Living In Alignment With Nature — Colin Hudon on Holistic Health, Seasonal Rhythms & The Interconnectedness of All

Man is a microcosm of the macrocosm. The nature that exists outside of us also lives within us. Separation is an illusion. Indeed, we are all intrinsically connected — to each other and the world that surrounds us. Embracing this fundamental truth lies at the core of ultimate well-being. Because true health doesn't stop at the kale salad — it requires fidelity to our natural rhythms and a comprehensive, holistic devotion to bettering and balancing not just our physical bodies, but our mental, emotional, and spiritual selves as well. Returning to the podcast to walk us through this powerful law of nature is Colin Hudon. A gifted healer, physician of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Taoist Arts, Colin is also an herbalist, acupuncturist, tea master, and founder of Living Tea, an enterprise that finds Colin traveling across China, Taiwan, and Malaysia multiple times a year to source and import the finest and rarest old-growth teas and teaware in the world, sharing his expertise and wares in group tea ceremonies, with an eye on opening a tea house in Colorado in 2018. On point and remarkably instructive, this episode is lifted from Colin's open dissertation conducted during our Plantpower Ireland retreat this past July. Most of us live lost in our heads. A predisposition that leaves us disconnected from ourselves, others, and the world. This is about transcending our addiction to thought and information, and how to leverage mindfulness and awareness to live healthier and more fully actualized. Colin also delivers an amazing primer on what we can glean from Traditional Chinese methods of medicine and healing. A perspective that begins with embracing seasonal rhythms to live in better alignment with the laws of nature. In addition, it's also about tea. How tea, and the traditional ceremony around its enjoyment can serve as a powerful, moving meditation — an expression of living art that soothes the soul and enhances vitality. In anticipation of this episode, Colin was cool enough to create a special offer for listeners to purchase his amazing Living Tea (the only tea I drink) at reduced prices, including an awesome new subscription service called Tea Club, which takes the guesswork out of differentiating his exotic teas. When you sign up, Colin will send you the best seasonably appropriate, rare, old-growth teas (3-4 teas per season) quarterly, plus a bundle of extras, including information on the tea’s origin, optimal brewing techniques and Chinese medical philosophy on how to live a healthy, longevity focused life, including food suggestions and more. When you add the promo code RICHROLL at checkout listeners will get 12% off on your first season. In addition, if you follow Colin on Instagram (@livingtea) and click through the link in his bio to purchase you will also get 15% off on everything he has in stock. To learn more go to livingtea.net and click on Tea Club and sign up for his newsletter to be first in on future offerings and rebates. And should you happen to find yourself in the Denver area, I highly suggest you schedule a tea ceremony with Colin — as someone who has sat for tea with Colin many times, I can tell you it's a transcendent experience. This is not an ad: I do not have any financial or professional association with Colin... Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

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• 1:05Speaker 01

  Man, or an individual man, is a microcosm of the universe, of what we call the macrocosm. And all of nature outside of us also exists within us. This idea of separation is an idea, something we made up. And I think that feeling of disconnection is at the root of a lot of, especially, mental and emotional illness that we're currently experiencing.

• 1:26Rich Roll?

  That's Colin Houdon, and this is the Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:44Rich Roll?

  Hey, everybody, how you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. That is my God-given name, not a stage name. This is my podcast, welcome to it. Thank you for dropping in on the show where each and every week I bring you compelling, thought provoking conversations with some of the best and brightest minds in wellness, fitness, sports, entrepreneurship, basically the coolest people I can find, people who personally inspire me to be better with an eye on helping you achieve maximum vitality on this path towards greater self-actualization that we are all blazing together. Got Colin Hood on back on the show today. I think this is his third or fourth time on the podcast. For those of you who are new, Colin is a physician of Chinese medicine. He is a master healer.

• 2:28Rich Roll?

  He is an impresario of tea. And just because he's awesome. And this presentation, which focuses on holistic health, was recorded live during our retreat in Ireland this past summer. It's just so on point and remarkably instructive. I think you guys are really gonna enjoy it. So my birthday is coming up on October 20. I turned 51. My head's exploding. I can't believe it. But I feel pretty good about it. I feel super fit. I feel strong. I feel alive. Things are going really well. Quite a long way from where I was at 40 and a universe apart from where I was at 30, to be sure. I'm pretty much living my dream. I want for

• 3:10Rich Roll?

  nothing. I don't need anything, especially any presents. So I thought I would use the occasion of my birthday to try to do some good because there are just too many people out in the world who are suffering, who need help. And it's help that I can give and we can give together. So longtime listeners will remember my podcast with Scott Harrison, the founder of Charity Water. Well, that was a profound one for me. And I think for a lot of you guys, it was a discussion about the global water crisis that still lingers in my consciousness. I think about it every single day. If you missed it, please go back and listen to it. It was RRP 305, I think from July this past summer. And it's all

• 3:51Rich Roll?

  about how we in the developed world take clean water for granted. I mean, I basically live in a desert here in Los Angeles and not once in my life have I thought twice about my unlimited access to clean water. But so many people do not have this luxury. In fact, 663 million people live without clean water. That's nearly one out of every 10 people worldwide, which is just amazing. Diseases from dirty water kill more people every year. Then all forms of violence, including war. And every day, every single day, about 1,400 children die from diseases caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation. It's just unbelievable. And it doesn't have to be that way.

• 4:34Rich Roll?

  Together, we can help solve this totally solvable problem. So I decided to use my birthday to help Charity Water build wells and filters that provide clean water to communities around the world. And to do that, I need your help. So I'm asking that you step up and help make this difference for those in need. I'm asking for $51 from each of you, $1 for every year that I've breathed air and drank water, clean water, on this planet Earth. 100% of this will be used to build clean water projects. And my goal is to raise $51,000, which will provide clean water to over 1,500 people who have never before had such access. It's an act that will change their lives for generations to come.

• 5:18Rich Roll?

  And I just think that's so powerful and incredible. And what's really cool is that when these water projects are complete, Charity Water will send all of us tons of photos and GPS coordinates, so we can see up close the impact and the exact community that we were able to help. So I'm really inspired by this mission. Many of you guys have already heeded the call, contributing to the Spring, which is Charity Water's monthly subscription service. That's been an incredibly successful campaign that has already contributed to four, maybe five at this point, wells, building wells, which is helping thousands of people. And I thank you for that from the bottom of my heart. I'm incredibly grateful, as is Charity Water, and of course, those who are directly impacted.

• 6:02Rich Roll?

  But I also think that we can do more. So please check out my birthday campaign, which you can find at mycharitywater.org/richroll. Mycharitywater.org/richroll. I'll add that link to the show notes, of course, and please consider a gift. I'm asking for $51 because I'm turning 51. If that's too much, donate what you can, totally fine. I welcome everybody. And if you're feeling super generous, more, of course, is even better. Your generosity isn't just appreciated, it's needed. It's really needed now more than ever. And together, we're powerful. Together, I think we really can change the world.

• 6:51Rich Roll?

  Okay, Colin Hudon. Colin, for those of you who are new to the show, is an herbalist, he's an acupuncturist, he is a physician of traditional Chinese medicine and Daoist arts, as well as the founder and owner of Living Tea, livingtea.net, which entails Colin traveling across China, Taiwan, and Malaysia a couple of times a year in search of the finest and rarest old-growth teas and teaware in the world. He then imports it and he sells it to you guys, directly to consumer. Colin originally learned the art of tea from tea master Wu Da, who you will remember from the podcast, he's been on twice. In fact, we only know Wu Da because of Colin. And then Colin began offering his tea experience

• 7:33Rich Roll?

  to others in the form of tea ceremonies, which is kind of a form of moving meditation and living art. It's a really beautiful practice. People ask me all the time what tea I drink. The answer is I only drink tea from Colin, from Living Tea. And I say this not because I have any financial or professional entanglement with Colin whatsoever. I don't. This is not an ad. It's just phenomenal tea. I think it's the best tea available to the consumer. And in anticipation of this podcast, Colin was cool enough to create a special offer for you guys to get his tea at reduced prices, including an awesome new subscription service he calls Tea Club, in which he takes all the guesswork out of all these exotic teas and sends you his selection of seasonal bests quarterly, including all kinds of amazing

• 8:17Rich Roll?

  extra information. It's really cool. So for more information on that, stick around to the end of the podcast. After the conversation, I'll provide you with all the details. Again, I don't benefit personally from any of this. I have no professional relationship with Colin. I just love the guy and I'm happy to help get the word out about what he's doing. It's awesome stuff and I think you guys will really enjoy it. In any event, this is a presentation on why we need to focus on health from a holistic perspective, an approach that encompasses not just body, but also mind, emotion, and spirit. It's about how to move past living in our heads, lost in thought, addicted to thought and information, disconnected, by

• 8:58Rich Roll?

  leveraging meditation as foundational to health. And it's also a primer on what we can glean, what we can learn from traditional Chinese methods of medicine and healing, beginning with And understanding and embrace of the fact that man does not live outside nature, that we are all a microcosm of the macrocosm and how health can be improved by learning to live more synchronously, more in accordance with natural laws and seasonal rhythms. All right. I know that was a long intro. There was just so much I wanted to say. Thanks for sticking with me, but let's let Colin say the rest.

• 9:38Rich Roll?

  Well, we're really lucky to have Colin with us here, who's going to share quite a bit of wisdom with us today. Obviously, one of the predominant themes of this week and kind of what Julie and I do is health, health with a capital H and health with a small h, right? And what does health mean? How do we define health? It's great to eat plant-based. We can talk about our kale salads and our workouts and we can Instagram them and that's all awesome. But how can we go beyond the kale, right? How can we sort of notch things up beyond just the greens that are on our plate to,

• 10:20Rich Roll?

  you know, address not only our mental and emotional health, which is something we've been working with Julie on throughout the week, but also how can we get more specific and granular about our nutritional health, right? Is it enough to just eat organic food, plant-based food? And what Colin's going to talk about a little bit today through sharing his expertise is how we can go next level with that. What are the foods that we can eat? What are the herbs that we can incorporate into our life to balance our adrenal glands, to, you know, modulate our hormonal health? How do we, you know, achieve better balance

• 11:02Rich Roll?

  through understanding how these micronutrients and macronutrients and different foods that we can eat? How do those impact, you know, our systems on a more cellular or organ level? So with that said, I'm just going to turn it over to Colin and let him run the show. Is that an accurate introduction for you?

• 11:25Speaker 01

  I'd say it was relatively accurate.

• 11:28Rich Roll?

  Where was I off?

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Well, at the end, I'll open it up to some question and answers. So if you do want to get more granular about specific health with a little h questions, I'll do my best to answer those.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  But my interest initially or really is to talk about health with a capital H first, to give primacy to that, and then go a little more into what health is in terms of Chinese medicine, because that's the system that I've got the most experience in.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  I think that I'll do my best to make that clear. Yeah.

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Sure, I'll do that in a sentence.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Health with a capital H, I'm referring to holistic health, meaning your relationship to life itself, your orientation in life. And it also means the relationship between mind, emotion, body, spirit. And so what health means, despite maybe some physical ailment, or health with a small h, which is, you know, how many phytonutrients in a particular thing. Yeah, health with a small h is really more focused on the body. And that's, it was significantly. So I've written down some ideas so that my run on sentences don't turn into digressions that never end, or else we'll be here all day.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  So the two kind of disclaimers I want to give at the beginning.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Are one that I don't think any ideas are really truly original. We all borrow ideas from all over the place constantly, even when we don't know that we are. And one of our culture in the West, one of our favorite things is to claim originality to ideas that are definitely not original, which I think oftentimes is really unfortunate because we don't honor a lot of the indigenous roots of a lot of the wisdom. Like Rich and I were talking about, you know, the origins of bulletproof coffee, or we could open that can of worms and talk all day about it. So I'm not claiming originality to any of these ideas. I pull a lot from different teachers and things.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  So if you hear something unoriginal, I'm not claiming it to be original. So that's the first disclaimer. The second one is I don't want to give the impression that I have any idea what I'm talking about. What I do know is that we're tethered to a blue ball in space. We're spinning at 67,000 miles per hour roughly through space, and if anybody tells you that they really know what's going on, you might want to raise an eyebrow. We have a lot of ideas. We have a lot of beliefs and ideologies. But the idea of real, objective truth is something that I'm highly skeptical of.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  I think truth is pretty relative and perspectival and shifty. So I say that because what I like to do is share some opinions, basically. And if there's something you don't like about those opinions, then you don't have to accept them. So we'll start a little bit with health with a capital H. So if you look at the root of the word health, it comes from the Latin

• 15:15Speaker 01

  I don't know what the Latin is, actually. And that doesn't really matter.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  That's sort of beside the point. But it shares the same etymological root as whole, as in wholeness, and holy. And I think that's a really significant thing to acknowledge, because it insinuates that health, or healing, has something to do with returning to or an awareness of your original wholeness as a being, as a person. And that's really significant to me. And in some ways, you could kind of just stop there. And there's a lot to reflect on, just in that idea. But it also insinuates this word "holy." And we have sort of a stigma around what holiness is.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  And it's something that, I think, we have mixed ideas about.

• 16:10Speaker 01

  H-O-L-Y, yes. Not "holy" like cheese, like Swiss cheese.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. So this is macrocosmic. And I'm just gonna just share a kind of stream of thoughts about it, which is related to health with a capital H. So if you're going to wake up in life, then you're going to wake up. It's just something that a person, it's a decision that somebody makes. And if not, then you're flirting with this idea. You're teasing an idea. And most people who are on a path of growth or trying to refine the way they're living, there's an aspect of that that has to do with this idea of waking up. But I think so much in our culture,

• 17:02Speaker 01

  we think that waking up means it's something we have to do. We have to get better at this. We have to improve this aspect of ourselves. We have to tweak the diet, work out more, be kinder. And we make a long list of things that we believe we have to do. And that list never ends. There's no conclusion. There's no point at which you go, "Ah, okay. I've gotten there, finally."

• 17:23Speaker 01

  And it's a bit of a smoke and mirrors situation. And I think it's kind of a dangerous path to go down because what it does is leaves a constant sense of separation or dissatisfaction. A constant sense that you're almost there, you know? And it's missing something really fundamental, which is, I think, our pre-existing wholeness. So that's something that I kind of want to talk about a little bit. What I would say is that this idea of waking up, if you're here right now, then there's something about it that you're very serious, or at least sincere in that question. There's an element of it that's serious.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  But if you want to find out who you really are, this process, it's about doing what the whole universe is doing right here and right now. And I'm going to explain what I mean by that a little bit. You are what the whole universe is doing in the way that a wave is something the whole ocean is doing. Now, I'm starting to run the risk of sounding a little bit like Deepak Chopra in his most recent book, You Are the Universe. I think it might be You Are the Whole Universe, so I don't want to go too far down that path. But the real you is not a puppet or a chess piece that life is pushing around. The real, deep-down you is the whole universe.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  And so when you die, you can't go into some dark room or some state of eternal non-existence. Here is a way, a path of realization. This is kind of a yoga. It's a reflection, it's a question. So try to imagine what it would be like to go to sleep and to never wake up. Now, if you think long enough or you reflect about that, you'll discover, among other things, another question. Something happens. And you find the question, "What is it like to wake up having never gone to sleep?"

• 19:29Speaker 01

  That's another yoga, and you could reflect on that for a while. So that was when you were born. You see, you can't have an experience of nothing, because nature abhors a vacuum. Stick with me, we're going somewhere here. So when you're dead, you must have the same kind of experience as when you were born. We all know very well that when people die, other people are born. And they're all you. They're all cells in the body of life with a capital L. So, for example, when I brew tea in the morning, it's not Colin brewing tea for people. It's life brewing tea through a colon.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  And it might sound like kind of a stranger or poetic description, but it's actually closer, it's a closer orientation to who and what we really are than our egos want us to believe. So the thing is that you can only experience life one at a time. Everybody is the same I. And when anyone comes into being, that's you coming into being. So you don't have to remember the past in the same way that you don't have to remember how to work your thyroid gland, or how to tell your heart to beat, or your lungs to breathe. These happen naturally, in the same way that the sun just shines.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  It's not told what to do. You know, if you watch animals when they're born, they're not told how to learn to stand up, or how to feed themselves, or go to the bathroom, or do any of these things. So we're this fantastically complex organism that's doing trillions of things all the time, and it doesn't require thought.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  And you're doing all this and you've never had any education about how to do it.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  So there's a lot to reflect on in there. But the suggestion is that we, in Western culture in particular, have given so much primacy to the mind. We're profoundly addicted to thought. And we're profoundly addicted to information. You know, I imagine for some of you, the idea of not being, checking your phone every 15 minutes on this retreat, you know, you might like get the shakes or something.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  And when I was seeing patients at this clinic in Los Angeles, for a while I would walk by the waiting room and I would look, I made it a habit, an alarm clock like we were talking about yesterday, to stop and observe the people who are about to come in for a healing treatment. There was only one case in a year of observing people where a person wasn't just totally enmeshed in their information and their phone and the stimulation of information.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  So humanity's living in this state of being lost in thought. And I think if you take some time to be quiet, you observe that you can't stop this mind from constantly creating thoughts. And that creates a reality that we tend to spend our entire lives in. And so then you can kind of ask the question, well, if I'm spending all my time lost in thought and all of that thought is in the future or the past, then am I really living? You know, how am I really spending my time? Am I really here for my life? And I think if you look at that question quite a bit, it can be a little bit disconcerting when you start to get some answers about it.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  That's, that's, the introduction is now complete. My suggestion, and this is kind of the belief around Chinese medicine, it's the basis of Chinese medicine, is that man, or an individual man, is a microcosm of, of the universe, of what we call the macrocosm, and that all of nature outside of us also exists within us, that this idea of separation is, is an idea, something we made up. Or like I said this morning to some people, the earth peopled, you know, it evolved and, and man emerged out of the earth. And sometimes I'll ask people, and so does one of my teachers, find the nearest earth,

• 23:58Speaker 01

  put your hand on the nearest nature. And, you know, people get up and like go stick their thumb in a planter, or they walk outside and try to find a piece of grass or something, but rarely do people actually put their hand on their own chest or on themselves. And that is a, that is a form of disease, that's a fundamental misunderstanding about who and what we are. And I think that feeling of disconnection is at the root of a lot of, especially mental and emotional illness that, that we're currently experiencing. So, you know, if you even look at this idea of man and nature, it's in our language, it's in all of the languages.

• 24:39Speaker 01

  So we have things like, you know, the fingers or arms of a lake, or the shoulder of a hill, the eye of a storm, the mouth of a cave, you know, the lip or foot of a cup, the heart of the matter, the guts of an operation, and there are endless more examples of how we fundamentally, you know, you can understand so much about people through their language, we fundamentally have this understanding, and yet we have gone very, very far away from, from the experience of our relationship to nature. So, I think that's kind of the root of, of disease, and that's the stance also of Chinese medicine.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  So, I've got to share an Einstein quote, because it'll make me sound much smarter. And I think, you know, I think we all agree, he was a relatively intelligent human being.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  And the suggestion is that to be healthy is first to feel whole, to be connected to your own wholeness.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  So he says, "A human being is part of the whole called by us the universe, a part limited only by time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. And this delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few people nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense

• 26:22Speaker 01

  in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive." So I think that's a pretty, you could unpack that quite a bit. But you know Einstein was also a vegetarian, so I think he was really living according to these principles. And what he's talking about here is a liberation from this idea of a self separate from life itself.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  There's a wonderful quote from a guy named Dogen, who is the patriarch of Zen Buddhism. And he says, "To study the way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things."

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Again, I'm throwing things out here that we can unpack for probably a couple hours. But the first implication there is that we have to study ourselves. And something that I mentioned yesterday is that we give all our importance and primacy to external reality and we're not given the tools or educated in what it would mean to turn our attention inwards and give as much attention to the study of our own thoughts, to the study of our own emotional bodies, and the study of sensation, physicality, impulses, desires, etc.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  And as a result, I think we tend to live all in our heads, for the most part. Is there anybody here who feels that they spend less than ninety percent of their lives not thinking about something, aside from when you're sleeping? And if so, raise your hand. Okay, good, we've got one. Would you say that that's largely because of meditation? Hundred percent because of meditation. So, so there you go. Meditation is one of the five healths that I'm going to talk about in just a moment here. And just to complete Phase Two of this little talk.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  You know, for myself personally, where a lot of this began and where I started getting into health and wellness and wanting to understand something, was I had an experience during my teenage years where I started to realize that I felt like there was something wrong in myself, and not something morally wrong, something wrong in terms of the functioning of my being. And what I realized was, I could be thinking about something in one way, I could be feeling something different about it, and I could do something completely contrary to those two. And it seemed like the communication between my thoughts, my emotions, and my bodies, there

• 29:21Speaker 01

  wasn't a unified sense of agreement with almost anything I was doing. And at one time, I have a strong feeling about something, and then the next day, I'm actually more interested in thinking about it. And the day after that, I'm actually totally disinterested. And I started to recognize what I, I would call it a plurality of eyes, that there's not one unified eye making decisions and having thoughts, emotions, and sensations, and desires that are in any form of agreement. And it felt like a very strange way to live. And the more I talked to people around me, the more I realized that it seems most people have that. You know, one day they love somebody, the next day, they don't particularly like that

• 30:04Speaker 01

  person, and they don't really necessarily know why. Or you wake up in the morning... And you make a decision, "Today, I'm going to X." And then you don't do that thing. And in the evening, you've forgotten about it. And then the next day, you go, "Oh, right, there was that thing that was so important to me yesterday morning. What happened?" You know? Or, I think this is true with addiction or things where people... One person wakes up in the morning, and that person says, "Oh, how wonderful. I don't have any cravings for this thing. And I'm not going to do this thing today." But then, by that evening, it's a completely different person who shows up. That's a very curious thing, because it suggests that there's more than one "self"

• 30:49Speaker 01

  running the show. So I use this analogy, which is, it's like an estate. It's like ballyvolane, volan, or volane, or whatever we've decided to call it. It's like this place... Let's, for fun, just put it back in the 1700s, when it was first created. And you've got three cooks, and a person who attends to the bedrooms, or cleans the bedrooms, and another person who is the coffee brewer, master. And somebody who attends to the lawns, and somebody who attends to the horses and stables.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  And you have all these people, maybe 20 different people, serving a function or a role. But there's nobody home to guide and determine what all those roles should be, or when, or how they're done. And the master's gone away on vacation for a year. And all the people have forgotten what their role is. They've forgotten not only what their role is, but what they're supposed to do. And the cooks are trying to take care of the horses, but they've never taken care of horses. And the people in the stable have decided that they would rather clean the bedrooms. But they don't really like that, so they just give up, and they've decided just to drink tea on the patio.

• 32:11Speaker 01

  And before long, it's kind of total chaos at the manor, because the master's not home. Nobody's home to guide the operations of the place. That, I think, is a really, a more apt metaphor for what's going on inside of us than maybe we like to admit. Meaning that oftentimes the emotions are doing what the mind should be doing, or the mind thinks it's, it needs to critically analyze a situation, which really you just need to feel into.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  Or the body is doing things that, that is really the place of the mind or the emotions. That there's this very dysfunctional thing. And then on top of that, you've got one person showing up one minute, another person showing up another minute. You know, it's like if you're walking down the street and you see a hat. There's not usually somebody home to make the decision, "I'm gonna buy the hat." The hat buys you. And what that means is the hat starts off this process inside of maybe some craving, "Oh, I bet I'd look very nice in that hat." "I wonder if so-and-so would like the way I look in that hat." "I bet she would, yes." And before you know it, you've bought a hat, you've paid for it, you're wearing it, but you weren't really there to make that decision to buy the hat.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  It just sort of happened. So, all of this is to suggest that there's a lot of mechanical functioning going on in us. A lot of it's rooted in habit and conditioning, and that we're really not there for most of these experiences.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  And that is not living from a place of real wholeness. Because we're not even really there for it. And if you go back to what I originally said, which is that health has something very important, very significantly to do with wholeness. In order to be whole, you also have to be home. And in this, in this, I'm suggesting that home is to be really present to yourself.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  And that's why I think meditation is probably the beginning of health. I think it's, it's where it begins. The ability to be calm and still, to quiet the mind, and to develop a balanced way of seeing things. To both see yourself and also see the situation that you're involved in, and not just be at the whim of whatever, whoever shows up in that moment to buy the hat, or pursue the young man or woman, or whatever it is you're doing. So, that's a little bit about health with a capital H.

• 34:43Speaker 01

  And it might not seem like it's really related, but I think it's actually primary, so.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Phase 2. So I noticed something when I was in school studying Chinese medicine, which was that I'd walk out of all my classes in Western medicine and biomedical science and I'd have a very deflated feeling. I'd never felt great. And I'd walk out of my classes in Chinese medicine, always feeling really inspired and curious and my mind would be very open and I kind of observed that and said, "I wonder why I feel that way." It can't just be that it's, that, you know, the glomerular nephrons of the kidney are just too complicated and it's pissing me off. Because Chinese medicine can be quite complex too.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  And then I realized over time that it's because there's a fundamental philosophical underpinning to those two approaches to life that are quite different. The earliest, the beginning of Chinese medicine came from these emperors or aristocrats or different people in China, trying to figure out how to live forever, how to have greater virility and strength or power in the bedroom or wisdom or insight or knowledge and the basis out of which all the practices came, Tai Chi, Qigong, meditation, herbs, different foods.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  They were attempting to, they were attempting to find a way to optimize health. So it was really a study of health. And with Western medicine, it's really a study of both the functioning of the body but also of disease. And so in all my Western medicine classes, it was, the emphasis was on...

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Pathology of the body and how to treat the disease. But it wasn't on how to optimize health. So we have some doctors in the room and some physicians and that's an ongoing dialogue that'd be an interesting one to talk about. But I ultimately came across a guy named Sun Si Miao. Like you know you're a real geek when your hero is, you know, somebody who lived in the six hundred or the eight hundreds. And was an old Chinese guy who broke the mold by living to 104 at a time when people died at like, you know, 30 years old. But he developed a philosophy that he calls Yang Sheng, which means nourishing life. And his belief and his ideas were about how do you really nourish health?

• 37:27Speaker 01

  How do you optimize health? How do you find out what would be customized and optimized for an individual to be really robust and healthy? And to extend their years, extend their life? And so those ideas are kind of the basis of Chinese medicine. So I'm hesitant to go too deep into Chinese medicine right now because I think I'll start to lose people, except for those who are really excited about it. But the basic idea is that we have this concept of yin and yang, which everybody here, you know, we have the sun and the moon and male and female and day and night and on and on and on.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  And that they're in a constantly cycling process of transformation and change. That movement is constant and life is movement. It's constantly in a state of change. And that it works in cycles. You know, we observe what we call the five seasons in Chinese medicine. The cycles of life from early age to, you know, puberty to early adulthood, et cetera. And the cycles throughout a day. And these ideas that different organs in the body are controlled by different elements. So for example, the wood element corresponds to the liver and gallbladder, the fire element to the heart and small intestine, et cetera. And so Chinese medicine is based on balancing these five elements.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  And it's also about looking at what are called the eight principles. And I'll describe that really briefly because it's actually got a practical application that you can think about in terms of your life. So we look at, when we look at a disease in a person, we look at, is it internal and how deep in the body? Or is it external, out towards the surface?

• 39:14Speaker 01

  We look at cold and heat, which you could think of as like inflammation or as a lack of circulation. Is it a cold condition in the body? Or is it something, it's an inflammatory, more heat condition?

• 39:30Speaker 01

  We look at deficiency and excess. So we look at, is there a deficiency of an organ or an organ system? Or is there something excessive happening, you know? A simplified example would be like hypothyroidism versus hyperthyroid.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  And then based on those, we determine if a condition is a yin condition or a yang condition. So we look at that and then we look at conditions like atmospheric, like wind, dryness, fire, cold, heat, dampness, which is like phlegm in the body. And we look at this relationship between nature out there, the macrocosm, and nature inside, which is a microcosm. And we look to harmonize those so that a person's in balance.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  So a big part of that is living in balance with nature. It means eating foods that are truly seasonal, foods that are grown in the region where you are, taking herbs to help support and balance the body. In the summertime, we have more daylight. It's a very active, yang fiery time. So it's a time of far more activity. Whereas in the middle of the winter, it's a time for sleep, introspection and quietude. And so it's also living in accordance with these cycles of nature. And that by doing that over time, you become harmonized between the microcosm and the macrocosm, and that constitutes real health, real true health. That also means that you're living

• 40:58Speaker 01

  in accordance with what I'd say are natural laws.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  And we, at this point in history, are so far profoundly,

• 41:09Speaker 01

  so far away from living in those natural laws because we have artificial light. We're very young in the West, so it's like more, work more, longer, all the time, non-stop. It's a very fiery, young culture. And in a lot of ways, it's out of balance. And if you look at what's going on in the world right now, and a lot of the dysfunction of the world, I think it's because of this, these imbalances on a collective level.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  So where I'd like to end and then open it up to some questions is,

• 41:46Speaker 01

  I'm working on a book which are, it's based on what I call the 12 vitalities, or the 12 healths. And they're aspects of what I think it means to really live in health, in a healthy way. But you can strip it down to five, so I'll leave you with five for today.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  The first is sleep, the second diet, the third movement, the fourth meditation, and the fifth tea.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  So I'm just gonna say a little bit about each of those.

• 42:19Speaker 01

  There's actually a great book on sleep by Arianna Huffington that was just published recently. It's fantastic.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  My basic idea towards sleep is that different people have different needs, and that we should sleep in accordance with the season. In the summer, you can stay up later and rise earlier. In the winter, I think it's really important to actually get more sleep. If you go back and you look at a lot of the older Chinese, the writers in Chinese medicine, their ideal is to go to sleep with the sun and wake up with the sun.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  I think the likelihood of most of us in here going to bed at 6:00 PM in the middle of winter is probably not very high. But I do know that there have been times in my life where I really try to live closer to that and you feel absolutely extraordinary.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Like we were saying the other night, when we were adjusting to jet lag and we got like 12, 13 hours of sleep one night, you just feel like a superhuman the next day, you know, you feel like you could probably fly if you focused on it or something. So I think sleep is so fundamental. And people who are having a lot of insomnia, it's indicative of something going on, either psychoemotional or physiological in the body. Chinese medicine, both through needles and herbs, can be incredibly effective with insomnia. And then there are occasionally anomalies where there's something else going on, like sleep apnea or what have you. The other thing I want to say about sleep is, it's incredibly important to be in a really calm space as you fall asleep, a really calm and positive and peaceful state.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Oftentimes, we're like flipping through Instagram and then we're like, "Okay, time to go to bed." And so you're bringing in like way more stimulation than anybody in human history has ever taken in, and all of those are impressions. All those impressions are going in, you know, our subconscious takes in 40 million bits of information a second, whereas the conscious mind only takes in like 10 or 12 or something like that. So you're taking all this information, like stuffing it into the subconscious and then going to sleep. And that's affecting your dream state, and who knows what other, in other ways, it's affecting you. So, there's also, the Taoists have explored dreaming a lot, and lucid dreaming.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  I've met some people who say that there's no difference between when they go to bed at night and when they're awake in the morning. In other words, they have 24 hours, and they say at night, because they're not bound to the physical body, they're doing tai chi up in the clouds and who knows what other practices. And all of the people I've talked to about those kind of practices say there's something fundamental. Tibetan Buddhism, they have a practice called Dogen, or Jogen, which is same thing, dream, it's dream practice, they say. All of them agree on one thing, which is that you have to get yourself into an incredibly deep meditative state before you fall asleep. Consciously, so not accidentally, I'm really tired and I fall asleep,

• 45:17Speaker 01

  but to do some form of meditation to quiet the mind before you go to bed. And to set the intention, I want to wake up tonight, or I want to remember my dreams. One way to do that also is when you wake up, immediately write down your dreams. And over time, it will start to create an effect that you remember them more easily. We're not going to go into dream psychoanalysis right now, but there's a lot to be said there, too. So that's it on sleep. There's a lot you can say about it, but I'd recommend that book by Arianna Huffington. Okay, okay, so there you go. Just listen to Rich's podcast if you haven't already.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  So the second one is diet. Again, diet is something that I think is... For those of you who saw that Z Dogtown, Dr. Doggy Dog Z... What's his name? Z Dog? Z Dog's criticism of what the health? The only thing about it that was valid, in my opinion, or worth taking is that diet can and should be customized. Every person has different constitutional makeup and different needs. And I mean, I eat a vegan, plant-based, whole foods, organic diet.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  I make most of my own food, so obviously I'm a believer that you can have a very healthy vegan diet. But I do think that people sometimes have to customize. I think sometimes they need to supplement with Chinese herbs. And/or to take sometimes some supplementation like B12 and iron and things. And getting enough fats.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna say too much about that because it's opening a big can of worms, but what I would say is to focus on organic and to eat seasonally. The earth produces the food that we need in the region we are to keep us in balance with nature and that environment and that climate. There's a reason that root vegetables grow in the middle of the wintertime, right? That apples grow in the fall, or they're ripe. Nature is very intelligent and communicative and, you know, just because we can't eat mangoes in the middle of winter from Brazil or wherever, doesn't mean we should live in a diet of mangoes.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  I'm gonna leave that at that for the moment. I would like to say one thing though, which is, I read this study recently of all these, um, these different examples of people living in a place for a period of time and having some ailment, some physical ailment, and the medicinal herb or plant they needed to address that ailment starts growing mysteriously on the land near where they are. Um, you know, and countless examples of this. So, again, we're, we're interacting with and communicating with nature sometimes, even when we don't realize it, and I would suggest we should do it quite a bit more. Um, there is a, there are different Taoist practices of sitting with a tree,

• 48:31Speaker 01

  and I know people with cancer who have done this, uh, and healed themselves. They establish a relationship with a healthy tree, and they enter into a cyclical breathing process, and the tree will take on the, uh, cancer, sometimes grow a tumor itself, and, and take it from the person and then heal it, uh, itself. Again, I'm not suggesting that if you, if you develop cancer, you should only just go talk to trees, but there are people who have done that and healed themselves. So, the point is that we're in communication with nature and that we are nature, and, um, and diet is such a fundamental aspect of that.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Movement, kind of the same thing. It's, I think what's important is that every day that we move, we eat well, we sleep well. And with movement, it depends on how old you are, it depends on your constitution. I would suggest somebody who's incredibly fiery and very yang, do some movements that are more like tai chi and qigong to balance out that energy. Or if somebody's really sluggish and slow and maybe carrying extra weight, that they do exercises that are, what I say, more yang or fiery, to help to balance out the elements. Everything in Chinese medicine is about balancing of these energies in the body.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  Movements that are wedded to mindfulness, I think, are a profound learning tool. So things like yoga, to actually observe yourself while you're in movement. I know for a lot of you who run, you probably have experiences of hitting a place where the mind drops out and you're profoundly aware of your body and your breathing and the environment you're in, and you kind of go into the zone, right? The ideal would be to have some exercise where regularly you're going into that state of being in a zone, or... That's the same thing as being in a mindful state. The fourth is meditation. And, I mean, there are so many different endless types of meditation that it's, I think, probably overwhelming for people

• 50:42Speaker 01

  just trying to step into the world of meditation. Fundamentally, for me, meditation is about taking things off. There's a saying, "A man of the Tao takes something off every day, a man of the world puts something on every day." So, I say with meditation, the simpler, the more accessible, the more it...

• 51:06Speaker 01

  Lends itself to observing yourself and/or being in total stillness and letting the mind go and allowing things to come up naturally. For me, that's a better meditation. I think I've probably tried just about every form of meditation out there and I've settled on a practice of Zen meditation, which is about maintaining a state of emptiness internally, or Vipassana. If any of you can ever find ten days and go sit a Vipassana course, you will have a very profound meditation practice for the rest of your life and you'll probably be a completely different person by the time you walk out of a ten-day sit.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  It's non-sectarian. I mean, it's technically Buddhist, but you sit with a Jewish guy and a Hindu guy and a Janist guy and it's not really a religious thing, but it's a very, very potent form of meditation and supposedly is the original form of meditation taught by the Buddha. And there's a lot to say about that. If you have questions, we'll talk some other time.

• 52:04Speaker 01

  And I would suggest meditation every day. I say it's a bit like diet, you know? Just because somebody can't eat a perfect vegan diet or something isn't a reason to say, "So I just eat T-bones and New York strips instead every day." Doing something is way better than doing nothing. So even if it's sitting for five minutes and starting your day from a place of clarity and stillness, even if that's five minutes, if you can't meditate, then have a cup of tea and be attentive to the experience you're having. That can have a profound impact over time. It's a compound impact, I think. And then the fifth is tea. People say, "Well, tea, how can that be one of the fundamentals of health?"

• 52:48Speaker 01

  I would say that it doesn't have to be tea. I think it's anything... To me, health is anything that puts you in harmony with life itself. And in order to be... You know, there's a saying that the only difference between a master and the rest of us is a master has no future or past.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  So we could talk about that for a while, but what it means is that the master is one with life, and life can exist for you anywhere other than right now, right here. And so, a practice of tea is a practice of mindfulness. It also means for those of us who are living in the middle of a busy city, that you're actually connecting with nature in a direct way. You're literally drinking trees. Doing that and using it as a practice to be aware of the movements of your body, the state of your mind and emotions, to be still and to be attentive to the experience you're having. Not to mention that what we call the chi of the tea, or its ability to lift you up, or to adaptogenically change your state of being,

• 53:52Speaker 01

  but also to free to be calm and still, is a very profound practice. I say tea for me in terms of some sort of ritual observance, because I haven't found a better practice for cultivating mindfulness aside from meditation. For me, it's a direct way to connect to nature every day, every morning.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  The other, I can mention the other, the other what I call "healths", but I don't want to go into too much detail about them. So if you want to know, you can ask me. But, but I think when I find myself in life, and this will be kind of my final word, when I find myself out of balance, lacking clarity, not knowing what direction to go, feeling really indecisive about what I'm doing, having any kind of health issues, I go back to these five practices and I say, "Am I doing them? Is there a deficiency of them?" And if I'm not practicing them every day, then I go, "Oh, okay." And I always find out, "Oh, it's because I've started leaving this one out. Maybe it's movement. And maybe what I'm feeling is sluggish in my body, or tired, or I'm not thinking clearly." And I go, "Well, I haven't been moving for a week or two weeks, whatever."

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Or I seem to be able to always track how I'm feeling back to, am I observing these things or not? When I'm doing them, especially for a couple of months, every day, I get into a rhythm, an inner rhythm, where I just start kicking an incredible amount of ass. And that's how I would like to be living my life. It's also that I feel very centered and grounded and present to the people and present to the experiences I'm having. And from that place, I think you can live a very fulfilled life. I also think when you're balanced like that, your purpose begins to naturally rise up and make itself very apparent. I don't think finding your purpose is making lists of pros and cons and things that you think you should or shouldn't do and thinking intensely about it.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Like, one of my teachers said, "Your purpose," or what we call your "jing" in Chinese medicine and Daoist medicine, "jing" is your contract with heaven. So they really say you're born with a genetic thing that's dropped into your kidneys that carries your genetic lineage, and it's connected to tian, or heaven, and that it's an actual contract, and it's what you're here to do. You have a purpose and a mission, and your life should be organized around it. And if you're living truly in alignment with your purpose, that in and of itself is a form of health. So I don't think that comes from thinking. I think it comes from being in a very balanced state of being.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  And I'd suggest that you can come much closer to that if you're observing some basic aspects of health, like the five vitalities. Now, if you follow all 12 of them, I don't even know what's possible, probably a lot of things.

• 56:38Rich Roll?

  That's a book for me.

• 56:39Speaker 01

  Uh, I've got a strong outline, and I've written some chapters of it. It's all in there. I just need to get it onto the paper, so it'll get there. And there's some exciting topics, like sex, and addiction, and relationships, and creativity, creative expression, and things like that, so.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  The last thing I'm gonna say, this is not a business plug, but it is to say that I have a tea company called Living Tea. And we get old-growth teas. I go to China and Taiwan and Malaysia, and we source these teas from trees, some of which are 1,000-year-old trees. And they're grown in their native environments, with no pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, weed killers. They're medicinal herbs. They're not like any tea you've ever drank in a bag or something. And I would suggest, if you decide to explore tea as one of your aspects of health, at the very least, make sure it's organic.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  A lot of the organic teas are still coming from little eco-plantations, where they clear-cut the mountain and only grow these little bushes. The bushes die after 15, 20 years. Whereas tea trees, the oldest one on record, is 3,400 years old, it's still alive. So that gives you an idea of... You know, I think it's the same thing, human beings, I believe, if they're really living in actual health, are meant to live 120 years old. I really believe that. And there are areas in the world where people are living a much more natural lifestyle, and the centenarian populations there are much higher. So I think we should be in robust health and still moving around at 100. That's not the norm.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  So, maybe that's what happens if you follow the 12 healths. You live a healthy life to 120 years old, I don't know. But that'd be a nice thing to happen. This is actually the last thing I'm gonna say, and this is just a really practical thing. I think a lot of us live in a state of tension. And I think at the root of that tension is this relationship to death that's not very healthy. And I was talking at the beginning about what I feel death really is all about. And...

• 59:07Speaker 01

  In one tradition that I've studied, the idea is to consume tension like it's a food. So when there's difficult moments, you know, I've talked to a number of people here who say they're having difficulty in uncomfortable situations, or they have difficulty expressing themselves if they think they're gonna let somebody down, or disappoint somebody, or they feel a little bit stuck. And I'd like to suggest that all of that tension is just energy. You know, tension is friction. And what happens when you spark, when you rub two things together, it creates heat. And that heat can turn into a fire. And that fire can be a transformative fire.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  And I would say that friction is just another form of qi. Everything in nature is made up of qi, whether it's the trees, or the grass, or the clouds, or you. And that that tension can be consumed actively. And that what that means is when you feel contracted, that you find the point of contraction, you find the place where you feel tense, and you actually breathe that through your system and actually consume it as if it's a form of food. And here's my esoteric statement of the day, which is that I'd like to suggest that the body, I mean, the flesh body and the skeleton, is just draped over the chakras. And that the chakras actually are like muscles.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  If you ask Arnold Schwarzenegger, I don't know if you guys have ever watched like the YouTube video of him, the pump? "I'm going to pump you up." You know, it's this video of him lifting and talking about his experience of lifting weights. You know, and you look at that guy, and he's looking at his bicep, and he definitely feels his bicep when he flexes it. The chakra system is, they're like muscles, but they're psychic muscles. In order for them to be strong enough, they have to be used, in the same way you would do bench presses to, I can't believe I'm making this analogy, but...

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  The idea of breathing tension through the body is a way of strengthening the chakras. And so, I invite you to not back away from confrontation, to not back away from fear of disappointment, to not back away from difficult moments with people or situations, but to face them head-on and to breathe into them, to enter into a relationship with them. Because by doing that, I think we really build...I know Julie's been talking about the core. That's really what it is to build the core. And that's also the cultivation of that gut

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  feeling, or intuition. And by doing that, I think it helps develop a steering, a navigation system for showing us kind of what direction to go in life. So, just a couple thoughts. Again, mostly my opinion, so if any of it resonates with you, great. If not, then you can throw it out. Then breathe into it. So, thank you.

• 1:02:11Rich Roll?

  You are wise beyond your years, my friend.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:02:20Rich Roll?

  I really appreciate the wisdom. That was quite a gift. And before we open it up to questions, two things, I would highly suggest that everybody explore this relationship with tea that Colin sort of only began to touch on. And you really should check out all of his teas at livingtea.net. You can get a subscription. Do you have a subscription thing set up yet? Or we talked about that?

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  A pop-up screen will come if you go to the website.

• 1:02:50Rich Roll?

  Right. And support this guy and the amazing products that he's putting out into the world. The second thing is, I thought, you know, I'd like to kind of launch into the next phase of this discussion by bringing up a topic that I think we can probably all relate to on some level. And, you know, you talked about it in a macro sense, but this idea that we're just chronically...

• 1:03:15Rich Roll?

  You know, out of balance with the gestalt of the way that we live our lives. You know, we don't sleep enough, we're overly stressed out at work, you know, we're in this state of chronic fatigue that leads to anxiety and depression and then, you know, pharmaceutical dependence and it cascades down from there. And I think there are a lot of people in the world, it is almost like the epidemic of our age, like people are sort of stuck in this, in this system and don't even know the first step to begin to emerge out of it, right? So you, you explained these, you know, sort of, you know, core principles of health, each

• 1:04:00Rich Roll?

  and every one of them, you know, integral to, you know, clawing your way out and achieving some, you know, approximating a greater sense of balance in your life that can lead to improved health. But if someone is feeling really trapped and confused and is just, these are brand new ideas to that person, like what is the first thing that they can do? Or is there, you know, a practice that can ignite that spark that would be more important than any other that, that one could focus on?

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  I mean, I would probably like to smoke a cigarette to calm down first, you know, because, because you don't want to be too healthy after, after all, because you're gonna die, right? No, I'm obviously being sarcastic.

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  Well, organic tobacco.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Again, I would suggest, I think everybody in this room knows just, I have this debate with friends of mine who are doctors and they, they relate to food as, you know, bioavailable fuel packets. I gotta get my carbs, my protein and my fats in every day and they don't even relate, they're like the guys in Silicon Valley.

• 1:05:14Rich Roll?

  The soy lent guys.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, who are just like, just drink this milkshake twice a day and you're cool, you know, and it's like.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  You're cutting yourself off from such a fundamental relationship to nature and also to other people. Like, for example, I don't know that it's about finding some practice. I think it's about doing the things we're already doing in a better way. And it's not in a new way. It's actually in a lot of ways going backwards a little bit. I don't know how many of you, before you eat, take a moment to acknowledge the labor and sacrifice that went into that food internally, to acknowledge that that's the most important medicine you're going to take that day, to allow your body and mind to be in a calm

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  state of being when you take in this nourishment, or to realize that it is nourishment, and also that it's a moment to really stop and connect with the people you're with, if you're with other people. You know, most often, we get the food, we scarf it down, because the body's hungry. Stick in the face, moving on, next thing. You know, like, whatever happened to, even if it's non-spiritual or religious, whatever happened to a moment of prayer or stillness before we sit down to a meal? Now, it's almost seen as weird. You know, if I stop at a meal and put my hands together, or just sit quietly and take in the experience I'm about to have, people look at you like, "This guy's a little weird." You know? "He's a little off to the side, I don't know."

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  And it's like, when did that become the norm? When what I see as being so perfectly natural is, for most people, seen as kind of, "He's doing that California stuff again." So I think it's really, a lot of it's about doing the things that we're already doing, but doing it with more mindfulness and more reverence. And, you know, something I've observed and that I've talked a lot to one of my teachers who's a tea master about, we don't have an issue of a lack of mindfulness. It's not so much that we're lacking mindfulness, we're lacking reverence.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  And the example that I use is if I sit down with some of you for a tea session and we're drinking out of Ikea cups and Ikea pot and we're talking about Donald Trump, that's not, that's not an experience that requires a great deal of mindfulness. If we sit down and I tell you, "This is a 500-year-old teabowl that was the Emperor's Bowl from Shanghai or somewhere, and this teapot is 300 years old and it came from so-and-so," now when you pick up that 500-year-old teabowl, unless you're a little, you know, you're gonna be extremely mindful of what you're doing. So I think the mindfulness issue first goes back to reverence.

• 1:08:13Speaker 01

  And taking that same level of reverence, that same level of respect for every aspect of our lives, and to try to live from that place. Because there's something really remarkable and miraculous about everything and everybody and the entire experience we're having, it's just that if we're chronically in our heads and addicted to thoughts, we're not recognizing this extraordinary miracle of life that's going on every moment of every day that we're alive. And, you know, so many people, I think, get to the end of their lives and then they go, "Well shit, that's it." You know, and if they had really been there for their whole experience and been awake

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  to this miraculous happening, then they'd get to the end and go, "That was a life well lived."

• 1:09:09Rich Roll?

  All right, let's open it up to some questions. Andrew.

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  Other than Mike Rich. Colin, that's fantastic. I really enjoyed listening to that. I just wanted to talk about a bit, you mentioned there towards the beginning, at the beginning and the end about death. I'm a doctor. I practice in intensive care. I see a lot of death. And I was interested, Rich said the other day, he's never seen a dead body. I hate to say how many I've seen. Most of them because they have such burden of disease, as we see it in Western health, that they can no longer live. And we try and do our best to make it a comfortable death. As I'm learning more about the Eastern traditions and the fundamentals of health that you mentioned, I'm starting to recognize appropriately that I should worry less about disease and think about just giving health to people.

• 1:09:58Speaker 02

  And therefore, in the perfect state, you mentioned before the person might live for 120 years. Why can't we live forever? I don't want to live forever, but why doesn't the human body we're born into, why cannot it live for much longer than we currently live? And why did you say 120, for example?

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  Telomeres, obviously.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  Because our stem cells, research has not been funded adequately.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  I went to this conference last year, there was a private conference put on by the founders of the TED Talks. And there were a number of doctors there who are really working in private labs in Palo Alto and working with limitless budgets and doing research into longevity and

• 1:10:57Speaker 01

  technology, the biotechnological intersection and nanotechnology and all this stuff. And they're kind of trying to solve these questions.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  I mean, this is a little bit like, you know, you're asking a Taoist a question about science. And so, um, my answer is that it's unnatural. And I derive all the guiding principles of my life by observation of nature. And I think, I think we naturally could live to 120 years old if we were really living in harmony with nature, but not through an artificial means. And so to me, it's, again, it's just natural. You know, it's, it's, different animals have different lifespans.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  There's also a concept in Taoism of the, what's called the Husian, H-S-I-E-N, which are, uh, people who through spiritual practice cultivate, uh, I mean, this is gonna start sounding a little crazy, but it's called the Holy Fetus. And so it's called Naidan, or Inner Alchemy. And they cultivate a, uh, what in the West we call an astral body, that is independent of physical, of the physical body, and it lives on beyond the physical body. And they, they're, they're called immortalists, right? So they're suggesting that, um, they can live forever. And also that through reincarnation, that people eventually arrive at a place

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  where they commit themselves to those practices and achieve this state. But again, it's through these sort of natural means, you know, through different types of meditation and breathwork and Tai Chi and different practices. It's not through the, um, it's not through using, you know, scientific means or injections or things. So, so I guess I just sort of like contradicted myself probably a couple of different times in different ways. But I think there's a natural means of achieving extraordinary longevity. And then I think there's what we're trying to do with science and, uh...

• 1:13:08Speaker 02

  I'll stick with the natural.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's probably got better consequences because part of, and I'll just say one thing, I think that for a person to cultivate that sort of extraordinary longevity naturally requires also the ennoblement of their character. So it's a cultivation of virtue, it's a cultivation of the inner principles of nature by observing nature, and it's in accordance with the natural universe. Whereas the scientific means you could have just some dude who's a billionaire because he made a new Google app and now he's got this. And what's he gonna do with the time? What would a person do with that kind of power? You know? And I think it's kinda scary what most people on the planet today would do with that power

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  without the ennoblement of their character. So, I think nature would find a way to prevent that from happening, in fact. So, you know, growing second heads and things.

• 1:14:06Speaker 03

  Other than the five healths, did you mention it or did I miss it?

• 1:14:09Speaker 01

  I kinda like flirted with mentioning it.

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  Here's what I'll say about that. So if you go to the blog for Living Tea, I've written some long essays on there. One of them is specifically on veganism in terms of its spiritual, the spiritual aspects of it. It touches on ethics and other things, but it's a perspective that I think a lot of people haven't maybe thought about too much, I don't know. But I'll be publishing, it will be the 12 healths with maybe a couple paragraphs on each in the next couple of weeks. So I'd, rather than just list them off right now, I think it'd be better to have some context

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  for why I consider, I give primacy to those 12.

• 1:15:04Speaker 03

  Do you have water?

• 1:15:05Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 1:15:06Speaker 03

  Do you have water in it?

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  Water. What do you mean?

• 1:15:11Speaker 03

  I don't know. Is water one of those?

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  Oh, that's in diet. It's part of what I talk about in diet. Yeah.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  So, it's there.

• 1:15:28Speaker 04

  So there's this theme that I've kind of been working through for some time in my professional life, and it is particularly for a female in a corporate environment, is the suppression of your emotions. You're not supposed to show emotion, you're not supposed to cry, or get angry, or you have to stay very neutral. And I've often debated, do I disengage from the environment, or do I try to engage and foster a change in that environment? And both seem to be detrimental, one way or the other. So I guess maybe my question is, do you have

• 1:16:11Speaker 04

  some suggestions on how to support myself in, I mean, I've chosen to try and foster more emotional environment, or a more authentic environment, but it does sort of deplete me in a way. So what are some tools or practices that can help support me in that?

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  That's a great question. I'm in a relationship with a Venezuelan woman, so if I thought that the expression of fiery and strong emotions was a bad thing, I'd probably be in the wrong relationship. But I think it's incredibly healthy, and important, and necessary. Actually, one of the healths is about creative expression. And creative expression isn't just, you know, painting a tree or something, it's also our voice. You know, I'm about to quote the Bible,

• 1:17:12Speaker 01

  "The word was made flesh," right? This power of the word is, to me, the seat of our authenticity and power. I think where we are, our word is what anchors us to the earth. And I think that the word is incredibly powerful, and it's very important to be mindful of the way we use our words.

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  That said, you know, earlier I was talking about how the emotions are like, another analogy for the emotions is that I read from a great teacher I like a lot. He says, "It's like an animal menagerie, where somebody went around in the middle of the night and opened all the cages and then just left." And like, you know, so the flamingos are like squawking somewhere and the gorillas are attacking some animals and like it's just, and somebody's hungry, the crocodiles wanna eat and now, and it's just like kinda mayhem in there. And so, there's no groundskeeper to maintain order, so to speak. And so the emotions are very reactive and there's not much space between something that happens and our emotional reaction to it.

• 1:18:20Speaker 01

  The communication and expression of those emotions, I don't know how helpful they are in situations. So I'd suggest first that space is really, creating some space through meditation and practices, so that there's some space between you and the emotion. The second thing I would say is, sometimes I tell people, "Internalize everything, externalize nothing." So what I mean by that is, an externalized lesson of, you know, Trapper's being a real inconsiderate asshole right now and I'm so sick of his blah blah blah blah blah, and then all the mental chatter about it, you know, dah dah dah dah. That is not, where is the lesson in there? Okay, so the lesson I get out of is, "Sometimes Trapper's a dick."

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  Great, you know? That, what can be done with that information? Nothing. If I can see that that's happening, or that I'm having those thoughts and I can internalize it instead of externalize it, I can internalize it and say, "When am I an inconsiderate person? Am I being inconsiderate in this situation?" I think the internalization of our external experience and recognizing that actually there's no separation between the self and other at all, is a very profound tool for growth. It's also why relationships, like an immediate relationship, is a more profound tool for growth than any, you know, ten day Vipassana sit or anything.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  If two people can be engaged in a relationship where they recognize they're just mirroring each other constantly. And that if they can learn to internalize all the things that they think are about the other person, they can grow profoundly. And I know you guys have talked quite a bit about that, I think, on different podcasts, but... So I would try to create enough space to first try and internalize the situation. And if you can, take a little bit of space and then communicate it in a way that's non-emotional. Because you can communicate strong emotions in a way that don't trigger everybody else's emotions. And sometimes you've just gotta... But I would say, actually, if you need to speak up and you're stifling it,

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  then let it out, because it's healthier to let it out and run the potential risk of what could or could not happen than it is to stifle and repress what you're feeling, you know? You know, something I say to people is, "How would you live your life if you knew you couldn't fail?" The worst possible thing is you get fired. Maybe that's actually the best possible thing. And if you're in an environment where you're having to live in a way that's disingenuine and inauthentic, and you're constantly stifling yourself, then maybe that's not the right place for you, you know? And maybe you need to be in a place where people can actually honor and hold space for you in a way that's meaningful.

• 1:21:14Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 1:21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, I want to echo that conversation because I was trying to think through, and just personally, the five tenets you've talked about and adding more and doing more meaningful things. But reality is, is we go to work for eight hours a day, and trying to maintain a balanced present mindset is really hard. In my head, I don't know if there's always that tension that's trying to create imbalance, or it's there to create balance. But trying to emulate that in work specifically, I would love to get some advice for just somebody who's young and, you know,

• 1:22:08Speaker 05

  there's this idea that we have to try and prove ourselves, we have to move up, and if you don't, there's a whole line of expectations that come with that. So I'd just be curious to get your thoughts.

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's tough, kinda hard in this world to sort of do this work in a world that doesn't acknowledge its importance or significance, when I feel like it's, in a lot of ways, the most important thing that we could incorporate in life right now. Yesterday, I talked about something I call alarm clocks. I think if you're in a work environment all day, that's very heady, and it's all about critical thinking, and getting things done, and checking off a to-do list and everything. Man, you architect into it some way to have mindful moments within it. Because if that's the reality, and you choose that reality, and it is a choice, you know,

• 1:23:04Speaker 01

  you are, you could do whatever you want ultimately, within reason, right? But if you're choosing to live in that reality, and you also want to attend to your interior life, and to also work on your own growth, you have to find a way to architect into it mindfulness. And so that might mean, you know, sitting on an alarm clock that goes off a couple times a day, where you stop, and drink a cup of tea mindfully, or go for a walk in a park outside, and really feel your feet in the grass, and connect to what's larger than you. Because again, I think people go through life, and they work for 50 years, or 40 years, or whatever, and every day it's a grind, it becomes very habitual and mechanical, you do the same thing, you make your money, you check off the boxes of what you have to do

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  in life, and then you get to the end and go, "Well shit, that's it." I mean, you know, what Thoreau said, "The majority of men die in quiet desperation." So build in the mindfulness practices. And it might also take some discipline. Discipline's only difficult until it becomes a habit. So if it means you gotta get up in the morning, and go for, get some exercise, and do meditation practice, and it means you gotta go to bed an hour earlier, or whatever, for me personally, I think it's absolutely worth the discipline, because you live a fuller life, you know?

• 1:24:26Rich Roll?

  "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is considered resignation is confirmed desperation." It's profound, right?

• 1:24:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:24:41Rich Roll?

  And perhaps truer now than during his age.

• 1:24:48Speaker 06

  Just wanted to go back to something that you said at the start. You were talking about life acting through us.

• 1:24:56Speaker 06

  And I recently put myself forward to talk at a particular seminar, it was on pensions, about health and what we can do to improve our longevity. And I talked a lot about plant-based diets. And the reason I did that is not because I enjoy standing up, talking to people, I don't, but I felt pushed to do it. I felt it was life acting through me. And I just kept things just appearing in my brain about what I should be talking about. So it was life acting through me. But I also think that, so I was talking about vegan stuff quite a lot. There's also paleo people, where they're being pushed to talk about paleo.

• 1:25:39Speaker 06

  Now, is that life trying to say that different people should have different diets? Or is it just life messing with us?

• 1:25:51Speaker 01

  That's a good question.

• 1:25:55Speaker 01

  I wouldn't worry too much about that. And what I mean by that, you know, it's like, once the Buddha was asked, are you a man or a god? And you responded, I'm awake. So it's just kind of wrong question. I'm not saying that's a bad question, all questions are good questions. What I am saying is, do your thing, you do you. And do it to the best of your ability. And set an example by your own vitality and your own, the way you feel. And embrace it. And don't shy away from sharing who you are with the world. And allow the people with whom that resonates to resonate. And if it doesn't, then that's their own trip. You know, I mean, we spend too much of our lives worried about what other people think.

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  And I don't think you can live a genuine, authentic life if you give a shit what people think. So, I mean, it's not saying walk around saying, I don't, you know, I don't care what anybody thinks, but don't live your life from that place, right? I mean.

• 1:26:59Speaker 02

  Can I go again?

• 1:27:00Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:27:01Speaker 02

  I want to come back to Western health again, which obviously because I work there, but also because the people in this room see doctors that, you know, practise Western health, I hope as well as seeing people who practise Eastern health principles as well, philosophies. I'm starting to, you know, become to a dilemma in my career where I, I see all the, the good that you can do in Western medicine, but also a lot of the bad, because basically all we do is give a pill or a procedure for, for everything and we have to put a label on the diagnosis every time, when in fact, many of the things, your fundamentals, which I like to now preach as well, are the most important things you can do.

• 1:27:46Speaker 02

  I think sleep may be the most powerful drug in inverted commas on the planet, maybe even more powerful than meditation. I mean, we can debate that one. But so, so when I'm practising, how do I convince the patient who's, who's, wants to see me for a pill or a procedure, that I can give one of the more natural fundamentals of health? And also, how can the people in this room who come to a doctor, wanting to try and get the more natural remedies, rather than the pills or the procedure? How do we all interact in a modern society where we're, we're getting worse as we, we get more tools and more X-rays and more operations and things we can do?

• 1:28:31Speaker 02

  Any guidance in that dilemma?

• 1:28:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, this, I mean, this question seems to come up a lot. And actually, I talked about it in, at the end of the Italy retreat, in that, I think that podcast was, Rich published that as a podcast, and I think I go into some depth about that question. But my brother's a Western doctor, and he, he studied Chinese medicine for a year and a half, so we have a shared lexicon.

• 1:29:00Speaker 01

  And, you know, he's just, he just finished his residency, so he's at the same place that is starting to really see and question, "Am I helping these people?" You know, like, "I'm just prescribing drugs or, or cutting people open?" And that's, and then they're gonna come back in six months and nothing's changed. I mean, I would say in your case, so, either share like you're doing through events or podcasts and things, or open an integrative practice, you know what I mean? Buckminster Fuller, who I think is an unbelievable thinker, one of the most extraordinary thinkers we've had in the last hundred years, he's got a great quote there, he says, "You do

• 1:29:40Speaker 01

  not defeat the existing system by fighting against it," or "You don't subvert, you don't subvert the existing, existing system by fighting against it, create a better model that makes the old one obsolete." Something like that. So, I think, instead of railing against the healthcare system and the insurance situation and da-da-da, you work to create new models and to share information in a way that's more, inspiration is far more powerful than incitation. So, you know, incitation can get people fired up for a little bit,

• 1:30:22Speaker 01

  but inspiration can change a person's whole life, I think. So, I'd say just keep on with what you're doing.

• 1:30:28Speaker 02

  And what about the patients, themselves? How can, how can they get to...

• 1:30:31Speaker 01

  Right. You're like, "What about the question that I asked?"

• 1:30:33Speaker 02

  No, no, no. That was very helpful. But I'm also wondering, you know, I see a lot of people where I say, "When you go to the doctor, why don't you seek to find out that the answer is within yourself?" Or that by getting more sleep and changing your diet, you might fix yourself. And they go, "No, no, I want, I want an operation."

• 1:30:52Speaker 01

  Just tell them to start reading more Deepak Chopra, I think that's the, you know. No, I, um...

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  That's a tricky one, right? I would suggest that maybe you do your research into alternative modalities that you really feel are valid, or that you agree with, or you can stand behind, and find a practitioner, because there are great alternative medical practitioners, and a lot of mediocre ones. I guess it's true of doctors as well. Except that the baseline of becoming an M.D., you have to pass through so much that you kind of know what you get, at least at a baseline. That's not necessarily true because of the rigor of standardization with some of the alternative. You know, I mean, like, we live in, or I lived in L.A. for like, eight years, and like, there are a lot of people who are like, "I was brushing my teeth one day, and then I

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  realized," because the dolphins came to my third eye, "that actually, actually, I'm a crystal reiki master from the ninth dimension, so now I do healing treatments and I charge 400 bucks, and it's fantastic." And you may or may not experience anything, you know? It's like, so, you know, a lot of people are out there who haven't gone through any really serious, rigorous training and education. So I would find somebody who you, you can stand by, or if you want somebody who has the credential of being an M.D., who's also practicing other modalities, because there are definitely people like that out there.

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  And you work with them, or integrate them, or refer to them. Or you find a couple of points that you think people can really digest and absorb that are accessible, you know? I mean, I think the biggest thing is accessibility. A lot of people know that there's other ways of living, but they just don't even know where to begin. I mean, I think that's part of why probably Rich's podcast, and Julie's podcast, and other things have been so...

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  So well received is because of their accessibility, you know, partially.

• 1:32:58Rich Roll?

  Also, just a couple of follow up thoughts if I may on that, you know, in response to Andrew's question. From the patient perspective, you know, a major theme of what's been discussed throughout the week is developing this connection with the self and kind of cultivating that intuition, right? And I think, you know, baked into that is this sense of personal responsibility. And, you know, we're in a culture where we look to the doctor as if the doctor is this godly creature that, you know, is holding the keys to the kingdom and has the answer to every conceivable question you would ever posit to that person. And I think we need to break that mentality and really shoulder more of that responsibility

• 1:33:41Rich Roll?

  for our health upon ourselves, to do our own inquiry and to, of course, seek out the advice and the protocols that medicine in all its forms have to offer, but ultimately to, you know, basically not divest ourselves completely of that decision-making process. And I think that comes through education and what's available on the internet, et cetera. You know, you can't like just like, and you can express that, you know, when you see patients yourself. And secondarily, with respect to the doctor's perspective and how you can step into a more, you know, holistic approach to treatment protocols. In the United States, you're seeing more and more of these functional medicine clinics,

• 1:34:25Rich Roll?

  doctors in private practice, who are incorporating some of the methodologies that Colin is expert in, into a more Western practice. So it's these hybrids, you know, where they have, you know, they're prescribing herbs and they have acupuncture rooms in the actual clinics, you know, and it's like, and it's a struggle to get insurance to cover some of this, like it's in flux, but you're seeing more and more of this and that makes me hopeful. And some of the doctors that I've had on the podcast, Dr. like Michelle McMackin, Dr. Robert Osfeld, they've been able to create forms of these kinds of clinic or

• 1:35:03Rich Roll?

  Or preventive practices within the rubric of the hospitals in which they work. Like they've been able to petition the boards to get funding to create, you know, pilot programs, et cetera. And a big part of that success equation for them has been, you know, the sort of outreach programs where the patients have to come back in and there are staff members who check in with them on their, on their diet protocols, et cetera, to create some accountability with respect to these sort of lifestyle alteration prescriptions that are being made. And then I've had doctors on who actually get out their prescription pad and write down like, "You should eat broccoli at dinner," or, you know, like, something about writing it on the prescription pad, like making it official.

• 1:35:46Rich Roll?

  And they'll have stacks of DVDs and books and they'll say, "Your, your prescription is to watch this movie or to read this book, you know, watch Forks Over Knives, watch, you know, What the Health, whatever it is." And, and I think that is a really cool, kind of interesting way of, you know, approaching that. And then if the person watches it, when they come back, there can be a dialogue. And I know, you know, there's a, there's a very specific framework in which you work, where you only have a certain amount of time and you've, you've got to like get on to the next patient. So I don't know what kind of flexibility you have to be able to do these sorts of things. But I think there's creative ways of, you know, kind of, of putting your stamp and, and, you know, infusing your practice with some of these ideas.

• 1:36:31Speaker 07

  The doctor's side of it may be easier because you are the authority having to see you and expecting a result. And if they get an alternative for you, then, you know, they can question it or not, but it comes with an authoritarian message. The other side is tough because, you know, there's a, there's a groundswell of a movement to go alternative and to look at other naturopathic type remedies, but there's massive counterforce, at least in the US, you know, when you sit in front of a TV, any amount of time, you're going to be told what you have. And go see your doctor about it, or you know, one in three people are gonna get this in their lifetime.

• 1:37:13Speaker 07

  Go see your doctor and you know, then they're funded to prescribe a medication or something, so it's, that's a tricky part.

• 1:37:19Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:37:20Speaker 07

  And that's gonna take time, it's just gonna take time and movement.

• 1:37:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, there, there are major problems with the, with the medical system as it currently exists. I mean, I'd go so far as to say it's a broken system, but there is also a lot of very brilliant minds and very compassionate, intelligent people working on that problem. There's also a lot of agencies who have a vested interest in not allowing that to happen. So, you know, we're in interesting times, my friend.

• 1:37:57Speaker 08

  I had a question. I live in Cincinnati and you live way out, wherever, Colorado. If I wanted to find a person that practices Chinese medicine in Cincinnati, and I don't know anything about it, how do I, like, what, what do I need to look for? And that like, is there a certain place that they should have gone to school? Or a certain number of years that they practice? I mean, how am I gonna know that they're a good practitioner versus a quacky practitioner?

• 1:38:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:30Speaker 01

  The good thing about Chinese medicine, and one of the reasons that it's, it's, of all the alternative medicines, it's the one making the most headway in terms of mainstream society, Western society, is because it was so well standardized and exported under Mao Zedong, which there's a whole story there, I'm not gonna go into, we can talk about it later if you want.

• 1:38:53Speaker 08

  Okay.

• 1:38:54Speaker 01

  But the testing is, is really rigorous and the standardization of care and education. So you won't find many, you, you can't practice as a quack Chinese doctor. I mean, you would very quickly be shut down and likely put in jail or something.

• 1:39:16Speaker 01

  So there is a standard there that's good, you can trust. But there is also a big difference, and I'd say this is true, Western doctors as well, as somebody who's been practicing for a long time, very actively, versus somebody who's just starting out. And that's not to say that somebody just starting out might not be very good. I remember listening to this podcast somewhere recently that was talking about the instances of death by some cardiac failure, or some sort of, you know, heart-related issue, went down when all of the senior or elder cardiologists and cardiac surgeons went on vacation.

• 1:39:58Speaker 01

  And they did this big study on it across the country, and they were trying to figure out, like, what is going on here? Like, you've got all the old veterans leaving town, and it seems that the quality of care is better. And I think that's, there are lots of different conjectures as to why that's the case. But one of them is that you get these young guys, fresh out of school, they're putting a lot of pressure on themselves, they're not mechanical, because they might not know the answers to everything, they know that, so they're very attentive, they really care a lot about what they're doing, and they're much more engaged. They're not doing things based on, this is how I've done it for 20 years, right? So you can have practitioners who are younger in their practice who are still very good.

• 1:40:40Speaker 01

  I mean, I would email me if you want, and I'll be happy to ask around and see if I can find a good practitioner.

• 1:40:47Rich Roll?

  I will definitely do that. Is there no website or one place where you can go to find somebody, you know, who's in your area?

• 1:40:53Speaker 01

  There's not, really. I mean, you can find one through NCC AOM, which is the National Accreditation Institute. You can type in "find a practitioner" by city or state, but you won't be able to get any kind of reviews on them or anything, so.

• 1:41:20Speaker 01

  Uh, no, I mean, so that's another thing, right? Is if you're trying to address a particular thing, then they're licensed practitioners, but then there are also people who've done an additional two-year specialty, which are DOMs, so it's a Doctor of Oriental Medicine. DOM or OMD. And they'll, they'll have- OMD, the band? Yeah. Yes, exactly. That's where they got the name. If they have the title of Doctor, or OMD, or DOM, it means that they've spent two years intensively researching a particular area. In particular, if it's around, you know, like, I know a guy in LA who's treating cancer,

• 1:42:03Speaker 01

  which he can't claim that because it's illegal, but he has people from all over the world flying into LA to, to see him. And he is, he was one of my favorite teachers for, for six years. And he, I've never, I mean, this guy's mind is so crazy. He's absolutely brilliant. And he was a, he was an MD in Beijing, came up against what he thought were the limitations of Western medicine, went back to school for Chinese medicine for a number of years. And, and he's almost exclusively treating cancer. That's really his focus, so.

• 1:42:35Speaker 07

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:42:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:37Speaker 07

  Why is he an M.D. practitioner?

• 1:42:42Speaker 01

  Uh, because of the American Medical Association, primarily. You know, there's, there's just certain... There's a lot of things that we're limited in terms of what we can say we do, we can and cannot do, you know? It's like on all the supplements, you know? You look, the FDA does not recognize that this thing does this, does anything, basically. And you're like, but what about all these instances of it doing this thing? And it's, you know, it's just kind of a bureaucracy, I suppose. I mean, do you have anything more to say on that?

• 1:43:17Rich Roll?

  I mean, we can go down the rabbit hole on how, you know, government lobbying groups, you know, influence policy and what can and can't be said and the compromised FDA and EPA and all of that. I mean, I don't know how it works specifically with respect to, you know, what a Chinese medicine doctor can, you know, advertise or market as doing or not doing. You would know more than that, more than me about that.

• 1:43:45Speaker 01

  Well, it's curious to me that it's specifically cancer. Cancer is the one thing we cannot claim anywhere in our website, anywhere in our literature. We can't say we can treat cancer. But I know Chinese docs who are using a lot of very strong herbs, in particular certain medicinal mushrooms, and diet, and getting amazing results. So, I think, I think the main thing is they don't want people, if they are in stage three or stage four cancer, who really need close supervision and maybe might need chemotherapy or they're gonna die. Or at least, that's what, that's what western medicine might think about a condition, that they just, that they disregard that. Or they say, "I'm not gonna get any

• 1:44:29Speaker 01

  testing done," or "I don't need, you know, any lab, labs or radiological reports." So, maybe it's precautionary, maybe it's, you know, I could come up with a lot of conspiracy theories about other things. I mean, it is curious why a lot of, even western doctors who are using alternative means in treating difficult conditions, they come under such scrutiny that they have to move their practices to Mexico, or Costa Rica, or some private lab in Canada or something, when, when they start getting really great results. You go, "Well, okay, what's, what's going on there?" You know, so. I'd say there are a lot of people making a lot of money off of disease. And that's all I'm gonna say on that for

• 1:45:13Speaker 01

  now. Yeah. Yeah. It's usually the question is, "Why this thing? It doesn't seem right." Just follow the money. You know, that's usually where you go.

• 1:45:22Speaker 09

  So, just a, I just want to follow up on something Andrew said, which I think is really profound. I have a client who's, I don't want to say who they are, a large pharmaceutical company that happens to be in the health and wellness business as well. It's a very small part of their business. And I was talking to the guy who runs that, and he was giving me an example, and I shared this with someone here. You know, if you, if you, if a diabetes patient came in and you had to amputate a limb because of their diabetes, and you told them that I can, you can prevent that through diet and exercise, that they would actually, that seven out of eight of them would choose not to do that. And I think that's sort of the

• 1:46:05Speaker 09

  example of the enormity of the problem. And I was thinking, Andrew, too, that people come into a doctor, you know, and they're a bundle of stuff, you know, not just a disease or just a, something that could be even cured, that to kind of help them and to meet that those seven out of eight people, you kind of have to open up a can of worms and say, like, you know, and the system's not designed to do that, right? And so it's very, very hard. I think the ones that seem successful is that they seem to funnel people to where they can open up, to say, what's getting, you know, what is getting in your way of living your life, the way you want to live it? And then there's probably so many different paths that that can go down. And I think that's the challenge, is that the system

• 1:46:49Speaker 09

  just doesn't seem to want to see who the whole person is and what they're trying to become. So, we'll just have to keep finding different models, you know? It feels like that's really the moral of the story.

• 1:47:02Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Yeah, I think the system is not set up to manage the psychology of motivation, you know, just systemically, like Andrew said, you have 15 minutes, right? This is what you get. People come in with an expectation of getting a prescription with a pill or a protocol that is going to resolve their problem. And I think it is true that if you tell people, well, the path through is to, like, you're going to have to change your diet, and you're going to, you only have to change one thing, everything, and it starts Here and this is what you're gonna have to do, like, most people would freak out or not do it, or maybe start it for a couple days and then wane off. Why is that? Like, we need to address that. And I think there's a lot of brilliant, well-intentioned people in

• 1:47:44Rich Roll?

  the medical profession who understand that. And yet, at the same time, I still think it's an excuse, right? When a doctor says, "Well, I could tell them that they could do that, but they're not gonna do it, so I just give them the pill." Well, I think that's lazy. And I think that that is, that's not a valid reason to not explore that, no matter how time-constrained you are. And so, we've got to find a way to at least, you know, nudge this system forward to create the openings, so that we can begin to, you know, treat people in that way, right? And it will come through these functional medicine clinics, but it also has to happen from the top-down systemically.

• 1:48:22Speaker 01

  And I'm gonna say one quick thing, and then we gotta round it up here. But there's a great TED Talk by a woman who said, "Why are waiting rooms these repositories of, you know, dead, static information, and people just sit there forever? Why aren't they opportunities to understand the context of a person's life? Because the context of their life has a lot to do with their health. Do they have sufficient work? How is their relationship with people? Do they also need some psychological or emotional support? What alternative therapies could be available to them to do more robust diagnostic intakes?"

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  And so, that's, I think, starting to happen. People are starting to recognize we could create new models. And that talk's fantastic. I'd recommend it. And, you know...

• 1:49:15Rich Roll?

  Do you remember who it was?

• 1:49:16Speaker 01

  I'll have to look. You'd have to look up, you know, TED Talk, waiting room, new diagnostic models. I don't know. Something. I wish I could remember, but I haven't seen it in maybe a couple years. But, you know, I think things are changing, and as long as we keep doing the best we can ourselves, and to hold that, hold that for other people, and hold that intention, then hopefully they'll change faster than slower.

• 1:49:43Rich Roll?

  All right. Thanks, you guys. We have time for one last question, though? All right, we got one last question, then we gotta go to lunch.

• 1:49:58Speaker 06

  Just a quick question on what's the best type of movement or exercise for longevity? So you look at the Blue Zones and people there weren't running marathons, or they're not Olympians, or anything like that, they're people that are shepherds, or people that do a lot of walking or gardening. So to get to the 120 years that you were talking about, should we be giving up the marathons and doing more walking? Or what's the view of Chinese medicine on that?

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  I think that depends on the person. I think that's an individual thing. Just like diet, I think exercise can be customized for an ideal for a person. I like the idea of following seasons, so more active in the summer and in the winter focusing more on quiet, or more like yoga, or things that are more stillness oriented, or mindfulness oriented. One thing is that one of my teachers went to China to study some of these villages that have huge concentrations of centenarians, and he was trying to find out, is there something they're doing that's different than other places? So like in one village, he found out they were drinking as their drink, like they drank

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  instead of water basically, an herb called jiao golan, which is gynostema, tea, they just drank the stuff all day long. It's incredibly rich, and it's one of the most antioxidant-rich foods you can consume, and they were drinking it like water. But in the places with extreme longevity, they were finding that the exercise was usually like a lot of farming work, so it was a lot of like hands in the dirt, and it'd be dynamic movement in all directions, you know, different weights, different things. But I think in terms of intentional movement, there are things like something called bakun dao yin, which is specific types of qi gong for longevity, that's the intention of the practice.

• 1:51:55Speaker 01

  And it's similar to what you think of as tai chi, or qi gong, but it's really about cultivating inner strength, inner energy. I'm happy to talk to you more about that.

• 1:52:11Speaker 01

  But there are, there are specific longevity practices. Usually they aren't extremely rigorous. That doesn't mean you don't, you might sweat like crazy, but you're, you know, you're like moving like this and finding that you're just sweating like a wild man and you're going, what's going on? You know, I don't know why this is such an intense workout. Um, so, and that's because you're, you're, the mind and body are working together, which is very challenging for most of us because we don't do that very often, you know? So.

• 1:52:41Rich Roll?

  Cool. We're good? All right. Thank you, Colin. Beautiful.

• 1:52:46Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:52:50Rich Roll?

  That was great. I just love that guy so much. And I have to tell you, as an addendum, he's been an incredible influence on my two stepsons, Tyler and Trapper. They've really connected with him. They spent a lot of time with Colin and he's sort of become a mentor to them. And it's something that's really beautiful to kind of watch. And it's a privilege and an honor to be able to share his amazing wealth of information with you guys. So I hope you enjoyed it. Do me a solid and track Colin down on Instagram. He's at Living Tea there and let him know what you thought of our conversation. Also, if you're intrigued about all this tea talk, maybe you just want to check out Colin's tea, the tea I drink, go to livingtea.net. I was going to say dot com. It's livingtea.net.

• 1:53:34Rich Roll?

  As I'm sure you can gather, Colin is very passionate about tea and his stuff truly is the best. As I mentioned at the outset, he just launched this new subscription service. It's called Tea Club. And it takes all the guesswork out of trying to figure out the differences between all these exotic varieties, especially because a lot of people have never heard of any of these, like what's the difference between oolong and pu'er, all that kind of stuff? So when you sign up, on a quarterly basis, Colin will send you the best seasonably appropriate rare old growth teas, three to four teas per season, which also will include tons of information about the tea's origin, how to optimally brew it, as well as Chinese medical philosophy on how to live a healthy longevity focused life, including food suggestions and all kinds of other cool stuff.

• 1:54:19Rich Roll?

  So. To learn more about all of that, go to livingtea.net and click on Tea Club. Also, for listeners of this show, Colin has an awesome special offer. When you add the code RICHROLL at checkout, you'll get 12% off on your first season of Tea Club. And if you follow Colin on Instagram, @livingtea, and click through the link in his bio and purchase that way, you can also get 15% off on everything that he has in stock, which is awesome. Finally, if you sign up for his newsletter, you'll also be the first in line on future offerings and rebates that he's putting out to the world. And I should point out that Colin recently relocated to Denver, Colorado, where he's conducting these tea ceremonies for groups, and he's also working on opening a tea house next year.

• 1:55:03Rich Roll?

  So if you happen to live in that region, or perhaps you're passing through, I would definitely recommend you avail yourself of the opportunity to sit with him and enjoy a tea ceremony. It really is an amazing, transcendent experience. Again, I get nothing from this. I'm not profiting whatsoever. I just love Colin. I think his stuff is amazing. It's the best, and I want you guys to check it out. Another reminder, in celebration of my impending 51st birthday, I am committed to raising $51,000 for Charity Water to bring clean water to those most in need. And I really need your help to get there. So come on, people. This is the giving season. I don't want any gifts. I don't want you to mail me anything. I don't need a new tie, or a new t-shirt, or a pair of jeans.

• 1:55:48Rich Roll?

  So please consider a one-time gift of $51, a dollar for every year I have been drinking clean water. And to learn more, visit my campaign at my.cheritywater.org/richroll. Consider a gift. If you can't afford $51, whatever you feel comfortable with is most appreciated. If you're feeling extra generous, of course, more is better. My.cheritywater.org/richroll. Also put that link in the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. Speaking of which, you should always visit the episode pages on my site. We put a ton of time. And consideration into packing these pages with numerous links and helpful information related to the episode and the podcast guests to take your experience further and deeper.

• 1:56:33Rich Roll?

  If you would like to support this show and my work in general, please share the podcast with your friends and on social media, leave a review on iTunes, hit that subscribe button. And also, we have a Patreon set up for people who want to financially contribute to my work. But if you're considering donating a gift to me on Patreon, please consider donating that money to Charity Water instead, again, at the aforementioned link. If you would like to receive a free short weekly email from me, I send one out every week, it's called Roll Call, five or six things I stumbled across over the course of the week, generally a few articles that I've enjoyed, a video I watched, a documentary that I viewed, or perhaps a product that I discovered that I'm getting use out of,

• 1:57:15Rich Roll?

  just things like that. No affiliate links, I'm not trying to make any money, just good stuff to share, especially as social media has become like so diffused and it's just so much noise, even when I post things on Facebook or whatever, you guys who are interested in what I'm doing, don't get a chance to see it, it doesn't come up on your feed. So this is just a way of directly communicating with you guys, and that's why I started it. If that interests or intrigues you, you can subscribe by just entering your email address on any of those email capture windows on my website. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today, Jason Camiolo for audio engineering and production, he does all the audio on the show. Also, he does a lot of work behind the scenes on the show notes and configuring the website page, all that kind of good stuff. Shawn Patterson for help on graphics, David Zammatt, who's recently

• 1:57:59Rich Roll?

  come on board to begin videoing the podcast and taking amazing portraits of the guests. We're slowly getting up to speed, ramping up how we're going to be presenting this new material to you guys, I'm really excited about that, including configuring a new podcast studio, all kinds of cool stuff coming, and David is the guy behind that. Theme music, as always, by Anna Lima. But I should point out that quite often, the interstitial music that you're hearing in the podcast are original compositions by Jason Camiello, the audio engineer. I don't know what music he's using today, but if you're enjoying it, you can hit him up @JasonCamiello on Twitter and Instagram. Let him know that you're enjoying his work and all of the music that he has been selecting

• 1:58:44Rich Roll?

  and sharing, much of which, again, is written by himself. Also, hit up David on Instagram as well, @DavidZammit, Z-A-M-M-I-T. Let him know that you're appreciating all the work that he's doing into the photography and video work. Like I said, we're ramping up our YouTube page. I'm putting up about two videos a week right now. You can find that at youtube.com/richroll. Enjoy it. If you like it, please subscribe. And that's it, you guys. Thanks for the love. I'll be back here in a couple of days with a brand-new episode. I think the next episode up is Tarot Isucapila, the guy behind 4Sigmatic, the mushroom company. It's to talk about mushrooms and their healing properties. It's really amazing. We went behind the scenes in a recent video that David shot.

• 1:59:27Rich Roll?

  You can check that out on YouTube to get a glimpse or a feel for what that podcast conversation is all about. And that's coming up on late Sunday night, Monday morning for you guys. Until then, be well, live well, peace, plants, and namaste.