Midlife Mastery - with Daniel Wagner
Midlife - the main words associated are 'crisis' and 'spread'. But what if we challenge the societal narrative and make midlife the opportunity of our lifetime? What if it was our invitation to become more intentional, live more purposeful, and use our accumulated wisdom to contribute to the world around us? In Midlife Mastery we'll explore ways to do that. So that the best is yet to come.
Midlife Mastery - with Daniel Wagner
Jonny Miller on Nervous System Literacy: Harness the Power of Somatic Intelligence
More about Jonny Miller here:
- His course Nervous System Mastery: nsmastery.com (also the code MIDLIFE will give a $250 discount to listeners)
- Your Nervous System Assessment: assessment.nsmastery.com (free self-Assessment)
- Jonny Podcast Curious Humans: sptfy.com/curioushumans (link to the Curious Humans podcast)
Explore the benefits of understanding your body's signals in this episode of Midlife Mastery featuring Johnny Miller from Nervous System Mastery. Johnny discusses the importance of somatic awareness and interoception in managing emotional instability and anxiety, especially useful in midlife transitions. He shares how being attuned to your nervous system can improve decision-making and strengthen relationships.
In the episode, Johnny explains the "feather, brick, and dump truck" metaphor, which illustrates the stages of personal growth and emphasizes effective stress management and emotional regulation. He advocates for precise terminology, preferring 'incomplete reflexes' over 'trauma' to enhance understanding. The potential for integrating somatic practices into educational programs is also explored, which could lead to significant improvements in mental health and vitality across different age groups.
The discussion also covers practical aspects of self-development and spiritual growth. Johnny and the host discuss the pitfalls of spiritual bypassing and the importance of addressing generational emotional issues. They consider the effects of evolving human consciousness in the context of a growing universe and discuss how personal narratives can either act as defenses against or gateways to deeper existential understanding. This episode offers insights into personal and collective emotional well-being.
Hello, daniel Wagner here from Midlife Mastery, and I always love when I press the record button. The adrenaline starts pumping, my nervous system revs up, and today I'm with Johnny Miller, who can hopefully help me to regulate my nervous system. He's the founder of NS Mastery Nervous System Mastery. He also runs a podcast called Curious Humans and he seems overall, from the little I know him just an awesome guy.
Speaker 2:So thank you, johnny, for making the time welcome to midlife mastery it's great to be here, daniel, and I'm loving the, the overlap of midlife mastery and nervous system mastery, I think.
Speaker 1:See, see where we go let's see what we can cook up. Yeah, I mean for me. Why did I reach out to you? Because a good friend of mine who was an earlier guest on the podcast, pete craig, he actually has done your course and he was raving about it. He said this guy is really, he's real. And I think when I say real, in this world, of course, creators and creators and marketing, many people find ways to attract clients. Find ways to attract clients and then, when the program is actually happening, there is a certain expectation gap happening between what was told and what was actually shown. I try to formulate it very, very lightly, but I think you know what I'm pointing to. So I watched also the way you communicate, the way you market your five-day program, the little what is it called? Five to Thrive Beautifully done. So I'm really, really happy you're here. So, johnny, for the ones who never heard about you, can you give us a high level overview of what is johnny miller about and your ventures?
Speaker 2:what is johnny miller all about, goodness? Well, I mean, as you just mentioned, like my time at the moment is mostly taken up with running, exploring, researching everything around the course, kind of building the community there, finding interesting ways of sharing nervous system literacy to a kind of broader population and you know people that have never heard of somatic work or attunement, or these words sound weird or woo and finding interesting and hopefully compelling ways to communicate that. So that's, that's for sure, my main focus right now. And then I also have the podcast curious humans, which has been, you know, passion projects for for many years now, and I get to have conversations, you know, like you do, I imagine, with just people that I'm, by people that I consider to be mentors from afar, and that's kind of like my own education, really it's like my own inner MBA, I guess you could say. And then, living here in Boulder, love climbing we have a puppy that just walked in the room, if you hear her in the background, yeah, and love surfing as well.
Speaker 1:Surfing has been a big part of my life, though cool not so much in boulder, I guess, but alas so. Nervous system literacy I never heard that word before and and you also mentioned that. You mentioned some of these words also. Interoception is a word I learned when studying your material. Why, why would people bother? What's the point? Why should we become nervous system literate? What's the big deal?
Speaker 2:why should we bother? I mean, to put it bluntly, it helps to save a huge amount of suffering that otherwise occurs when that isn't in place, and that suffering looks like anything from emotional reactivity in relationships at work. It looks like forms of anxiety, different things that are labeled as mental health conditions and challenges. It looks like poor decision making thing that there's a way of more aliveness and joy that gets, uh, unlocked, let's say, when this somatic awareness and emotional attunement is present, there's just much more capacity for joy and and literally aliveness, which I think is is really the thing that many of us are seeking underneath. You know success at work, you know all the typical goals that people have and it also makes it makes it, you know, immensely rewarding to, to share and teach this stuff, because I get to witness people's changes and transformations and and it also attracts really thoughtful, interesting people like your friend.
Speaker 1:Pete craig is a great example, who I just enjoy spending time with selfishly so I mean maybe I'm reading too much into it, but from where I'm sitting, the world's in turmoil. People are overwhelmed. Anxiety, stress, depression, burnout. These are very common problems that my clients, students and the people I'm hanging out with especially midlife is a time when we get some wake-up calls, often relational wake-up calls, often career success wake-up calls, health, anything right. So for me, having done breath work for about a decade and yogic breathing, I always felt that breath was one of the few things we have control over, and attention being the second one to help me deal with the outer world, but not in a way of detaching but a form of managing. I'm surprised it's not being taught in schools, but many things I'm surprised about. Do you believe that if people had the knowledge you're teaching that there would be? You said earlier, a lot of suffering could be alleviated. What would be the benefits? I mean, what would people experience if, if your knowledge was common knowledge and common practice, maybe better than common knowledge?
Speaker 2:yeah, really great question. The hope is that with these practices there's this there's not only management of the symptoms but there is a way of going upstream to the kind of underlying root causes of what then presents as anxiety, depression, overwhelm, burnout, these things, and obviously there's slightly different routes that people get to those places. But underlying that, I I'd say that the three missing pieces or ingredients, let's say, are interception, which you mentioned earlier, which is basically how aware am I of my internal state, kind of from the neck down right, most of us are very aware of what we're thinking but we're not even aware of oh, am I hungry? Like, how is my breathing? Is the like tension in my chest that could be related to anxiousness, etc. Etc. So that's, that's one piece. And, incidentally, when that is ignored for long, like a long period of time, that's often what leads to burnout is just this perpetual overriding of our internal state and kind of living in, living in the mind and being relatively numb from the neck down.
Speaker 2:I think the second contributing factor is a kind of lack of awareness of practices that often use the breath. Like you said, that increase our, our capacity to be with intensity is, I think, one of the best ways I can describe it, which is, you know, a window of tolerance for stress is another way of putting it Like how can we remain present and grounded and centered in increasingly intense and uncertain situations? So that's number two. And then number three is what I call emotional fluidity or emotional mastery.
Speaker 2:Fluidity or emotional mastery, and the paradox there is that it's actually not about managing emotions, which is what a lot of the kind of mainstream dialogue is kind of centers around, but it's about acknowledging and then accepting and welcoming the full spectrum of emotions, no matter what it is, and and what we typically experience as negative emotions say anger or sadness or these types of things.
Speaker 2:They're actually the ways in which we're resisting that emotion, almost like a kink in a hose, and it's the kink that we that. That is really challenging. But when we're able to kind of really welcome these, you know, the full spectrum of these feelings, then there is more energy, more aliveness, more joy and less emotional debt. When we chronically repress these often for good reasons in childhood, as I'm sure you know, that builds up allostatic load, which is what I call emotional debt, and that emotional debt creates fragility in the nervous system, which means that you know, it just takes like a pin drop before we just lose our shit right, and it also leads to the health conditions and mental health crises that you were kind of speaking to.
Speaker 1:Wow, I mean this is big stuff, right? You mentioned those three Interesting In my world. Before I learned interoception from you, I called it inner world tracking, to just you know what is going on in my body, and I had some beautiful training with a guy in Holland called Christian Pankhurst. He runs man circles and circle work and mat work and shadow work, and I find it really fascinating that the second part you're speaking and I really feel this is number one. If you're not aware of what's going on in your body, then this is what you call somatic work or somatic tracking, somatic experiencing. Then of course, you know the body will send you signals. I once heard that our body is like 2000 times more acute and intelligent than our mind. Even the capacity of processing information is just so much greater. The so-called unconscious mind, right, or the rest. I find it amazing.
Speaker 1:So is your course and your mission, then, to teach those three aspects, so the interoception, the learning and the tracking, then methods of dealing it. I like also how you said the capacity to be with intensity. I really like that. And third, this emotional work you talk about. I work actually with the journey and as a marketing director for the journey and that's where I learned that emotions are not good or bad and our labels of these emotions and suppression of these binds so much life force and and I love the way that you that, that you say that you know to welcome them, accept them. Would you class that as partly shadow work, because we're locking a lot of stuff away. Many emotions are not welcome in our society. Even even exuberant joy isn't welcome. So we're not just talking bad stuff, right, but even any intense state is moderated, ideally yeah, I, I suppose I would class it as a shadow work in a way.
Speaker 2:I don't use that framing in in the course, but if shadow is defined as something that we are formally unaware of, and it can be a golden shadow or, you know, kind, be expressed in a safe way, you know, not at someone, but just released, there is, you know, often depression lifts life, force kind of comes back and this, like vibrancy, is there.
Speaker 1:That often isn't for people that have equated being angry or expressing anger with being bad, which is, you know, very common in society in, in in your experience, johnny, with the people you you're working with, how many people come with a healthy nervous system and go towards excellence, and how many people come with and when I mean deficiency, I just mean with a constant red alert, you know stressed system that does not ever go into rest and repair? What's your guess? Looking at the students you've been with, yeah, I mean it's a real mix.
Speaker 2:We've had just over a thousand students to date, so pretty big sample size. Thank you. Yeah, we're doing the final week this week at the moment and it's been, it's been so much fun. I would say there's a mix.
Speaker 2:I think what tends to what tends to change is, you know, someone's capacity.
Speaker 2:So, for example, there's a number of ceos and founders in this cohort and they're still able to kind of show up and be very high functioning, even though there is some degree of nervous system dysregulation happening under the surface. But there's almost more capacity in the nervous system to hold that versus other people that are almost like on on the verge of breaking point. So that is and and in some ways I I talk about this this idea of a feather brick dump truck metaphor, where for some people it just takes like a feather before some kind of you know immense like changes are made. Other people require a brick and for people with really high capacity, sometimes it takes the dump truck of a divorce, a company going bust, health crisis for them to be like, for them to wake up and to actually pay sufficient attention to their internal tracking, like you said that sadly, that's the majority of people I'm meeting, because that's what midlife crisis, the reorganization of our values, often, often comes with right that shock.
Speaker 1:I really. I mean I haven't done your course yet, but I I really see such an overlap. There will be such value for my students and my my following to learn more about your work. That's why we're here. Partly I haven't in your literature. I mean, trauma is a word that's been panned around a lot. Gabo Marta has done great work at trauma awareness, but when he comes to talking about solutions, it's a quite thin list. I mean, he talks about somatic experiencing and he does talk about EFT and he talks about somatic experiencing and he does talk about EFT and he talks about which, the tapping thing, and he talks about EMDR, the eye movement, desensitization thing. But I'm surprised how few practical exercises are given to people. You don't speak about trauma much, but actually everything you speak about could be called trauma. Right, if somebody has a dysregulated nervous system and has stuck energy or unwelcome, tucked away emotion, locked with memories and story, and lives a compromised life, an unexpressed life, that's trauma. Why don't you speak about that? Is that not a preference for you or just not?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was actually a very that's a great observation. It was a very deliberate choice on my part and it was because trauma is now it's almost like a suitcase word, I call it, where it means so many things and it's used in so many different contexts that it's very imprecise and so it's very hard. There's so many different types and so I prefer the language around. Incomplete reflexes is actually one way that I like to frame it, where, if we go through a very stressful experience, but that mobilization cycle isn't completed, that will get buffered in the nervous system, and there are, you know, different types of these reflexes that have been categorized and researched and looked at like that landau reflex. Some of them go back to early childhood development, like pre-verbal years, and so I prefer it. It's a more precise language and it's also yeah, I just, I just it's it's helpful that trauma is being talked about in the you know, the public discourse, and it's used in so many ways that it ceases to become helpful in a lot of cases, I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I just feel that your modality, if you want to call it that, or your body of work, if made available to people who suffer from what is banded as trauma, would be extremely valuable. Right, that's just my observation and again, I haven't done enough depth of your work to make a fully educated statement around it. But that's from what I heard and what I see and the literature I've seen. But I really understand why you made that conscious choice, because it is. People use it colloquially as oh yeah, it's just been traumatized, and they use it for everything.
Speaker 1:These days it's also become the blanket excuse for any erratic behavior. You know, oh, wow, I mean the way I look at the so-called trauma. I just say interesting, similar to you, I just say, the stuff we tuck away, the process later, but later never comes and it becomes a load of unprocessed emotions that at one point, just so much energy is bound up in trying to process these things at a certain moment that we don't process life in the moment anymore and, as a matter of fact, our life gets narrow as we avoid more and more triggers. Right, so what you call the intensity capacity, or capacity intensity, is minimized, right, so I really feel there's a correlation that I'm just curious about, right as as I am yeah, absolutely, I describe it very similar an interesting question for me, always about any form of self-development, spiritual work.
Speaker 1:When people become too aware using modalities or protocols, does it take away from spontaneity? Does it take away from actually experiencing life? Because we're so aware of regulating our nervous system, we're constantly checking in and checking out and regulating and protocoling. Does it take away from just enjoy living?
Speaker 2:interesting. I would answer that in that I think there's almost a couple of stages in the journey. The first stage is for people who, let's say that, say they're always on the edge of their capacity. They're on the edge of their window of tolerance, the edge of their capacity. Learning some of the protocols to down-regulate and control the nervous system and kind of manage the stress is extremely empowering and it can help people shift from that kind of victim sense of I feel completely out of control and disempowered to I now have very practical levers to change the state of my nervous system as and when I need, and that's an incredibly, you know, powerful step for a lot of people.
Speaker 2:And then there's a kind of step beyond that, which is almost like letting go of control. And you can also think of this as the difference between self-development versus self-unfoldment, which is a phrase from steve march that I, that I really love and it's, you know, it's also like managing emotions versus then welcoming and accepting emotions, and that that shift of kind of moving towards unfolding is a shift towards really trusting the wisdom of your nervous system and allowing and receiving to a greater and greater degree, which requires a greater degree of, or an increasing degree of embodied safety to kind of allow us, because it's a vulnerable thing to do. And so I think that's typically the the journey that people go through, myself included where there's an initial shift, where there's this empowerment and I feel for the first time in you know who knows how long I feel in control and, you know, empowered to change my state, and then from there it's it's actually about letting go of the control and surrendering more into spontaneity, play joy, whatever, whatever comes up.
Speaker 1:Great answer, brilliant answer. If I could give points for answers, that would be good score, really good. No, I, I, yeah, I really. I believe you nailed that. It is really depending on, on your stage, right. But I I'm just so aware that the idea of self-development there is a paradox in in term, right, if, if we believe that at the core of our existence there is a perfection, a unity, a sense of absoluteness, godliness, sacredness, and then the idea that we develop, that is nonsense, right. So every path in that way is questionable for me. I've been part of many spiritual paths, so to say, and practiced 20 years in the form of Hindu meditation, but I realized that putting a goal outside of you or the level of achievement, or even wanting to change how you are, creates separateness, right, it can create.
Speaker 2:It could be a total trap, a spiritual uh trap, right, where you end up creating more incompleteness and more dissatisfaction, although actually life's already great, but you have an aspiration that is beyond yeah, and I think this is a really key point in that going into somatic work with a personal development or self-development lens can actually be a huge barrier in the sense of if you go into your own feelings and emotions with a change agenda, like with an agenda to fix something or make something better, then that that way of attending to your internal state will be the resistance, because that part of you will sense that you, you want to fix it or change it, and in the same way as if you're, you know, with a partner and you're like trying to fix or change them, that that they like push away, it's the same with the, with the parts inside of us, and so having that frame of, or even the question of what if everything was, was perfect right now, is actually in in in and of itself, just like a different way of attending that will create transformation.
Speaker 2:Paradoxically, even though you're not trying to create the transformation I so.
Speaker 1:I so get that. That landed well in my nervous system. I have to say it gives me an internal smile, right, a giggle. It is complex though, but it looks like you have done your own work, which sometimes I don't find the right words, but I say it entitles you to teach. Sometimes I see and experience people teaching when I feel they haven't really done the work themselves and I really feel the intention of the teacher is even more important than the curriculum, right? So what is your intent beneath that, johnny? And then I'd love to go a little bit more personal. I'm just warning you that, johnny, and and then I'd love to go a little bit more personal. I'm just warning you. I want to. What's, what's the intent? Obviously you, you are running a business, you're making money, you're offering courses. But what's the driving intent underneath? Because you could do so many things. You could. You know many talents. What do you do?
Speaker 2:yeah, thank you for that question. I well, I I went through a pretty intense journey through grief at one point in my life after losing one of my, my former fiancee. She had bipolar and she ended up taking her own life. And my kind of journey through grief and then the other emotions that kind of came after it just completely transformed who I was at on like a very foundational level and I just became I.
Speaker 2:I kind of applied this lens of adventure and curiosity that I'd always, I'd always had for the outer world.
Speaker 2:I love travel, love surfing, love going on big expeditions and that lens almost got turned inwards and so I became fascinated about psychotechnologies, modalities for exploring consciousness, breathwork, plant medicines, meditation, like all of the different things, and I, you know, spent 10 days in a dark room, have done hundreds and hundreds of hours of breathwork journeys, dark room, have done hundreds and hundreds of hours of breathwork journeys and like, at a certain point I was like this is so fascinating and so few people are really aware of that this stuff even exists, that I've almost felt this like desire to tell stories and communicate and build an experiential curriculum that could really not necessarily like create, create the transformation there and then, but really provide an on-ramp and to stoke the fires of people, to stoke people's curiosity in themselves, to then go down whatever paths were most resonant, be that be that breath work, be that somatic experiencing or hokomi or whatever the thing ended up being and, selfishly, I really enjoy.
Speaker 2:I used to teach entrepreneurship in in london for three years, so I really enjoy curriculum design and the kind of the challenge of how do you communicate abstract, quite dense ideas in a way that that land with people, and so that has been a kind of an it is an ongoing kind of set of challenges that I really enjoy getting into.
Speaker 1:Thank you for sharing that and I so 100% get you when you say that it feels absolutely in integrity and authentically. You, how long ago was that grief journey you spoke about, and I'm sorry to hear that. At the same time, I know that whatever life throws at us makes us who we are. So you wouldn't be mr nervous system mastery, right, but give me a context in time when, when did you have to go through that? When would you go?
Speaker 2:yeah, so it was october 23rd, 2017 was when was when she passed and, yeah, the kind of the year afterwards I was fortunate enough to be able to just not work essentially and kind of focus on the inner journey and doing Vipassana meditation retreats and my first ayahuasca journey, things like that, and yeah, I really like how you said you turned the lens of curiosity you had for the outside world on the inside world, because the irony is that all the experiencing is internal anyway.
Speaker 1:Right, so, yeah, we don't get right. There's something we get taught and obviously our visual. We're so visual I had to think 80 of our, you know, perception capacity from the senses goes through the eyes for most people and we are are missing a lot. Are you aware of a guy called Michael Singer? Are you aware of his work? Yeah, I really, I really like he's the first guy that described the yogic path and spirituality in a way that I really found demystifying. And I think that's what you do. It feels like the language. You're very precise in your language and you look to describe things in a way that, yeah, simplify complex matters so it lands for people.
Speaker 1:Right, this is really important work, I feel, and you need to make the experiences to. You can't distill it unless you've had the whole smorgasbord, right, and what are you doing? You're creating, you're distilling. You like that. Yeah, no, no, you're welcome. I really, I really find that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, michael singer this one thing stays with me. He just said that so-called spiritual people looking for solutions to the problems in the world internally, while non-spiritual people look to solve the problems outside, hoping that it will make the inner world better. He said it better, but the essence is clear, saying okay, I can try to create everything around me so that I don't get triggered, I feel safe and I feel loved, which is an impossible task, or I can work on my inner capacity. It's an impossible task, or I can work on my inner capacity. So would you class some of your work as spiritual work, although we would have to define first what that means. But when you talk vipassana, dark room retreats, meditations, breathwork journeys, ayahuasca, many people say you meet a part of you in those experiences that is normally not available to the conscious mind, the egoic mind, the self-identified part of our mind. Would you call this work spiritual?
Speaker 2:Hmm, hmm I, I would.
Speaker 2:And at the same time there are a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't be interested or or even curious, or almost have like an allergic reaction to a lot of the languaging that is used in the spiritual worlds, often because it is very imprecise.
Speaker 2:And so I almost, I like, I like the idea of creating the conditions for for that, for that sense to kind of emerge organically for someone, without saying this is a, you know, a spiritual thing.
Speaker 2:And, and I have, I also have some aversion to ways in which spiritual teachers can encourage bypassing, particularly bypassing of emotions, and through techniques that do temporarily alleviate suffering. But if you hang out with that and you don't actually feel the thing, then it's just another way of getting stuck thing, then it's just, it's just another eddy, it's another way of getting stuck. And so, and I think there's also a very interesting relationship between doing the, let's say, emotional excavation, paying off your emotional debt through some of the things we've been talking about, and creating from there that sense of embodied safety which allows the the the deeper insights taught in, say, zen or other meditation traditions, where you then see through to the true nature of reality, but you don't need to do it in such an intense, fierce way. It almost just arises naturally on the other side of doing a lot of the attachment and emotional work. So it is certainly related and I feel like the somatic aspect is missing from a lot of spiritual approaches and modalities.
Speaker 1:Again, we're not giving points today, but this is a good points question. I don't know, it's just because it matches so much of my own experience and I understand more and more why you choose the language and why you choose the science and why you choose that To avoid the whole realm of imprecise and mystification. And it goes into a realm that I find difficult myself, right. So, again, another thing I really appreciate about how you approach it, right. So again, another thing I really appreciate about how you, how you approach it, because the experience, everybody knows when they have an experience that is otherworldly and you, it's always the irony.
Speaker 1:How can we describe the indescribable, speak of the unspeakable? And you know so that there is possibility, in the attempt even. But if you create the right conditions and I I believe, like you do, that safety, nothing can happen before that, because if your body, your nervous system is in high alert, there won't be any entry point to any relaxation or rest, awareness or deeper experiencing. Do you? This is a wild question, but some people talk, talk about that. We are at a crossroads of humanity where there seems to be like a timeline split, where some people become more aware and go that path, while others go into more unconsciousness. Do you experience that in your own world?
Speaker 2:Timeline split Interesting my. My sense is that we are going through, or we're beginning to go through, periods of increasing intensity, let's say, and that intensity is bringing up a lot of this excavated emotional debt, which I also believe is you know from from prior generations as well, and that can either, you know, in conditions of safety, where it is, is held and it's engaged with, curiously, can create incredible transformation, and when those conditions aren't present, it can then send people into further you know, projecting their pain out into the world's mental health challenges, anxiety, overwhelm, you know all those things as well. So I I do think that there is almost like we're going into more of a crucible or kind of like alchemical fire, like whatever phrase you want to use, where more of that unconscious stuff is coming to the surface, and in some cases that can lead to profound awakening experiences and in other cases it can lead to perpetuating those cycles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, I mean incredible amount of suffering through unconsciousness and, as you say, the opportunity to wake up. But of course you can't fabricate that right. There's so many factors. You just spoke to generational emotional debt, I think you call it. This talks to what is called intergenerational trauma and for many times when I did some of my journeys into so-called past lives and ancestrals, I was like, oh, there's a lot of woo-hoo and what is all that. But today I feel it makes sense, if I'm half the DNA of my mom and half the DNA of my dad, that there would be a great part of her DNA has nothing to do with physical expression. I think it's zero point, something percent that has to do with the physical appearance. So a lot of the other stuff must have to do with emotional imprints, emotional patterning and all that. So I do see that. Have you got any deeper scientific knowledge around this, passing on through ancestral dna, epigenetical stuff, I mean? You read papers it's.
Speaker 2:It's a great question. There isn't any kind of existing evidence, for you know the mechanism by which the trauma or emotional debt is passed on. I I do, or I did listen to a great interview with a guy called jack cruz who has a hypothesis. Let's say that some of that, the dna also carries a kind of electromagnetic signature, and that in that electromagnetic signature there are things that are passed on through through the generations, and so I believe it's plausible that the kind of the electromagnetic side of what dna carries, which we're as of yet unable to fully measure or quantify, could well carry some of this information which is passed on, because, like you, I've also had had experiences of what appeared to me as processing and moving through something that wasn't mine but that was in me, if that makes sense more environmental stuff or surrounding or ancestral or community.
Speaker 1:I mean everybody? I think not everybody. Most people have an experience. You enter a room, you can sense the emotional temperature of a room, right. So we have got nervous system capacity to feel a state of energy. You know. A wild question for you. I'm loving them. Keep them coming. This is great. A wild question. Assuming we're correct in saying that the universe is expanding, which, from what I understand, seems to be happening, does it make sense that our perception of time, with the speeding of of the expansion that we this, this sense that things are accelerating, is that just a lower frequency aspect of the universe expanding? And does it also mean that our consciousness has to expand with it and we can either resist less or more, but ultimately there's not much we can do about it. That we're we're expanding. It's just my own theory.
Speaker 2:I've never thought about it in those terms, but I guess I believe that there is a, some form of innate intelligence that is forwarding the, the adventure of the universe, let's say. That is like, and is is desiring to experience increasing complexity for itself. And so, yeah, I mean with with that in mind, I perhaps the best way to answer this. I read a book by a guy called christopher bash recently. It's called lsd in the mind of the universe and it's it's quite out there, but he had 72 high dose lsd journeys over a 25 year period, and I don't usually read people's trip reports, but these are so fascinating and like, meticulously documented. And he's a professor, you know, he has an academic mind, an incredible horsepower, and his, his view is that we are almost giving birth to a new type of being, like a new form of consciousness in this next period.
Speaker 2:And as with, say, a human birth, there are these birth contractions that happen, that cause intensity, and if you were the baby and you were in there and you didn't know what was happening, you'd be terrified. You'd be like I'm about to die, like this is, this is not good. And then the baby comes out into this world that it couldn't possibly have previously comprehended and that's kind of an analogy for what he thinks is happening with the human race. And so in that intensity and obviously not all births are successful, and you know, do we, do we make it, who knows but that kind of narrative and frame really resonates for me and that in this intensity there is, it's almost happening for a reason, in the same way that, you know, in the peak of a breathwork journey. It's that intensity where the deepest emotions can be processed and released. So that's kind of my abstract way of seeing it.
Speaker 1:Do you think we create those narratives as a form of creating meaning or pacifying our fear of non-existence or the futility of existence? I sometimes wonder if this is all just made up. We'll make up these elaborate constructs, right? Some of them we're sharing here today, simply to create a narrative of meaning. I don't expect you. Yes, I do have an answer to that. Yeah, oh.
Speaker 2:I mean I, when I was, when I was a kid, I remember being like terrified I was. I was an atheist until I was 20 something and I was terrified of death, Like I imagined what it would be like to just be nothing after I died, and it kept me up at night for, you know, a long period of time and at a certain point and maybe you've had experiences like this as well that there's a certain way of being or a state where to even ask the question is the meaning in the universe feels like a ridiculous question. It's just so inherent in like the fabric of your perception that it's like it would be a ludicrous question to ask. And so I actually think it's less about the narrative and more about knowing that there is a state that one can access, where everything feels inherently meaningful and connected, and I think that is the state that a lot of people are seeking and grasping on and tell stories or research things, because they think it's a problem to be solved, but it's more of just a state to be experienced.
Speaker 1:Beautifully put and I I from my experience as well it is more a process of subtracting or taking away, and not adding or moving towards. It's almost as you say. It is an inherent, innate possibility. We could experience it all the time. But we people are having of being in pain, being in trouble, struggling survival, fear, fear of the future, all of these things perpetuated through media consumption and whatever conspiracy theory you might throw into that. The truth is they have this experience right, and that makes it real for them, no matter what is behind it. I really, yeah, I'm with you on that one.
Speaker 1:Did you ever hear the story of Ramdas? When I got into the whole breathwork community and you know holotropic breathwork after the LSD journeys from the sixties and Ramda, I forgot his name before he became Ramdas. But he went to India to, yes, Richard Alpert, yes, who was hanging out on doing a lot of trips. He went to India, supposedly, and gave a large dose of LSD to his guru, who had absolutely zero effect on his nervous system, which made him incredibly curious about where is this dude? What is he experiencing if this potent mind-al consciousness altering substance has no effect on him? And I find that a fascinating question, right, which obviously made him this conduit for bringing spiritual teachers to America, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2:Amazing. I think it was like 800 micrograms of Lsd. So it's a maharaji, was the name of his teacher. Um, yeah, it's I, I love, I love reading right, and I mean. Randas is another great example of someone who is a such an articulate and precise communicator of a lot of these concepts that other people would otherwise not be interested in I like that.
Speaker 1:So what's the next stage of the mission? Johnny, I'm also aware of the time you said you have a meeting in, in just a few minutes, but if you are extrapolating all the successes you've been through, and, and johnny is going strong and life supporting you, what's, what's next? What's the the next big milestone? What's?
Speaker 2:the vision.
Speaker 2:It's a beautiful question.
Speaker 2:It's actually one that's very alive for me right now.
Speaker 2:My wife and I are looking to start a family later this year and potentially move to Santa Cruz as well, and it really feels like, maybe for the first time, nervous system mastery is like taking on a life of its own, and it feels less like something that I'm doing and more something that I'm just like directing and stewarding.
Speaker 2:And so I am in this, in this inquiry of of like how to continue to spread and share nervous system literacy and increasingly interesting and creative and compelling ways. So tangibly that looks like you know, doing doing more youtube videos, kind of high production focusing on a leadership specific cohort, building out more of a self-assessment and kind of more like open source tools, basically to help people that, including those that aren't in the, in the community. And, yeah, and honestly, the next few weeks, I'll just be speaking to a lot of people who are much smarter than myself and seeking advice and looking for ideas and feedback, because I am at this, this place, where I now have more capacity and resources to invest, and so I'm thinking about how do I, how do I do that wisely in a way that is both still fun and joyful for me, but also helps to bring more people into this ecosystem and this, this path, and if you have any ideas, feel free to let me know.
Speaker 1:I would absolutely love to jump on a call with you and, and and I have thought about it before this call I can imagine and and yeah, we can definitely have that conversation and I love that you're as inquiry and congratulations on even even the idea of starting a family. It's beautiful. My children are 32 and 28. So they're all dead. Surely it's right in the middle of it, I feel that I've done a bit of disservice to people who will have been with us for the last 46 minutes, simply that we didn't share any hacks, any, any protocols, any. Could you would you want to share? Or could we point them somewhere? I mean, I think your five to thrive is a great, a great resource. But if there was, if they can't be bothered to anything but just carry on listening for three more minutes, what would you say? What would be the one thing from everything you know?
Speaker 2:that is the panacea what is the silver bullet that fixes everything?
Speaker 1:exactly the one that doesn't exist yeah, so I I really love.
Speaker 2:It sounds stupidly simple, but I really love humming. There's something that is so. I mean, there's a bunch of scientific reasons that I probably don't have time to go into, but humming if you just try for yourself and you can amplify it by putting your your thumbs like almost inside your ears and your two thing you've probably done this. It's also known as b breath in the yoga world two fingers over the eyes and then ring finger over the like nose cartilage and just take a full breath in through the nose and then hum all the way to the end of the exhale. Do it once or twice and just see how you feel. And most people have the experience of like eye strain goes, there's more spaciousness, there's more relaxation, there's more openness. So that's something that I that I love, that I do a lot.
Speaker 2:And if people want a resource, we've just recently created something called the nervous system quotient, which is a self-assessment and it's basically 22 23 questions which will both give people a sense of what their baseline capacity is. And then there's an email. There's an email series that sends personalized protocols based on where people scored low. That is sent over the next four or five days. So those emails will have specific like non-sleep, deep rest, alternate nostril breathing, different awareness practices that people can engage with in their own time as well. So that would be my recommendation and the link is assessmentnsmasterycom. And the link is assessmentnsmasterycom.
Speaker 1:We'll make sure the links are with this podcast episode and the transcripts and everything. Johnny, it's been even a greater pleasure than anticipated and I was looking forward to this a lot, so I really, really enjoyed our time. I really hope that people listening find it as curiosity inv inspiring and comforting as I did, and I definitely want to get to know this man more and learn more about him and his work, and that's part of the idea that you might feel the same, so you can find Jonny at nsmasterycom Also.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a bunch more links we're going to put in Any last kind of comments for our conversation no, I just wanted to say that I I really feel the the generosity in your, in your questions, and I appreciated like the wild questions as well, like it's. I really I feel your curiosity as well and it's. This was a really fun like uh, curiosity ping pong that we just had over the last hour. It was a real pleasure great.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much, johnny. Lots of love and lots of success and and blessings. Take care. Thank you, daniel. Bye, bye.