't have our music meditation on and when the frequency is off, she she wakes up.

And sometimes we go in and we extend it before we go to bed so that we get some extra sleep. But like Pablo's dog, right? You remember, they ring the bell and the dog got hungry, ring the bell, the dog got hungry. Yes, that music met that music goes on.

And my my daughter's she's out. She's out. In fact, my wife and I got so accustomed to listen to it through the baby monitor that now I listened to it in my room too.

And and as soon as it goes on, I fall asleep. It's it's really beautiful. And the reason for that is because music guides you into a theta brainwave state.

That to do list that you mentioned lives in a beta brainwave state. And too many of us are stuck in a beta brainwave because our brain is dysregulated. And our nervous system is dysregulated.

All that means is that it's stuck in that beta brainwave. It's not migrating into alpha, theta, delta and up into gamma. It's not exploring and experiencing these different brainwave states that we need to go through over the course of the day or night so that the brain can fix itself and rehabilitate itself.

But is that because I or whoever's listening to this spends their whole day in action mode and the first time they actually get to just not do things is right before bed. And so everything turns on. I've started writing a to do list before bed.

That's one of my sleep hygiene things, right, the to do list so that it takes it off my brain. But when I don't do that, I lie there and I'm just like. This is the first moment today I've had to think of all the things that I need to do tomorrow.

Sure. Look, and there's a lot of valuable tactics and techniques that you can use to help get that out of the brain so that the brain can rest and relax. Music and vibration is among the greatest to do.

Look, a nighttime routine is also really powerful. You want to share your nighttime routine? So no screens for at least an hour. I get off my I get off everything.

I spend a good half an hour with my dogs just doing playing, hanging out, cuddles. Yeah, we do that three times a day. They're on a very strict playtime schedule.

I read, I do a lot of reading before bed. And right before sleeping, I'll tuck the dogs in, and I just sit with them. Like I lay with them with a red light, red light on so that I can just start to kind of calm down.

And then I'll put my Reiki healing music on and I go to sleep. Cool. When's your last meal? I eat dinner about four or 5pm and I go to bed at about eight.

Okay, three hours is good. Because you're still digesting your food, obviously, and that uses your second most expensive use of energy is digestion. So if that's active, super active, it's going to keep you awake.

And obviously, you're eating sugar and glycogen and other things that are going on in the brain or in the body. So that's fantastic. Have you tried working out late? If I do, I can't sleep.

Okay. Have you tried hot showers or cold therapy before bed? Hot showers? Yes. Okay, did it work? It's more because I have really cold hands and feet.

So I'm like, yes, I'm nice and warm, so that I can get into bed and feel like I can sleep because otherwise, again, I can't sleep. If I'm too cold, I can't sleep. You're gonna hate this.

Try cold therapy. I knew you were gonna tell me this. I knew it.

I tell my wife the same thing. Look, hold on. I'm not talking about buying a cold plunge and getting into 35 degree water.

I don't recommend that for women in general. I really don't. Start with taking a hot shower so you enjoy it and you warm yourself up and just do 30 seconds to a minute all around cold.

Yeah. I'm not saying it's fun and I told you you're gonna hate it and I get that. I hate the cold.

Also, I live in Vegas, for God's sake. Okay. Like, like, I love the heat.

And, and yet, and yet it actually helps increase circulation to your extremities. It will help you not have cold hands and cold feet. It sucks.

It sucks the most when you first start. But I only tell you that because a lot of folks that have that don't get the response out of out of hot therapy, actually do better with cold. And again, we're not talking I'm not talking about submerging in 35.

In fact, I don't think women need to get in water that's less than 55 degrees to get cold therapy or to get the benefits of cold therapy. You don't have to do it for very long. Three minutes is all you need.

A cold shower will absolutely do it. It sucks. It's not fun, but it increases circulation and that might and that might help.

Look, music and frequency. Oh, there we go. Hey, you.

Everything. Everything's okay. Good.

Who's here? Who's here? Oh, Amazon. It's just Amazon, buddy. Music and frequency is a really close second.

And so look, my my ideal I have a six year old, so I don't get nighttime routines very often. But when I do, it is not a full workout, five minutes or less. I fatigue my muscles by doing as many pushups to failure, as many sit ups and crunches to failure.

Sometimes I'll do wall touches, putting my feet up on and just touching the wall and getting my my core muscles exhausted as many pull ups as I can and as many squats as I can. So I'm just exhausting to failure the major muscle groups of the body. It is by no means a full workout, but it is enough to to exhaust me.

Then I do hot therapy at night. I really enjoy a sauna. I don't know.

I have a relaxed sauna, a little little booth with your head popped out. Fifteen hundred bucks. Not very expensive.

And I'll do 20 minutes in that. I break a sweat. I get out.

I stand in the cold bathroom for a little while and feel cold. That's that's my version of cold therapy. And then and I'm waiting for the shower to get warm and I and I take a hot shower.

I finish all of that and then I get on the sound lounge and I do 20, 30 minutes on the sound. So that's my ideal. That whole process takes me about an hour and a half, two hours, depending on how long my my sound obsession is.

That to me, I mean, I sleep like a baby, like I'm I'm out. But look. Business is hard.

You have a podcast, you have other businesses as well. I know you've got a lot going on. There's lots of reasons for us to worry.

So a big part of what I do as part of my mental health is releasing that worry, knowing that worrying is only praying for something bad to happen. Right. Because you're thinking about it over and over and over.

You're ruminating and the mind is very powerful. The subconscious mind is even more powerful. So that visualization that you're doing, which is all worrying, really is.

And it doesn't have to be like, oh, my God, I can't believe what's going to happen tomorrow. It could just be I got a bunch of things I didn't get done today and I got a bunch of things that I got to get done tomorrow. They're still going to be there tomorrow.

And the fact that you didn't get them done is perfectly OK. I wear this bracelet every single day. Can you read it? Is it enough? It's enough.

And I wear it every day and it's facing me so I can read it to see that I've done enough. I'm busy all day. It's 430 and we're still going and we're going to go for who knows, another 45 minutes.

I don't know. And then I go into daddy time and and then my family and I got to take care of things around the house. I'm hanging a fan tonight in the guest room and blah, blah, blah.

The list goes on. The honey do list is real. And as many things as I check off that list is as many things appear at the bottom of that list.

I don't know how that happened. I've been sitting at my desk since 8 a.m. That was my first meeting this morning. I've been talking to somebody all day and I love it.

Don't get me wrong. I love it. I'm not complaining.

I love it. That's why I do it. And I get to do it all over again tomorrow.

Yeah, I just had a moment just then as you were talking and I thought to myself, why do we get so stressed out about a to do list? Like, what is the big deal? Who cares? Like what? Apart from work deadlines. And I get that. But none of them are going to cause us to have like real let's just say the daily stuff.

I can make some suggestions on that. All right. So what's on your to do list? Let's get some clarifying questions first.

What's on your to do? You don't have to give me specifics about what's literally on your to do list, but give me some general ideas of what's on your to do list that has you concerned or what are you thinking about? Like tonight when you go to bed, what are you going to be thinking about tomorrow that didn't get done today? Give me some examples. Look, I'm I'm quite religious with my to do lists and I mark things off and I pretty much do finish things off. But it's it's the, I think it's the like, I've got to make sure that I get the dogs out twice a day, at least.

I've got to make sure that I feed Enzo at the right time because he's got gut issues. I've got to make sure that I have what I need in terms of have I responded to the emails to my suppliers overseas? Have I got the stuff going on with my, you know, when are my labels coming for the product? Like preparing for a product? Like there's all these things that I'm like, okay, this is what I've got to do, this is what I've got to do. But I have like a whole Excel spreadsheet.

I'm a project manager, like I'm really good at that stuff. But when I listen to other people, like in my work environment or when I'm having conversations, a lot of their stuff includes children or a husband. I just went through a divorce, so I no longer have that in my life and I have no children.

But a lot of them, for a lot of them, they can't get things done in their opinion because of their kids and their responsibilities to do with their family. Yeah, well, I'll give you a couple of examples. Even in the to-do lists that you recommended, it involved other people.

The first two to-do lists that you mentioned were for your puppies, which is legit, right? Like they're lifeline, you're taking care of them. Look, it's the same with my daughter, bless her beautiful heart. She would die if it wasn't for me and my wife, my grandparents, you know, my parents, like poor thing.

We're literally keeping her alive. You ask her what her favorite food is, she'll say ice cream three times in her top five favorite foods, okay? There's no nutritional density in there. Like, no, no, no.

Donuts is number two, by the way. Lollipops is number three, right? Luckily, she doesn't get any of those until the nutrients are in her pie hole. Look, I think, and by the way, the third thing you mentioned was emails, and then you said to my suppliers, but somebody told me something very interesting, which I will never forget, and I share quite often.

I forget who it was so that I can credit them with it, but it was basically look no further than your own email inbox for somebody else's task list, because it's always people in your email asking you to do stuff, and it's usually stuff that they need done, not stuff that you need done. Now, don't get me wrong. You mentioned getting back to your suppliers so that you can get everything that you need and manage what you need to do, and look, I'm the first one to tell you my morning routine.

Now, let's talk about morning routines with a six-year-old, okay? No, just don't. Just stop, okay? My morning routine is I don't touch my phone for an hour and a half, and I like to go outside, and I like to go for a walk, and after my three-mile walk, I sit in silence while I think about- You're not in the 5 a.m. club, Craig. Hell no, I'm not part of the 5 a.m. club.

Stop it. No, no, no. All right.

I respect it, and I appreciate it, and yes, they're probably right that they get more done before 8 a.m. than they do for me. I get up just about, alarm or not, I get up sometime between 7 and 8 a.m. on a work day. I work seven days a week.

I'm an entrepreneur. I was going to say. It's like, who are we kidding, right? But no, I am not part of- I don't have a morning routine.

I'll tell you what my morning routine is, literally. This is what happens every single day. At some point in the night, my daughter will have climbed into our bed.

She's getting to that point where it's happening less often, but she's allowed to come in our bed whenever she wants. It's a whole co-sleeping thing. We can have that conversation.

I love it. Parents definitely care about it. My daughter's six years old.

She's allowed to come in my bed whenever she wants. If that's what she needs to feel safe, my job is to make her feel safe and loved. She has an open ticket.

My daughter will come into my room, usually wakes me up. Sometimes she doesn't. By 6.45, she's staring at me, laying right here, just staring, eyes open.

I'll roll open my eyes to my daughter, right here, breathing on me, hot. This perky voice of like, hi, dad, are we going to get up now? No, we're going back to bed. What time is it? She's like, I don't know.

It's time to get up. I'll see the lights in the window. It's time to get up.

First thing I do is I grab my phone. All these people in our industry that talk about not grabbing your phone, the first thing I do when I wake up is grab my phone. Why? I open up Telegram, which is a messaging app.

I open up WhatsApp, and I open up my email, and I skim it for messages specifically for my groups that are all around the world, manufacturing overseas, app development overseas. I have the last window of their day to give them information, or I lose them for 12 hours. For me and my peace of mind, scanning through my text messages to see if there's any emergencies, it gives me peace of mind that I can do it.

Now, I'm not waking up at 6.45 so that I do do it, but the first thing I do when I wake up is I grab my phone and I skim it. Then I have an hour with my family. I walk my dog.

First thing I do is I go outside. I do it barefoot, so I'm getting my grounding, and I'm getting my sunshine and my sun exposure on my skin first thing. If you don't have a dog, it's the single greatest thing you could do for sleep that night is getting sunshine as soon as it's available.

If you get up at 5 a.m., sun comes up at 6, get yourself outside and get the sun in your eyes and on your skin, as much of your skin as you're comfortable with, sports bra for the ladies, no top for the men, get yourself out there. Then I get my feet in the dirt, and then I immediately start taking care of my daughter, getting her breakfast going, brushing her teeth, getting her hair straightened, getting ourselves ready so she can go to camp or school or whatever it is that she's doing for the day. Then I'm straight to my desk.

I drink my water, lemon water, preferably if I can get lemon water and salt water in, that's great. Otherwise, I'm chugging 32 ounces of water, and I'm drinking my coffee, and I'm at my desk, and I'm in it. There's no morning routine.

Now, I cut out during the day, and I lay on my tech. I'm listening to music through Sonos. I'm not playing it now because we're recording, but throughout my house over the course of the day is frequency of music that's playing in the background.

I get my fresh air during the day. I get out, and I get sunshine between 10 and 2, no shirt, so I get my vitamin D. That's it. I take different supplements every day to switch it up.

I do like to get a workout in in the middle of the day. It's 15 minutes, HIIT training. I like Tabata training.

That's one of my favorites, seven minutes. Tabatas are seven-minute sprints. It's basically HIIT training.

You're doing these moves, and it's seven minutes non-stop of intense, 30 seconds of burpees, 30 seconds of push-ups, jumping jacks, whatever, but it doesn't sound like a lot, but by the time I get to six, six and a half, I am gassed. Like 30 seconds of burpees kill me. I forget about it, right? You can get a lot done in a short period of time.

My wife loves to go to classes. She loves to go to Pilates. She loves to go to yoga, and I enjoy it.

Don't get me wrong. It's the number one thing I can do for my wife is go with her to a Pilates class or a yoga class. For me, it's just a big drag because it takes me away from my desk for an hour and a half.

That, to me, it's just painful. I'm very happy serving and being in my desk, but to your point and to mine, I know I went on for a long time, but there are so many different things that we need to do over the course of the day that help us get ready for sleep. And by the way, it helps tremendously that I'm nonstop all day and that by the time it's time to sit down at the dinner table, I can hardly keep my eyes open.

Nice. I like it. Yeah.

Yeah. But it's important that you even bring all of those things up. And yes, it was a long way for us to get to the point that there's a lot that we need to do throughout our day to help us prepare for sleep, but it also really humanizes someone who is an entrepreneur.

Do you know what I mean? I think that a lot of us, and look, I've worked in tech for decades. And so I see, and really at high level seeing executives do things that I'm just like, I do not want your life. And I think a lot of people think that in order to have success or have any wealth, that is how we need to operate, but it's not.

There's such a human element to what you just said. And I love that all the things that you just said, because it is, it's a family life and people think that it's, that's not the realistic way to make it. Look, so obviously COVID pushed a lot of people to working from home.

I'm sitting in my home office right now. And I can't show you on this camera, but it's a very professional desk, like any desk I've had at any office, anytime. All right.

It's motorized, it goes up and down. I've got my technology here. I've got a nice little red light that keeps me warm and keeps me going.

I've got my studio set up. I've got a 4k camera. I've got three screens plus my iPad and my iPhone.

I've got studio monitor speakers because I'm in the music business. I've got desk lights. I've got a studio light, bookshelves, like this could be an office anywhere else, but my kitchen's right outside that door.

My parents are right outside that door. My wife is working in a similar office down the hallway. My daughter's at school most days or camp, but she comes home at three o'clock and she's the first person I see.

My dad worked in New York city. We lived on Long Island. My dad left every morning at 6.30 AM.

He came home every night at 6.25. I got an hour, hour and a half with my dad before I went to bed. Didn't even realize how detrimental it was. Now my dad was doing big things.

He was an entrepreneur. He had a garment. He was in garment business in Manhattan and he had a factory and a showroom and he needed to be in New York city and he made that sacrifice every single day for our family and I'm grateful that he did.

But I didn't realize that that was something that was very important to me. So we use softwares that allow us to work remotely efficiently and effectively as if we're in an office. I don't want an office.

Can I go to WeWork? Sure. When my daughter's home, do I get less work done? Yeah. But you know what I also get? To spend more time with my daughter.

Yeah. Nothing like it. Nothing like it.

And do I answer my phone seven days a week? I do. You can go to my website. We'll give it to you later.

You can look in the show notes, whatever. You can go to my website right now and I challenge the listener to do this. My phone number's at the top of the website.

Call me. Say hi. It works.

Even in our exchanges, you said, call me anytime day or night. I was just like, is he for real? Yeah. Look, I have boundaries.

Look, I have a six-year-old, okay? Like I've said over and over and over again, I'm up at odd hours. And if my daughter wakes up because she has to go to the bathroom or she's scared, look, I hear weird noises at night. Like, I don't know.

It was I, two weeks ago or something, I heard sound like gunshots, fireworks. It was around the fourth, but they sounded close. I got up to check it out at like two in the morning, literally outside in my skivvies with a sidearm and a flashlight.

Like, I'm ready to go, right? Like nobody's messing with me, by the way, when I'm coming out there. Like my wife jokes, she's like, why are you going outside? Like we have cameras. And I'm like, cause nobody's messing with me when I'm just out there in my boxers, you know, with a gun and a light, like what's going on? There was nobody there.

I was up for another two hours, right? Like I got back into bed and I'm laying there and I'm just staring at a dark room. Like I'm not sleeping right now. So I sat at my desk.

And if you would have called me, cause if you were in Australia or Melbourne and it's your next day or whatever, I would have answered. And people call cause they don't know what time zone I'm in. I travel a lot for work.

So they never know where I am. Look, sometimes I answer and they're like, Oh my God, I can't believe you answered. It's it's midnight.

I'm like, sometimes I'll be sitting at my desk. What am I doing? Well, look, cause I have boundaries. And at five 30, or if it's camp day, my daughter's home at three 30.

Sometimes my daughter's home at noon. And I'll say, you know what, from noon to three, I'm going to hang out with my daughter, let my wife get some work done and make sure my daughter's not sitting in front of a television. I'm going to be a good dad.

I'm going to take her out and we're going to go somewhere. And I'm going to give her my undivided attention. And then we'll start working at three or sometimes I'll, I'll not work in the morning and I'll work from three to midnight, whatever, right? Like I have the flexibility to do what I need to do when I need to do it.

Um, sometimes I'm just on deadline and I just have things to do and I'm still working or I'll put my daughter to bed at eight. And then I'll sit in front of my computer and with all the bright lights on and everything else, I'm awake. And I don't even look at the clock.

Sometimes I look at the clock and I'm like, oh man, it's one o'clock in the morning or somebody will call and I'll answer. And they'll be like, what are you doing? Answering the phone. It's one o'clock on the West coast.

And I'd be like, I didn't even know what time it was. Thanks for letting me know. What a nice thing though, to get lost in whatever you're doing.

I love what I do. I love what I do. Right.

And it's not, and it's cliche, but it doesn't feel like work. Don't get me wrong. There's a lot of things that are arduous about what I do that I'm just like, or just make it end.

But I'm grateful to have an amazing team. We have folks on my team that love project management, that love spreadsheets, that love repetitive tasks. They get to log it again and do it again.

And it lights them up and bless their beautiful hearts. Because there's a bunch of stuff I do on camera and everything else that they're like, Craig, I don't know how you do that. I'm scared.

That's not something I want to do. And there's nothing that I would rather be doing right now than having an incredible conversation with you talking about peak performance, health and wellness and helping people be better humans. Yeah, I feel that.

And just on that, because wellness and meditation and sound therapies and all these kinds of stuff can feel overly spiritual for a lot of people, right? This is, or what's the latest, the latest thing that I'm hearing is it's very right wing, whatever that even means. We hear that a lot. I'm like, since when did wellness become a right wing like thing? That's something the left must say.

No, I'm just kidding. I know, right? We're living in that time. But for people who just want the practical solutions to everyday stresses, like what, I know you're really passionate about making it accessible to everyone.

Talk to him about how you're making it accessible for everyone. All right. Look, first of all, what you just said, I have a black belt in the womb.

Okay. Like, okay. And I'm like the black belt in the womb, and I got it.

Like, you want to get into the womb? Like we can get into the womb, right? Like I've been down every rabbit hole and look, I love ceremony and ritual and hoppe and plant medicine. And I've had my attunement. I'm a Reiki master for a decade.

I can perform Reiki on others. I can do it on myself. I understand it.

I feel the energy. My hands are on fire when you've got stuff working on in your body, right? Like I don't need you to believe in my magic for my magic to work. So we're good, right? That said, I'm also very grounded in science and where I can document and prove it through different biometrics, biofeedback, through different tools.

Okay. You want to talk about EMF? That's great. I have an EMF reader.

It sits in my closet and it tells me RF magnetic and electromagnetic energy. I can see it. I know what comes off a cell phone.

Okay. I'm wearing a very special watch. This watch is made by a company called TLS, the light systems.

And I have it on my wrist and it increases the bioelectricity in my body. So my cells perform better. I know it works.

I can measure it with science and research. I use these fabulous devices right here. These AirPods, right? I try not to wear two.

You're wearing Bluetooth headphones right now, Beats by Dre. They're gorgeous. They're better for you than this because of these have two Bluetooth and they're constantly coordinating with each other, sending Bluetooth signals by.

So I use one of these instead of two of them, but I believe in the convenience factor for them and I like them. All right. I bring all of this up because as often as I dip into the woo and I get involved in things that we just can't understand like the quantum field and scalar waves and a bunch of stuff that I don't necessarily fully understand, that doesn't mean that they don't work.

A lot of folks, look, I make a meditation cushion. This beautiful little creature over here is sitting in my meditation. I can't talk about it, but soon you'll see these everywhere and it'll be remarkable, but it was a gift from friends of mine and their creation.

He's sitting in the footwell of my meditation cushion. I make a meditation cushion. I'm talking about meditation and I can't even tell you how many people are repelled by the word meditation.

Oh, I can't meditate. That's not. Prayer is a form of meditation.

So spirituality is simply, look, religion can be your spirituality. I think that's great. I think it's beautiful.

I think it's wonderful. I have my issues with certain parts of it, but look, you're free to do whatever it is that you want to do. And to the listener, prayer is a form of meditation.

Sleep and meditation and deep prayer is nothing more than a conscious perception of a slower brainwave state. So when you go to bed at night, you're going to bed. That's your conscious perception is that you're going to sleep.

Now, let's say in a perfect world, you sleep for eight hours and you wake up, go to bed at eight and you wake up at four in the morning, which doesn't seem like, it seems like an ungodly hour to wake up to me. But let's just say you go to bed at eight and you wake up at four in the morning, you got eight hours of sleep. What a fantastic night.

Okay. The perception is that Chanel got eight hours of sleep, but your body wasn't sleeping. Your brain wasn't sleeping.

Your autonomic nervous system wasn't sleeping. Your heart was still beating. Your breath was still breathing and your body was really busy.

It was busy getting things done. It was busy restoring, regenerating, rejuvenating, cleaning up, relieving the dark matter in the brain. We know all these different things that are happening in the brain, opening up your detox pathways, right? You're losing water overnight.

We lose a significant amount of water just by exhaling, you know, in the CO2 release. There's a lot of different things that are happening in your body while you sleep, but you don't perceive it. You perceive it as you had a dream or two or 10 or 30, or you didn't, you just blacked out and you woke back up and it was morning, right? Same thing with meditation.

You're dropping into a meditative state. You have no sense of time. You don't know how long you were doing it.

Let's say it was a 20-minute meditation. That 20-minute meditation could have been the equivalent of four hours of sleep if you're doing it the right way, which is what our technology does. It brings you into a deeper meditative state.

All deeper meditative state is a deeper brainwave state, an altered brainwave state. When you're stuck in that to-do list, you're stuck in a beta brainwave. It's where your brain is when your eyes are open and you're processing the world.

The goal is to get out of that brainwave state into alpha, theta, delta. Hello, beautiful humans. Welcome back to another episode of the Skin I'm In podcast.

I'm your host Chanel, and this is a space where real stories meet radical self-discovery. Here, you'll find peace through clarity, purpose through inspiration, and the permission to be your authentic self through the stories of men and women who've walked the path before us. If this show moves you, hit that like button, share it with someone you care about, or subscribe so you never miss an episode.

That small but powerful act helps the show grow and brings in the guests you most want to hear from. In return, my promise to you is that I'll keep showing up for the raw, the real, and the conversations that crack us wide open, reminding us we're not alone. So, let's dive in and find the light in the shadows together.

If you want something further than that, I highly recommend Vibroacoustic Therapy. Our meditation cushion is pretty approachable at $800, but you've got the world is your oyster as far as this unit behind me is $10,000. It's not approachable for everybody.

I get it, but it goes into clinics more often than not. So, there's probably a clinic nearby that you can go and you can get a session on it for $40, $50, $80. So, there's a lot of different ways that you can approach it, but I think the easiest way is to figure out what works for you to give yourself some downtime to quiet your mind.

I love your evening routine. I think that works really well. I love playing with my puppy and getting myself a little worn out through some type of activity.

Wrestling with my daughter is like my favorite thing to do, and usually by the time I tickle her for... She's so adorable. She'll hand me... We have tickets to Tickle Town. They're fake tickets, but she'll come over and she'll be bashful about it, and she'll be like, Dad, will you tickle me? And I'll be like, well, do you have any tickets to Tickle Town left? And she'll reach into her pocket and pull one out.

And as soon as she gets it, she gets a finger in her armpit and she just falls to the ground, hysterical laughing. And then I pick her up, and as I pick her up, I'm tickling her sides, and she's laughing, and she's laughing for what? A minute and a half? Two minutes? Like how long could you really take getting tickled? I get connection with her. I love it.

She's wrestling with me. She's jumping all over me. I'm getting tired from tickling her, and next thing I know, I'm worn out.

I'm ready for bed. Oh, yeah, this is great. I'm exhausted.

And so is she. So, you know, I don't know. I love this stuff.

I don't remember what I was talking about anymore. I know, right? But again, it's one of those things that you get lost in because you have so much passion and love for your daughter. It's very clear.

I do want to get your opinion, maybe. Maybe it's an opinion or guidance. But one of the things that I'm really noticing is that we rely a lot on technology to do the things that our ancestor did, you know, without it.

And so is there a risk that any product, like all of the things that you just mentioned, actually make people less able to self-regulate because they start needing the device or the pillow to feel calm rather than building that capacity internally? I don't think so. I have this saying, technology got us into this mess. Technology can get us out.

Really? You think so? I will say I'm 48 years old. Okay. I remember a time where there was no technology, literally.

I remember an 8-track. I remember when the camcorder was on your shoulder and it was tape-derived and you can record things. I remember when the compact disc came out and we can send each other mixtapes.

I remember when the CD came out. And now digital players. And now I'm buying movies for the fourth time through Apple Plus that I've bought in four other formats beforehand.

Okay. Largely why a lot of folks have the issues that they have is because of technology. Because of the constant bombardment of notifications and alerts.

And by the way, those are nothing more than multimillion, if not billion-dollar marketing companies and departments that are vying for your attention. That's all Facebook is. They just want your attention.

That's all Google is. They want your attention, right? So all these different notifications and triggers that go on your phone, they're all just vying for your attention. So technology got us into this mess.

And that's what has a lot of us in that dysregulated nervous system response. It's just information overload. Look, it's no different to watch television, the news, dramas, these shows.

They're all designed to stimulate your nervous system and put you into a state of fight or flight. That's what the news does. The news is just bad news and threats to your nervous system that really aren't threats to your nervous system.

Somebody died. Somebody's got an attack. There's a gunman.

It's never good news. They try and put in these light, fluffy stories that don't do well and make you feel good. Oh, here's a feel-good story of dogs downtown.

Whatever, right? But they know predominantly it's just bad. Look, it's no different with the dramas that we watch. It's no different with the rom-coms, romantic comedies and these dramas and these horror movies.

I went to the movies two nights ago. Four out of the six previews we saw were horror movies. I don't get the need for horror movies.

I don't get it either. It just stimulates your nervous system. But when you have a dysregulated nervous system, it actually feels good to stimulate it in that way, right? It just makes sense when you think about it.

So technology got us into this mess. I think technology can get us out, and I do not believe it's addictive, and I do not believe it's required. So when you lay down on my sound lounge, you are creating new neural pathways.

You are training your nervous system into a relaxed state, and you're expanding the neuroplasticity, and you are defining that neural pathway. You are retraining your brain to move out of a beta brain wave into alpha, theta, delta, and up into gamma. You're giving yourself that gift.

You're developing that neural pathway. That next day when you're in traffic and there's – when you're on your way to work and there's traffic when there wasn't the day before or somebody gets into a car accident and it shuts down the highway and you're stuck and you're running late, you can then kick into that same state. You can go back to that same relaxed state by thinking about it, taking a few deep breaths, maybe turning on the music meditation in your car stereo if you're not driving, maybe putting it on in one of your pod or in your headphones so that you can hear it, and the muscle memory will take you right back there.

So there are tools that we can use. Breath work is one of my favorites. Breath controls the mind.

Mind controls the body that we can do to go back into like a needle in a record, go back into that rut that we've defined and teach ourselves how to get there without it. Great example that I like to use because it happens to me rather often. I try and use Uber Eats and Instacart for everything because I just get frustrated when I go to the supermarket.

Yeah. There's never any lanes open. It's always self-checkout.

I can't stand self-checkout. It's awful, isn't it? I'm talking to somebody who used to work in a grocery store at the checkout. I can't stand it.

I want somebody else to do it. I'm paying you all this money. I can't get out of Whole Foods or Sprouts without spending 200 bucks.

At least check out for me and don't make me do the legwork, right? So I just get frustrated. And inevitably, the person that's in front of me at the self-checkout is taking their sweet time, right? They can't figure out the four-digit code for their password. I'm feeling it in my bones right now.

Instacart is just so much easier. I'll just say Instacart. It's all good.

But in those moments, I take a deep breath. I realize that this is just another human that's having a bad day, that they probably feel the stress and anxiety coming off me to put pressure on them, which might even be impacting their performance and leading to them missing that, not remembering that password again. So I just take a step back, give a little smile, take your time, take a few deep breaths, and go into that happy place that I create while I'm on the sound lounge.

And wait patiently, knowing that I should have ordered Instacart and that this is actually my fault. Yeah, self-awareness. But that requires self-awareness, Craig.

It's not as common as you think. No, I'm not saying it's easy, and I'm not saying that I haven't done the work. I have.

No, you have. You have very clearly done the work. I have done the work.

And it's work, right? It's funny. One of my dear friends, best body worker I know, it's not a massage. This is not a Swedish relaxing massage.

They call it body work because he's working my body, and it is the most painful, excruciating thing that I go through on a monthly basis. And it's all because I don't do the stretches he tells me to do in between. And it's all because I sit at this desk all day.

Sometimes I stand, but most of the time I'm sitting at this desk just like I am right now. And my hip flexors are tight, and my IT bands are tight, and I'm not going to stretch because I'm going right into family mode after this. And he's like, cool, so you're doing those stretches? And I'm like, nope.

And he's like, so this is going to be painful? And I'm like, yep. And it's my fault. And the awareness is there.

It doesn't change the fact that I'm not doing the stretches and that I'm taking the 15-minute workout instead of the 30-minute stretch and then workout and then stretch. It's all good. You got to do the work.

And look, part of that work is me spending time by myself in nature. Part of that work is plant medicine. Part of that work is deep meditation.

Part of that work is listening to the reflections in the world that come back to me because I believe we are all reflections of one another. So as my friends show up in my world, I think about how I'm showing up in their world. Yeah, there's a lot to it.

I love astrology. So I'm constantly looking at what's going on in the astrological world. I love Akashic readings.

So I'm going back to my Akashic. It's the year of the fire horse. I had a whole ritual around that.

We're coming into Lion's Gate. I have a whole ritual around that. My wife and I love ceremony.

Love it. My life is one big ceremony. No joke.

How do you live a blessed life? By blessing everything. We bless our sleep. We bless our food.

We bless our water. We bless our existence. It's not a religious statement.

I'm not really that religious, very spiritual, not very religious. And I've done the work. I've sat outside by myself and cried about how I feel or what's going on.

I've released suffering. I've decided I'm not going to suffer. Tony Robbins has a great storyline on this, if you're familiar with his work, where he says, it's your choice how long you suffer.

There's nothing wrong with allowing yourself to suffer. And when bad things happen, I give myself time to suffer. Sometimes it's five minutes.

Sometimes it's five days. Sometimes it's five hours. Sometimes it is what it is.

And then it's time to move on because it happened and it's over and now I've got to rebuild my life. And I think there's nothing. One of my favorite questions when I'm dealing with hard times or I'm working with somebody that's dealing with hard times is I ask them how they would feel about this 10 years from now.

How do you think you're going to feel about this in 10 years? And it usually cuts the suffering. It usually gets them thinking like, hey, if this happened 10 years ago, how do you think you'd feel about it today? Especially if you're still talking about it. You know what I mean? Depends on how long I want to suffer for.

So look, we're in relationship with people we love. I'm with my wife 18 years, okay? Over the time that we've been together, we have seen many couples come and go. And I think that, look, it's perfectly natural.

I've coached people that, hey, it's time for you to walk, right? And when it's time to go, it's time to go. And that deserves mourning. And that deserves some suffering, especially if you're on the receiving end and it wasn't your decision or you were forced to a hand where you had to go.

And again, I don't know your situation. I'm not trying to pry. But 10 years from now, are you going to be happily with somebody else? Probably.

If you're open to that, right? And I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to the listener. But like, how are you going to feel in 10 years about, and that's the hardest thing. Look, I've lost, I've unfortunately lost friends to suicide of late.

It's one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about what I do at InHarmony. 740,000 people a year. That statistic is very real.

It's about somebody every 40 seconds takes their own life. Most of the time, because they had a nervous system that was dysregulated. Most of the time, because they just couldn't get a grip on their own reality because of their nervous system and where they were at.

And they just needed to relax. It keeps me very passionate about what I'm doing. Do I mourn their death? Absolutely.

Do I think about them every day? Absolutely. Are they watching down on me right now? For sure they are. Do I cry for them? Yeah.

I think about situations, pictures come up. Thank you, iPhoto, where a picture will come up at a festival or trade show, conference, whatever. I was having a good time.

Do I think about it? Yeah. Do I shed a tear? Yeah, I do. And then it's time for me to move on.

And I'm not going to suffer around it. Do I hold their vigil and memory? Absolutely. But at the same time, it's a cycle of life and babies are birthed and people leave, hopefully when it's their time to go.

And we never get to know why it's their time. And we never get to know why they left. Do I mourn death? Not as much as most people do.

When there's a time and a place I do, I'm at a funeral, I'm crying. That's my time to be there, to mourn them. And then it's time for me to buck up and it's time for us to get after life and focus on the people that are still here.

I don't know. Anyway. Yeah.

I'm like, oh, we could go down so many avenues. You mentioned so many things that I'm like, yes, yes. But that's part of the work, right? Like, yeah, part of the work is me, is my work.

So are you familiar? You've heard this serving people and this has kind of been a running theme of our conversation has been being in service to others. The honey do list is not my list of to do's. It's my wife's list to do's.

Is it important? Yes, absolutely. Do I do it? Yes, absolutely. Right.

I'm going to keep doing it. Yes, absolutely. But if my cup isn't full, I can't serve others.

And I fully recognize that. My buddy, Andrew Reed, bless his beautiful heart. He is alive and well in Truckee, Tahoe, just outside of North Upstate California.

He talks about serving from your saucer, not from your cup. They talk about you can't serve from your cup because if you're serving from your cup, you're draining your cup, you're draining your own energy. You have to fill your cup so much so that it's overflowing.

And if it's sitting on a tea saucer, you're serving from the excess that overflows. So I'm taking care of myself first. And look, tonight, I really do have to put a ceiling fan into my guest room.

It's a project that's been sitting for a week and a half. It's 112 degrees outside. It will save me on my air conditioning bill.

It will make my guests more comfortable. I want to put it in. But if I go out there and I hit a wall and I'm too tired and I need to do a sound lounge or red light or spend my time with my daughter or do something to fill my own cup, then I do that, which is why that ceiling fan has not been installed yet.

It's fine. I'll probably go in tonight. I feel pretty good, right? But I got to take care of myself first.

And that's also part of the work. Bless my wife's heart. And she knows it because I tell her all the time.

She serves everybody else except herself. And to her own detriment, she wakes up in pain. Honey, get out of here and go to that Pilates class.

I know you love it. Go. I see it on the schedule.

Don't cancel. Go. Oh, I got to do laundry.

I got to clean the house. I got to do this. My wife's got some OCDs that she's working through.

Like, me and my wife are totally different. Me and my wife are the complete opposites of one another. And I'll give you two great examples.

At the end of the night, if we're watching TV on the couch, my wife cannot go to bed unless everything is reset. I'm the exact opposite. I will leave everything.

Now, I like a clean home, but I would rather reset it in the morning after a good night's sleep than reset it at night. And especially if I'm tired and exhausted and I'm just like ready to roll into bed. My wife has to do it that night or she won't be able to fall asleep.

The whole house has to be reset. And that's on her. And she knows that she's working through it.

Like, don't get me wrong. When I go to the sink and I see the dish, you know, a sink full of dishes, I do every last dish, whether they were mine or not. I just, it's my meditation.

I flip open a light. I put on a podcast or sometimes I'm just staring outside and nothing and I'm just doing the dishes and I knock it out. Not everybody in my house is like that because that's how the sink got full of dishes in the first place, right? People just walk by, put it down, walk by, put it down, walk by, put it down.

My wife needs the house to be in order before she can rest. And I rest before I put the house in order. It's a philosophical difference.

And it's debatable. And probably, arguably, she has a cleaner house more often than I do, which is totally fair. We share, we live in the same house, so it kind of works out well.

Anyway, I love my wife and I love this house. And I love that we're two totally different people that take two different approaches to it. Yeah.

Anyway. But that's a really good way to look at life in general, right? And if you can embrace where she has her, like the things that she does really well that you don't and vice versa, that's like the essence of yin and yang. Absolutely.

And life is... Two things that make it work. Right? Life is yin and yang. And you can't have the yin without the yang.

And you can't have the darkness without the light. And you can't have the struggle without the ease and grace. And you can't have the abundance without the lack.

Yeah. I mean, you wouldn't know. If you've never had lack, you don't know what abundance actually feels like.

You just don't. There's a couple different stories on that. And the one that really resonates the most is most people that are in roles where they heal or coach were down and out.

And a lot of people don't realize that, that a lot of us healers have had moments where, and don't get me wrong, I had a beautiful childhood and it was very abundant. And then I moved out on my own and I was eating ramen. I went to high school and college and I paid my own way and I earned, granted I was making good money, but that was still working my tail off to do it.

I've had my moments where I'm eating food credits from mom and dad, and that's what I got to eat. And I've had ramen where just the case of ramen from Costco is all I got. And that's my sustenance for the next couple of weeks.

Cheap, 12 bucks for 20 of those little things. Oh my God, what's in it? That's horrible. No, no, no, no.

That's not the right question. That's not a question you ask when ramen is your diet. I've never had it, so I don't really know.

It's like how you said, if it's in a packet, eat less of it. And I just never have gravitated towards those things. In my defense, the ingredients were way better 20 years ago.

I would agree wholeheartedly, yes. They were definitely better 20 years ago. In everything.

Everything, for sure. Before all the synthetic flavors. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But look, there's a great story. It's a bit of a joke. It's not really a joke because it brings me to tears every time I share it, but it's the old adage of the man who fell in the hole.

Have you heard this one? So a man falls in a hole and he's screaming at the traffic up above, help, help. I'm in a hole. I'm in a hole.

First guy walks by, finds a ladder, puts the ladder in the hole and walks away. But he dropped the ladder in the hole. It was too short.

The guy couldn't get out and he screams, help, help. The ladder's too short. The ladder's too short.

The guy's long gone. Thought he was helping, wasn't very helpful. The next person that walks by finds a rope, ties it off to a tree, throws it down the hall, walks away.

The knot falls off the tree. And now this guy is at the bottom of a hole with a rope and a ladder and he can't get out. Help, help, help.

He screams, I'm stuck at the bottom of the hole. And another soul walks past and jumps into the hole. He looks at him, he goes, what'd you do that for? Now we're both stuck in a hole.

And he goes, no, I've been in this hole before. I'll show you how to get out. Coaches and healers that have been through it can show somebody else how to get through it.

And that's usually how we got into it. You have a love for fitness. It's usually because you had some weight issues and now you're ready to get after it.

Or you had something going on. You were bullied as a kid and now you're helping kids not be bullied. You got into martial arts and whatever it is.

Martial arts is a great example. You're being taught by a black belt. That's somebody who has studied that martial art and understands it inside and out.

They've done the work. It kind of frustrates me when you see a 22-year-old life coach. It's like, come on.

Live first, please. But if that 22-year-old life coach is working with troubled teens because they were a troubled teen and has now found their way out, I'm all for it. So they've lived the life and they've gone through it.

They've done the work. And that comes in many different flavors, many different shades. And it's important that you do the work.

Look, nowadays, it's relatively easy to get access to information. It doesn't mean everybody has knowledge or wisdom for that matter. Just because you've read the book doesn't mean you've applied it, remembered it, or understand how to use it.

But that applied knowledge comes from learning and reading. I've got two bookshelves in here. And my daughter is very quick to point out that she hasn't seen me reading any of those books.

Now, I have read the books. There's a section of my bookshelves that I haven't gotten to yet. I get gifted a lot of books.

And I love my friends for writing these books, and I will read them. But I don't have a lot of time right now. I wrote a book, and I don't think anybody read it.

I mean, I know people have. But like, it's sitting right here. I haven't read everybody else's sections yet.

Joe Dispenza's on there. There's some incredible people in this book. And there I am right there.

And I haven't even had time to read the rest of my own book. I didn't write all those other pages. I wrote a section, which I'm familiar with, obviously.

But there's a lot of different ways that we can do that work and that we can work on ourselves. And we got to find the time to do that or find somebody to help us to do that or friends that can reflect back to us and help us to do it. But the single and greatest investment that you can make is in yourself, in my opinion, so that you can show up better.

And when we show up better for ourselves as ourselves, everybody around us does better. Yeah, I really like that. And one of the things that I'm, I'm, I say learning, I think I'll always be learning is a version of that.

But also that I don't have to do everything all at once right now. I can do the reading right now. And in like a year's time, I can dedicate more time to something else rather than exactly.

It's enough. It's enough. It's so hot in this day and time.

Like, it's, I find that a lot of people, it's just never enough. Nothing's ever enough unless you really get and are reminded constantly every day that it is enough. And you know, a lot of what we've spoken about today.

I got to look at it every day. I don't have any tattoos on my body. But if I did, it would be enough.

It would be that. Or the back of my hand like that's enough. Look, yesterday was Sunday.

We had a bunch of people in and out of our house yesterday. I'm in EO entrepreneurs organization. We have a forum in my forum.

New members have to go through lifelines. I hosted a few of our, our members of our, so that we can go through lifelines. So that was happening in one room, my wife and, and my buddy, Richard, they were working on a project in another room.

Richard's the moderator for my forum. He was doing moderator stuff. He had a call with our buddy in the Philippines that does cyber security.

Cause he's got a cyber attack that's happening against him right now. My daughter and friends were in the pool. I put together a sound lounge, my technology.

And I sent it off to somebody like I was nonstop until my daughter went to bed at like eight and at eight 30, I sat down on the couch and I was like, Oh, that feels really good. That's nice. All in five hours of sleep.

I was exhausted, right? But it was a full day. It was a rich day. We got a lot done.

Did I leave some on the table that I didn't get done? Yeah. A couple of things didn't get done. And I slept like a baby at nine 15 full day.

I got it done more to do today. All good. Be kind to yourself.

The number one thing we can do, be kind to yourself. I was going to say, if you could get one message out to, you know, about relaxation into the hands of every high performing or someone who's listening to this and he's super burnt out, like what would it be? What's that one piece of advice? Be kind to yourself, right? You are your number one worst critic for sure. Because you're a go getter, not just you, but the person that's listening to this podcast too, right? Like I know when I didn't do something, right.

I know when I wasn't at my best. I know when I wasn't my shortest and I can beat myself up about it like nobody else. Let it go.

It's the single greatest thing. I'll tell you, our business has had some challenges of late. We've been rebuilding our systems for another growth spurt.

It's hard. We just migrated our email system from Clavio into high level. We're literally rebuilding every system.

Just rewrote my lifetime warranty, just rewrote a hundred day return policy. It's exhausting work living in these legal documents. Like it's exhausting.

And we shifted to a new email system. We sent an email out to our entire database, all subscribers. Somehow it went out to unsubscribers also.

Got a lot of very unhappy email. Hey, I already unsubscribed from that. I'm like, I'm so sorry.

This was a mistake. It won't happen again. I wrote that God knows how many times, not to mention high level shut us down because we had an unusual high bounce rate.

I went to bed that night happy. And there's a lot of good reason for me not to be happy and wear a lot of stress. But I laid down in bed and I was hanging out with my wife.

That makes me happy. And I was just thinking like, look, I could sit here and sulk about what happened easily. Like easily.

I can't believe I let this happen. I take responsibility for it. Could I point the finger at somebody else? Sure.

But when you point fingers at somebody else, you got three fingers pointing right back at yourself. So could I blame it on somebody else? I could. But I did say send it out to all subscribers.

Now I thought they would know not to send it out to every single subscriber, but they didn't know. And I take that on mind because I didn't say, hey, send it out to our entire database, except our unsubscribes and those that have DND. But instead, I decided to say, you know what? I left it on the field today.

I did everything that I can do today. And I feel good about that. And if I sit here and worry about the position that I'm in, I'm going to be putting that worry out there to the universe.

Or I could sit here and say, you know what? I did everything that I can do today. I left it on the field. Tomorrow's another day and we're going to attack it.

And it's all good. We're going to fix it. At that point, my email was still shut down.

I hadn't heard back from support. Right? Like I went up getting an email in the morning on Sunday that was like, hey, it was just 12 hour downtime. You're back on all good.

Here's what we suggest you do in the future. Okay, cool. Got a slap on the wrist.

Whether you're happy about tomorrow or sad or stressed about tomorrow, tomorrow is still going to happen. I guarantee you, it'll be a better day if you go into it happy and excited versus sad and nervous. By the way, excitement and nervousness feel the same in the nervous system.

So really powerful to be happy and excited about tomorrow to feel blessed that you're going to wake up. That's one of the first blessings I say when I wake up, I open my eyes and I'm like, they opened again. Well, you've got to have a north star.

What's the north star? What gets you out of bed? What makes you keep going when the days are hard like that? That's a great question. I mean, it's easy for me to say my wife and my daughter, but like my daughter literally gets me out of bed. Remember the whole sleeping face thing? Literally, my daughter gets me out of my bed.

Like, it's time to wake up. She stands, I have videos that she stands at the foot of our bed where we have a PMF mat. And she stands on the mat and she screams the top of our lungs.

Get up, everybody. Get up, everybody. Who does that? I just want to throw a pillow and take her out.

Like, no. Or I could charge the day and get up and be like, yeah, I get to spend another day and be grateful that my eyes open. Look, my parents are in their late eighties.

One of their dear friends eyes didn't open in the morning. Husband laying in bed. I know him 40 years.

There's a conflict with some medications that she was on and the autopsy revealed that it was medically induced. She didn't wake up in the prime of her life. I mean, she was in her eighties, but like she was still rocking and rolling every single day and had complications from medication.

So the blessing every day is that your eyes are open. You're listening to this podcast. You're hearing it.

You got another day and you're probably going to get another one tomorrow, but you might not. So work your tail off to have fun, to do the things that you're passionate about. And that's my real guiding light is that I love what I do.

And I love that I get to teach and talk about this stuff. Yeah. Nothing better.

So grateful. Yeah. I actually feel it.

You know, there are people who you're like, I don't know if you live really by what you do, but I really feel it with you. And I love that Craig, this has been such an interesting conversation. It's been so valuable.

I, I love chatting to people like you. I love what you're doing in the world. Please share with my listeners where they can find you and your products.

I am one of the easiest people to find on the internet, like literally like by design. Okay. So first things first, my website, I am in harmony, two most powerful words in the English language.

I am, cause anything you put after it, you are. So why not be in harmony with the world around you? I am in harmony. I A M I N H A R M O N Y. It's probably down in, in the show notes.

At the top of my website is my phone number. Call me literally day or night, weekday or weekend. I've told you, I'll tell everybody else.

Like me, I, I record 250 podcasts a year for four or five a week. I put this out. My phone doesn't ring nearly as much as I want it to ring.

So really call me anytime I answer really. We're on all the social platforms, TikTok. We post twice a day on, on all of them.

LinkedIn, send me a message. Let's drop in. Let's talk about nervous regulation, vibroacoustic therapy.

Let me know how we can help. I'd love to be a part of what you're doing and I'm grateful to be a part of this podcast and have an opportunity to bring value to your audience. Really.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Oh, it's been an absolute pleasure. And if you are interested in connecting with Craig, I will include in the episode description and across social things, some ways you can do that.

So if you haven't already head on over to Spotify, YouTube, our podcast, Instagram, you know where to go follow the I'm in podcast to be the first to know when your episodes drop. Craig, thank you so much for this conversation. This conversation was incredibly timely.

While Craig had a beautiful night's sleep last night, I had a shocking one and I really struggled getting out of bed this morning knowing I had this episode to record. I just kept thinking to myself, Oh my God, how am I going to have this conversation? I'm not on my A game. I'm not myself.

I don't even want to talk to anyone today, but as always the universe doesn't disappoint because you reminded me just how much I care about sharing all the different healing modalities that I come across with all of you. I also hadn't considered that my own health journey, these last few years, including my divorce. Cause I really think that was a massive healing portal for me.

And I've been really open about, you know, everything that I've been going through around that with all of you. All of this is part of what I call my North Star cluster. I don't just have one North Star.

I have multiple North Stars. It is my cluster of North Stars. They are the things that keep me going when it gets hard and they carry me on the days that I just don't want to have to do shit all.

I am trying to be careful because I do, I do find myself almost slipping some of the things that I'm working on at the moment, which I cannot announce yet, but when I can, they're going to energetically change the way we approach self-care and healing. And so again, this conversation with Craig is so timely because I really felt deeply how much he cares about his work and how multifaceted his approach to wellness is. And the more work I do on myself, the self, on the self, myself, I realized just how much it is essential that the healing work that we do is multifaceted because it is the thing that expands us.

If we're choosing just one modality, you can't really expand yourself that way. And so multifaceted wellness is essential to our growth. And by the end of this conversation, everything that Craig was saying, all the things that he believes in, just his perspective on life, I genuinely was so excited by the product line and what it could offer those of us who struggle to find the time to just sit and be.

I mean, I try, I really do try, but we're also, many of us are trying to build empires and look after the people that we love simultaneously. And it gets hard because there are only a certain number of days, certain hours in a day. And while I'd like to manifest that I have an abundance of time, there's only so much of that time that I can actually work and do the things and get all of my life done, right? All the life admin that we have to deal with.

And wow, for someone who hasn't had much sleep, I am on fire today. But really, I truly believe in this doesn't have to be your belief system, believe in whatever you want. But my belief system and my perspective is that right now we are on the cusp of our inner lights being switched on, en masse.

Some call it a great awakening. I call it a return to self. And we all have to start somewhere, whether it's listening to specially tuned frequencies or podcasts, sitting on a meditation cushion, taking your dogs for a walk, having a bath, getting into a hot sauna, you know what, even a sound bath class, Pilates class, whatever it is, there is an entry point for every single one of you to switch on the thing that makes sense for you and is in alignment with your life's purpose and the thing that you need to help you relax and de-stress in your everyday life.

And if you're not chasing some big sense of purpose, that's okay too. Because being exactly where you are right now in this moment, so you know, being content, what a novelty that is, that can also be purpose. That is the purpose.

Contentedness can be purpose. Is that a word? I don't know. I'm gonna have to check that.

But we are all here for a reason. And like Craig said today, those of us who are healers became that because we needed it ourselves during the times that we, you know, struggled. And so the last thought that I do want to leave you with today is the advice Craig's friend gave him.

You don't pour from your cup, you pour from the saucer. That is going to stick with me forever. Amen.

Mary, baby Jesus, all the things. I just love everything about that. And so I want to ask you today, what is it that you most need right now that doesn't cost a cent? Because that's going to be your excuse.

I can't afford it. Well, no. What is it that you need today that doesn't cost a cent? Whatever it is.

This, this right here today, today, this is your permission to give it to yourself so your cup can overflow and you have plenty to give in your saucer to others. Until next time, my friends with gratitude and grace, have a wonderful day. I definitely do not need another chai.