024: Built to Last: How I Think About Physical Health and Why It's the Foundation of Everything

Your plans, your gear, and your hard-won skills only work if the body running them actually holds up. From the cabin, we zoom out on “health” and make it brutally practical: your body is the most important tool you own, and everything else depends on how well you maintain it.

We start with sleep as the master variable. When sleep slips, everything slips with it: mood, patience, cravings, immunity, and decision making. We break down a few simple sleep hygiene levers that punch above their weight, like getting natural morning sunlight to set your circadian rhythm, building a real wind-down instead of treating bedtime like an on-off switch, and keeping your bedroom cold and genuinely dark so your body can drop temperature and recover.

From there we get into food the way we think about self-reliance: single ingredient, real food, as close to the source as possible. We talk organic food without the hype, why glyphosate exposure concerns us, and why we prioritize grass-fed beef, wild game, and traditional cooking fats while avoiding industrial seed oils. We also touch on mold-tested coffee, daily movement built into life (not just a gym session), grounding, sunlight and vitamin D, reducing toxins in personal care products, and why clean filtered water matters.

Finally, we tie it all together with something most people ignore: unplugging. Time outside, away from constant screens and noise, is a real nervous system reset, not a luxury. If you want a healthier, calmer, more capable life, start here. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review with the one habit you’re committing to next.

Transcript

Morning At The Cabin

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Good morning everybody. Sean James here from My Self Reliance. Welcome back to the cabin. It's been a few days. It's early in the morning as it usually is when I film the or uh record these podcasts. So stick with me, even if I'm a little gravelly this morning. I get up early, as you know, if you've been listening or watching for for a while. I get up like four o'clock and have a tea and sit down and collect my thoughts, get a little bit of work done on the computer. And uh this morning I was thinking about physical health with all, you know, waking up and feeling refreshed. And actually, I feel refreshed almost every time I wake up because I get a good sleep and I know I'm physically feeling pretty good because of the work that I do. So I want to talk about that uh a little bit today. I want to talk about your body. Not in a fitness influencer way either. Not macros, not supplements, not six-week transformations. I'm a little bit beyond that at my age. I want to talk about your body the way I talk about everything else on this podcast as a tool. The most important one, the one that makes every other tool possible. Here's this the thing that I've come to believe pretty firmly. You can have the land and the cabin and the skills and the you know all the preps like the food and everything. But if you brought while he's breaking down, none of it matters. You can't run a homestead or a business or a family or a life on a foundation that's crumbling. You see from my cabins, you need a solid foundation. Never build uh home on sand, as they say. So I've learned this the hard way, and I want to share what I've figured out, what I actually do, why I do it, and the reasoning behind it. I'm a little bit unique, maybe, maybe not in the you know, the community that I'm I run in, the circles that I run in, but uh I think it's pretty unconventional the way I live compared to the way a lot of people live in in this modern society, compared to even the way I used to live. So this isn't me telling you what to do, it's me telling you what works for me and why it uh makes sense given how I think about this life. So take what's useful from it and just leave what isn't. I've got to keep in mind I'm 56, fairly healthy, never broken a bone or had any serious illness. So nobody's situation's unique, but this is mine.

Sleep Sets The Whole System

SPEAKER_00 2:30

First thing I want to talk about is sleep. If I could only keep one habit, if everything else had to go, I'd keep sleep as priority number one. I know that sounds a little bit extreme, but the more I've paid attention to my own body, the more I've come to believe that sleep is the master variable. It controls your mood, your energy, your decision making, your immune system, your appetite, your hormones, your ability to handle stress. Everything downstream of sleep is affected by sleep. As you know, if you don't get a good sleeper, you know somebody didn't hasn't had a good sleep the night before, they're not the same person the next day. They're not at their top of their game. So think about what happens when you don't sleep well yourself. You're irritable, you reach for bad food, uh, maybe coffee and a donut instead of a proper breakfast. You skip the workout, you make worse decisions, you're less patient with the people around you, you're more reactive to problems that a rested version of you would handle without breaking a sweat. So poor sleep doesn't just make you tired, it makes you a worse version of yourself in almost every measurable way. So, what do I actually do about it? Well, first thing I get outside in the morning, first thing I do. Single most impactful thing I've found for sleep is getting natural sunlight in my eyes within the first hour of waking up, not through a window either, like inside direct morning light. And this is regardless of the time of year, whether it's you know three feet of snow on the ground or 100 degrees outside. And because I get up early, the sun's still pretty low on the horizon or not off at all. Your body has a circadian clock, keep in mind, and that light is what sets it. Morning sunlight, it triggers a cortisol pulse that wakes you up properly. And about 14 to 16 hours later, it triggers the melatonin release that puts you back to sleep. So when you skip that morning light signal, the whole system gets fuzzy. Fortunately, living the way I do, this one takes care of itself. I'm outside early, anyways. Most days the sun and I are up and out about the same time. Like I said, I often beat the sun, but um it's not long up before I'm out there. The other thing you need to do is wind down before bed. I think a lot of people don't do this very well. The other end of that rhythm matters just as much as that morning routine. I try to dim the environment down as the evening goes on so the lights are lower, and you can actually get uh bulbs which I have in my lamps that um you can set the either daylight or this uh softer, warmer morning or evening light. So in the morning I turn that on, and in the evening I turn it on. Uh screens off like your computer or your phone or your iPad or whatever, or at least warmed down, so no more hard problem solving um or stressful content just before bed. A lot of people treat sleep like an on-off switch. They're stimulated and lit up and screen addicted right until the moment they close their eyes and then they wonder why they can't fall asleep or whatever why they wake up at three in the morning. The the wind down part is part of the sleep. It's not optional prep, it's the beginning of it. That blue light again from your screens is not uh that's the worst light for you, by the way. It um it signals daylight and then it's not bedtime. You need that warm reddish light as before bed. And you have to keep it consistent. So the same time to bed, same time up is what I try to do. Not easy for most people in modern life, but it's worth doing. And even on weekends, like I don't change my routine from one day to the next. I don't know and care whether it's Monday or whether it's Saturday morning or Sunday morning. Your body runs on rhythm, not on not just hours. So you can get eight hours of sleep at inconsistent times and still feel rough. Consistency matters as much as duration. I know for me, I feel literally like I'm hung over. If I even if I get those seven hours, but they're not in the like the same basic structure, I feel hung over. And if I get less than those seven hours, then I definitely just feel like uh well, all of the things I mentioned earlier just do not feel up to my game. Uh so it's that's how it affects me. I think it affects most people. The other thing is to keep that room, your bedroom, cold and dark. You'll notice in the cabin I built that addition mainly for my wife when she's um spending time there with me when we're there together. That bedroom, put that fireplace in, it's a very inefficient fireplace. But I didn't that on purpose. I didn't put a wood stove in there because it would be way too hot. And that room being slightly lower than the rest of the cabin, the heat from the wood stove doesn't really travel very well into that space. The cold air tends to settle in there, which is perfect for sleeping. That fire is just enough to get the chill out of the room or for ambiance. It's not to heat the room up. So once that fire goes out, the room cools down, which is absolutely perfect. And of course, it's always dark there because there's no natural light in the area or no uh artificial light in the area. So your core body temperature really needs to drop slightly to initiate sleep. Cool room helps that happen faster and keeps you in a deeper sleep longer. In fact, it's a little bit of a strategy if you have a furnace, is to set it to start warming up like an hour before you get up, just to start signaling your body that it's almost time to wake up. And darkness, real darkness, not just uh TV is off darkness. It signals the brain that it's time to shut down. I sleep in a room that's genuinely dark and genuinely cool, usually with a window open, fresh air. And the difference compared to it when I don't do that is significant. So that uh if you live in a town or city, most of you do, or there's lights, artificial lights, then you really need to get a blackout curtain, blackout blind so that no light is coming in. That's the absolute best way to sleep. Sleep is not lazy. It's when your body repairs itself, consolidates memory, regulates hormones, and rebuilds everything that the that the day broke down. So treat it like the most productive thing you do. It's literally the thing that helps you recover forever from anything, even if it's your workout, it's your sleep. It's your rest periods when you actually start building that back up again, that muscle that you broke down or whatever it is that you're working on. So important to get that sleep for restoration.

Real Food As Self-Reliance

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Now, the other part of, well, next part and most and second most important part of physical health is the food. So I eat pretty differently from most people, and I'll explain why. Um, not to preach, but because I'm my reasoning is tied directly to how I think about self-reliance and what I'm trying to protect, and also my history as far as things like uh blood pressure, for example. Um basically the short version of my food philosophy is single ingredient, real food, as close to its source as possible and as clean as I can get it. You can summarize everything I do basically down to those things. And organic food, and I know a lot of people as usual, the commercial industrial system of anything has kind of um changed our perception of the legitimacy of things and and food is no different. Organic food in the grocery store is not always better than the conventional stuff next to it, that's half the price. But um, often it is. And if you can get through organic, especially if you're growing it, that's gonna matter. So I personally, my family and I, we eat organic wherever and whenever we can. Not because of a label or trend, but because I've thought carefully carefully about what I'm putting into my body and what I want to keep out of it in particular. Conventional produce is often grown with synthetic pesticides and herbicides, glyphosate being one of the most widespread. The research on long-term glyphosate exposure is concerning enough that I've decided I do not want it in my food. And if I can, um if I can avoid it, of course. That's a personal risk calculation, not a political one. It is so pervasive. And in tests done even on children, they found that glyphosate's in the system of almost everybody on this planet, whether you're directly ingesting it or not. So it's something to keep an eye on. Um, now the other thing we do is mostly eat animal products. Um, so the bulk of what I eat personally is animal-based. Meat, eggs, dairy from quality sources, preferably like unpasteurized, if you can get it, with health caveats. So you need to do that research yourself, figure out if that's for you. I found this way of eating gives me steady energy, good mental clarity, and no digestive issues, like literally at all, which wasn't always the case. I eat grass-fed beef specifically and wild game. Uh, as you know, uh more than half my diet for sure is of wild game. And here's the reasoning a cow that's been raised on grain, especially conventionally grown grain, has been exposed to glyphosates through that feed. It also has a very different nutritional profile than a grass-fed animal. Uh, for example, the fat composition is different. The omega-3 to omega-6 ratio is vastly different. You are in a really very real sense eating what your food ate. And if your food is eating like hay, for example, or not just hay, but specifically in non-grass-finished animals, things that it's not meant to eat, like corn and soy, for example, those things are sprayed heavily. So there's a lot of junk in there that you do not want to eat. Now, the other thing is green-fed livestock also tend to accumulate more lectins and phytates indirectly through that feed. Compounds that are found in grains and legumes that can interfere with nutrient absorption and cause inflammation in some people, which is why we don't eat those things directly either. I don't eat beans anymore and and uh legumes or grains. Um, I can get that you reach out to me if you have questions about that, and I can give you some resources. Uh so by choosing grass fed, I'm trying to get as far upstream from those issues as I can. Now, speaking of animal products, it includes like cooking oil. So we eat zero seed oils unless we're eating out and we don't aren't aware of what's what something's prepared in or with. Uh, we eat no preservatives and no junk. So don't cook with seed oils, canola, soybeans, sunflower, corn oil. These are industrially industrially industrially processed. They're high in omega-6 fatty acids, and I think what they're one of the most underappreciated problems in the modern diet. So I cook with butter, tallow, uh, lard from a pig. So that's what lard is, by the way. It's the difference between tallow and lard. Tallow comes from beef or even uh venison. It's um sets up more room. Uh well, I'll get into that in another video too. But lard is from a pig and then a bear grease uh of rendered bear fat. That's what I use a lot too. And make sure they're from quality sources as well. So again, you don't want that from an animal that's been exposed to all of those, you know, lectins and phytates and glyphosate. Right, animal fats that humans have used for thousands of years is what we focus on. I also don't buy anything with a long ingredient list. So if I can't picture where each ingredient came from, or I don't understand what it is, or you can't uh spell it or read it, I don't eat it. So single ingredient foods only, the real stuff. Uh mold-free coffee and organic coffee and tea. Again, I'll talk about this in the future. There's a lot of studies that show that a lot of the issues, like jitters, for example, or like feeling like you feel like it's kind of a caffeine high or something, like you're getting too much caffeine. A lot of times that's actually from the mold that's in coffee, and the majority of coffee is moldy. And that's the same with other things like peanut peanut butter or peanuts, very moldy. So this one often surprises people. A lot of conventional coffee, especially pre-ground, contains mycotoxins. They're uh mold byproducts that form during the growing and processing of the beans. So I've switched to mold-tested clean coffee, and I noticed the difference. So I'm gonna share that with you uh soon. In fact, I'll uh have an announcement soon about that. It's so important to us, and we've spent so much time sourcing this coffee that um I want to share that with you. Anyway, because we've switched to that, I don't get an afternoon crash. The Half-Life doesn't have caffeine doesn't seem to matter as much because I'm not having that that uh reaction to the mold. And then I just have no less so less chitteriness and then a clearer head. So same with tweet, uh tea, black tea. Whether it's uh decaf or rather uh fully caffeinated, so the real stuff.

Move All Day Not Just Gym

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Uh third part I want to talk about, uh very important, obviously, as well, is movement. We were not designed to sit still for eight hours and then go to the gym for 45 minutes. That's exactly the opposite of what we should be doing. That's not how human physiology works. It's horrible. My I've mentioned it many times sitting here at the computer, worst thing I'd do for my body, and the worst I feel is when I'm doing this, when I'm physically working outside, even like sun up the sundown or you know, long canoe trips where I'm just again sun up to sundown by paddling, like physically active the entire day. I don't feel bad at the end of that. I feel horrible when I sit in an office under a natural light or a natural position sitting. Yeah, horrible for me. We're just not designed to sit still for eight hours. So we were designed to actually move all day long. Normally we'd be hunting and fishing or uh foraging, right? Hunter-gatherers. At low intensity, continuously, punctuated by occasional bursts of harder effort, hunting, gathering, building, walking, carrying. That's the template our bodies were built for. And we've completely inverted that. So for me, uh, I know this works for me. I aim for 10,000 steps a day, and living the way I do, that's usually not hard to hit. There's always something to do, but I want to talk about why the target matters because it's not arbitrary. And when I'm not getting it when we're working or when I'm working, my wife and I hike. We love to hike and we like to take Cali for long walks, and we always get our 10,000 steps and often that way if it's in the down season, for example. So consistent low-level movement throughout the day, like walking, carrying, uh, working with your hands, uh doing things that a single gym session can't replicate. Like when you're in the gym, you're gonna do sets and you're gonna do, you know, reps, 10 reps, for example, and do three sets of that thing. You're not pushing yourself the same way you do when you're actually working physically. So it's it's very different. It's good. It's way better than not doing it, but still it's not something you can replicate this uh all-day movement that they were designed for. So it keeps your lymphatic system moving, regulates blood sugar more effectively, it improves circulation, joint health, and mood in ways that are fundamentally different from concentrated exercise. There's lots of research showing that people who sit for long periods have worse health outcomes, even if they exercise regularly. The problem isn't just that they're not exercising, it's that they're sedentary for most of their waking hours. Um, but movement needs to be woven through the day, not bolted on at the end of the day or even the beginning of the day, or both. It's still not the same. For me, this is just a natural part of how I live, which again, I think this it's one of the reasons I promote this way of life. I think it's just the healthiest for us. I've talked about mental and emotional health in other podcasts as well. I just think this lifestyle is so much better for you, and certainly physically. So what's a typical day for me doing that? Like you see what I do on the channel, but there's a lot of hours in a day that I'm not filming, obviously. I'm you know, splitting wood, checking the property, hauling water, working on projects, walking the dog. But uh even when I was living differently, when I was in an office in a city, I had to be intentional about it. I had to walk where I could instead of drive, had to take the stairs instead of the elevator escalator, had to get out at outside at lunch, go for a walk, had to find ways to keep the body doing what it was actually built to do. And most of you are not going to have the leisure time, I call it leisure, but the work time that I have because I'm specifically working on something and I don't have to go to a job. So you will have to be more intentional about this than I am.

Grounding And Barefoot Time

SPEAKER_00 19:46

Speaking about walking and getting outside, I want to talk about something that sounds a little bit out there, but I've come to take very seriously, especially in the last couple of years, as my wife has educated more me more about this, even though it's intuitive. I should have probably did know this intuitively, but anyway, it's grounding. Just putting your bare feet on the earth. The idea is that the earth carries a negative electric charge and like an electrical charge and direct skin contact allows your body to absorb free electrons that act as antioxidants, which neutralize the positive charge free radicals that contribute to inflammation and cellular damage, major issue for most people or many people. The research on this is early but genuinely interesting. People report, including me, reduced inflammation, better sleep, lower stress, improved circulation, and the mechanism, electronic transfers through direct contact with the earth is physically plausible. It's not magic, it's physics. Like look it up. It's it's it's serious. And I get grounded through all the work that I do. I'm always like touching the ground, kneeling on the ground, and um, you know, working on with trees, all kinds of ways I get grounded, but physically easy is for most people, just to step outside in the morning, get grounded. So I also walk barefoot on the land when I can. I've been doing it that a lot over the last few years, hiking even like long distance and even up mountains, barefoot, no shoes. In the summer, that's pretty easy. In the winter, up here in the north, I find other ways to do it. Um I've walked outside in minus 30 Fahrenheit and bur like actually damaged my feet. It was not good, so I stopped doing that, and I tend to just uh like hold on the trees and stuff as I'm working on and ground that way. So don't do that. Uh the point is though, is I treat it as intentional. I could literally go out of my way to make sure I do it just just uh as every day. It's not just nice to have, but it's something worth making

Sunlight And Cutting Daily Toxins

SPEAKER_00 21:50

time for. Another thing, maybe it's difficult to do this in the city, but sunlight's so important. Like beyond morning light for sleep, I try to get real sun exposure through. Throughout the day. Not through glass, not with sunscreen blocking it, actual sunlight on my skin. I believe, like we were told, wear sunscreen all the time. I've been everywhere, you know, especially over the last several years in the south, in the north, outside all of the time. I st I haven't worn sunscreen in three years. And before that, it was just when I was out on the water. And I have not had a sunburn. And I think it's mainly because I cut out seed oils and some of the other toxins I was eating and not stopped putting toxins on my skin. And I don't burn. Anyway, again, do your research. Don't take my word for it. Don't go out there and get burnt and potentially get skin cancer because you listen to me. Go and do some research on it, figure it out for yourself. But anyway, that's my belief. Your body produces a vitamin D through sun exposure, keep in mind. It's a compound that's less of a vitamin and more of a hormone, actually. And it's involved in immune function, mood, bone health, and a long list of other critical processes. And most people in northern latitudes are deficient of vitamin D deficient, especially in winter. And it really does show might be the cause of uh sad seasonal affective disorder. So I'm not saying go out and get burnt. I'm just saying get outside, get some sun on your skin, at least part of the day. And you know, try to avoid the hottest and sunniest part of the day when you might get burnt. And don't immediately reach for the sunscreen every time you step outdoors, though. Your body was designed for sunlight, so a reasonable amount of it is not your enemy. And told otherwise, and you probably have too. Oh, here's another important thing that we've been working on for years, but especially lately, and that's avoiding toxins. Someone tends to raise eyebrows, but anyway, hear me out. We live in a world that's absolutely saturated with synthetic chemicals in our in our food, in our water, our air, and our clothing. This is the part I want to focus on, what we put directly on our skin, because that's obviously what we're going to absorb the most. Like our deodorant. Your skin is not a barrier that stops everything. It's permeable. What you put on it gets into you. And most conventional personal care products, especially deodorants, sunscreens, lotions, bug sprays, aftershaves, are full of compounds that your body was never designed to process. And I always use antiperspirant because I sweat a lot. Because I eat a lot of salt too, which is something I'll talk about in the future, but the importance of that. But being in an office wearing a suit, I sweat a lot. So I wore and used antiperspirant, which is full of aluminum, which is bad for you. Again, do your do your research. And the reason is conventional antiperspirants typically contain aluminum compounds that plug sweat glass to stop you from sweating. And sweating is a natural detox mechanism. So blocking it chronically with a compound that absorbs into the skin near lymph nodes is something I've decided I don't want to do. Most conventional skincare products are similarly loaded with pyramids, phthalates, synthetic fragrances, fragrances, petroleum derivatives. These are endocrine disruptors. Again, bad news. They interfere with your hormonal system. The skin absorbs them readily, and the cumulative load over years of daily use is what we're thinking hard about. And as you get older, like I said, I'm 56, and who knows, and maybe they're going to live another 40 years with the way technology's going. It accumulates, and bioaccumulation is serious for a number of reasons, but the longer we live, the more we bioaccumulate toxins. Not just us, but our food does the same thing, which is why you typically try to eat a little bit lower on the food chain. Anyway, I've over I've simplified what I put in my body significantly. If I can't understand the ingredient list or wouldn't be comfortable eating it, literally. It just doesn't go on my skin. Bug spray, you saw again recently I made some homemade bug spray. I'm trying, it's so hard. Like I work outside and the bugs can be brutal. And when it's hot and I can't wear or so uncomfortable wearing a lot of clothing to give me bug protection. I need something to keep them off me. So, you know, you've seen, like I said, bugs are a reality here. I've learned to use other products and I've moved away from DEET-based sprays in particular, because DEET's a potent neurotoxin, very effective, like extremely effective for bug repellent. And I would use it where the risk from the bug itself or the disease the bug carries is greater than the risk of the DEET. Um, I might use it in that case, but it works by interfering with the nervous system and insects. There's evidence it does the same to hours with the repeated exposure. So I try to use natural alternatives, which there's some links on my website and on my videos where you can see what I use, so you can try making it yourself or or buy it. Uh, I can give some links for that as well if you ask for me, ask me for them. Um they require more applic reapplication, but I'd rather deal with that than the absorbing neurotoxins through my skin all summer, especially this time of year of spring. I'm filming or I'm uh recording this early June.

Clean Water And Smart Filtering

SPEAKER_00 27:20

Uh clean water is another thing we really focus on. Clear, filtered, non-chlorinated water. This is one I feel pretty strongly about. Uh, chlorine in municipal water is there for a reason. It kills pathogens and makes water safe to distribute. I understand that, but chlorine also kills beneficial gut bacteria. Microbiome is a it's foundational to your immune system. Uh again, we'll talk about that too, your gut bacteria in a future video, why we eat so much fermented food. Um, anyways, foundational to your immune system, your removal, your digestion, your overall health. Drinking chlorinated water every day is a low grade of assault on it. And um, there's a lot of studies showing or telling, or yeah, proving why what's it called, fluoride is not good for you as well. So again, do your research uh on that. I filter all of my water. Uh we're on a well, actually, the water's so we have a well, two wells, like dug, or not dug, uh drilled wells. One's 50 feet deep, one's 250 feet deep, just for redundancy. We only use the 50 foot deep one, but if it ever got contaminated or ran out, we can switch over to the 250. And then we have the creek, which is not great water. I have to really filter that and boil it. And I didn't once and got gyardia, so try to avoid that. Um, but we have a really pristine spring water right on the edge of our property, a spring, I mean, like an artesian spring coming out of the ground that feeds that creek just below my cabin, actually. And that's uh been tested by some local hunters on and off for for years, like 50 years, and it is safe. So that's what we do. Spring water is the best because it's full of minerals and things that are good for you instead of bad for you. So, anyway, if you have access, whatever water you have access to, try to uh test it. And if you can, if it's not um, you don't want to filter all the good stuff out of it, but if it's not great to begin with, make sure you're filtering it well. And if you're on municipal water, get a quality filter just to remove the stuff that you don't want. It's fine that they've treated it and it's all you know free of pathogens or any other harmful uh chemicals or toxins or whatever. So try to filter those chemicals that they use out before it gets into your body. So you still get the safety, but you're not ingesting

Unplugging As A Biological Need

SPEAKER_00 29:49

toxins. Here's something I feel strongly about. Here's what I want to really start sharing with you more is the importance of unplugging, unwinding, and and reconnecting. And I'm gonna explain, uh I'm gonna keep hammering this these points on because I feel like the way the world's gone with AI and robotics, digitization of everything. I think our true nature is powerful and we can't um bypass that. We can't ignore it. So unwind, unplug, unwind, reconnect with nature, reconnect with what matters to you. This is the one that really ties everything together. Because we are not machines. We're not designed to be productive and stimulated and switched on all the time. We need rest that goes deeper than sleep. We need to genuinely unplug from the noise, the news, the screen, the constant input, and reconnect with what with what we actually are. I think one of the quiet gifts of this life is that it builds this in naturally, the life that I'm living, I mean, and hopefully you are, and hopefully you're planning to or want to. When you're out in the land, really out there, away from the Wi-Fi and the notifications, something shifts. The nerve nervous system down regulates the background hum of anxiety and quiets. You remember what it feels like to be just somewhere doing something with your hands, not tracked or measured or optimized like that. I'm telling you, that's to me is uh it's not a luxury. It's actually a biological need. Time and nature lowers cortisol, reduces blood pressure, improves immune function, and restores the kind of focused attention that screens deplete, like computer and phone screens. The Japanese call what I'm talking about, Shin Shinrin Yoku, Yoku, which is for translated as forest bathing. Um, you don't need a name for it, just go out and do it. Get out there and breathe in those terpenes from the forest. For me, it looks like this, like deliberate time each day where I'm not working, not producing, not consuming, just outside. Sometimes I'm walking, sometimes I'm sitting on the water, sometimes I'm just watching the light change on the trees. That sounds simple because it is. And it does more for my mental and physical state than most things I could put in a supplement. And when it gets hot, warm out right now at this time of year, and you get on a south-facing slope, and the the uh horse or strong sun is baking those pine needles and releasing those terpenes, man, that's like therapy to me. Uh, the deeper point here is about reconnecting with your true nature, and I mean that literally, you're like your your actual biological nature, what you actually are under the layers of modern conditioning. You're an animal. You're a sophisticated, remarkable one, but you're still an animal. Your nervous system was calibrated to it. The sounds of the forest, the feel of the earth, the rhythm of the daylight and the dark, these aren't just pleasant. They're actually regulatory. The part of how your system is supposed to run, your nervous system, your biological systems are supposed to run. When you cut yourself off from all of that, when you live entirely indoors under artificial light, on artificial schedules, insulated from the land by concrete and glass and rubber soles, something and you go offline. You can feel it even if you can't name it. A low-level wrongness, a restlessness that no amount of productivity or consumption seems to fix. For me, though, the fix is simpler than we've made it. Just go outside, take your shoes off, look at the sky, look at the sun, slow down, remember who you are, um, reconnect.

The Simple Maintenance Checklist

SPEAKER_00 33:29

Anyway, I'll bring it back to where I started here and kind of getting long and rambly. Your body, physical health, your body is your most important tool. Like any tool performs at the level you maintain it. You can't cut corners on the basics and expect to show up fully for the life you're trying to build. Sleep like it matters, eat real food, move all day, get your feet on the ground and your face in the sun, know what you're putting on and in your body, and build real rest into your days, not as a reward for working hard enough, but as a non-negotiable part of how you operate. None of this is complicated despite what people tell you, despite what the system tells you. You don't need to be on the system. You don't need to be. Oh, well, I can go down some dangerous paths here anyway. Most of it's just returning to what humans have always done before we got so clever about replacing it, replacing nature, replacing our natural way of being. You were built for this. We should act like it. Anyway, that's it. That's it for this episode. Thanks for being here. If this episode was useful, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Uh please subscribe, follow, do whatever. Go to the website, go to the YouTube channel, uh, subscribe to the podcast. But anyway, I just appreciate it. You guys being here, and I just feeling so rejuvenated and excited about sharing more with you and helping people on their path. Anyway, that's it. Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to seeing you back here at the cabin next time. Take care.