How Cold Immersion, Breath Work, Yoga, And Meditation Can Build Lasting Sobriety

Cravings don’t wait for perfect conditions, so we need plans that work in real life. I sit down with coach Jason Lyle to unpack a grounded, nontraditional approach to addiction treatment that starts with the body and rewires the brain: cold water immersion, breath work, meditation, and yoga. This is recovery as nervous system training—practical tools that widen the gap between urge and action and put your prefrontal cortex back in the driver’s seat.

Jason shares his path from ministry through sex addiction and despair to a repeatable method that helps men regulate first, then choose. We break down the science in plain language: why ice baths create a safe, high‑intensity rehearsal for impulse control; how Wim Hof‑style breathing builds micro‑seconds of space during cravings; and how a five‑minute, no‑frills meditation practice teaches you to see thoughts and let them go. We also show where yoga fits in—not acrobatics, but simple positions that let the body signal the brain and release tension before it becomes a decision you regret.

Across the hour, we map a daily stack that takes 20–30 minutes and delivers fast results, plus what to expect at the two‑month plateau when the “new normal” feels unfamiliar. You’ll learn the three pillars Jason uses—honesty, curiosity, and self‑love—along with on‑demand regulation moves: a ten‑second breath reset, when to grab a cold shower, and why hard exercise can dump stress hormones when grounding isn’t enough. We also talk identity shifts, rewriting shame narratives with simple journaling and affirmations, and how small choices compound into a life you actually want to defend.

If you’re a clinician, coach, or anyone navigating addiction, this conversation offers concrete steps and clear language to share with patients and peers. Explore Jason’s resources at thesacredgrit.com and his Sacred Grit Podcast for guided practices. If this resonated, follow the show, leave a review, and share it with someone who could use a stronger toolkit for recovery. Your next calm breath might be the start of a different day.

To contact Dr. Grover: ammadeeasy@fastmail.com

Transcript

A Nontraditional Path To Recovery

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Addiction Medicine Made Easy Podcast. Hey there, I'm Dr. Casey Grover, an addiction medicine doctor based on California's Central Coast. For 14 years, I worked in the emergency department, seeing countless patients struggling with addiction. Now I'm on the other side of the fight, helping people rebuild their lives when drugs and alcohol take control. Thanks for tuning in. Let's get started. Today's episode is on a non-traditional approach to addiction treatment. So as you all know, I am a board-certified addiction medicine physician, and we have three basic modalities for treating addiction therapy, group meetings, and medication. And I got an email a few weeks ago from a gentleman named Jason Lyle, and he wanted to share how he uses cold water immersion, breath work, yoga, and meditation to help the men he works with get and stay sober. And here's my perspective on treating addiction. If it works, do it. I tell this to my patients all the time. If one of my patients told me that putting mayonnaise on their left ear kept them sober, I would go buy them a jar of mayonnaise, meaning that I don't really care if someone uses an unconventional approach to sobriety. If it works and keeps them sober, I am in support. So you bet that when I got Jason's email, I wanted to learn more about his work. And so we connected for a podcast episode. His approach is grounded in brain science and made great sense to me. A quick heads up there is some adult language in this episode. And with that, let's get started. Happy Monday and happy holidays. So glad to have you join me. Why don't we start with you just telling me who you are and what you do?

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Yeah, man. My name is Jason Lyle. I run a nonprofit called Adventures in Recovery for Men. It's a recovery program based off adventure. So we rock, climb, mountain bike, hike, go hunting, fishing, all manner of things. But it's a men's alumni group. And we have once a month adventure. Sometimes it's outside. We went to a Himalayan bowl bath last month. So we do a little bit of everything to expose guys to mindful practices to control their addiction impulses. And then my personal business is sacred grit. It's one-on-one coaching for spiritual coaching and addiction. And then I also do retreats. So that's who I am and what I do.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

What brought you to this work?

From Pastor To Rock Bottom To Purpose

SPEAKER_00 2:36

I battled a sex addiction for the majority of my life. I was adopted at birth. I was 20 days old when my adopted parents got me and always struggled with a sex addiction, which I became a pastor in 2004. And so sex addiction and pastor does not go well together. And lost my job in 2017 as a result, and was planning the end of my own life in 2021. And when I met a man named Rob Gent, and Rob introduced me to everything that I do now, and it completely changed my life. It's a central nervous system regulation, impulse control through mindful practices. But also it's just about stress hormone release. And that's we can get into that. Men tend to need to do something with their stuff. So you know, talk therapy is great. And you and I just talked a little bit about the modes of recovery, recovery meetings and talk therapy and things of that nature. But when you start giving a man the ability to understand why he's doing what he's doing and what he can take and do with that trigger mechanism, that impulse, if you say, Hey man, I've got something else you can do with that, it really speaks to their soul. And so when I learned that, it changed my life. And as a result, started Adventures in Recovery, and then that led into Sacred Grid and the Sacred Grid Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

So you and I were talking before we started. For me, as a board certified addiction doctor, people ask me, How do I treat my addiction? And we have really three things talk therapy, mutual support groups, and medication. And you're talking about something that doesn't fall into those. Let's say I refer you a new client, male, history of alcohol use. How do you get started with the work that you do with that sort of client?

Honesty, Curiosity, And Self‑Love Framework

Cold Water As Impulse Training

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Yeah. So I sit down with them usually and just hear their story. And you probably know what I'm about to say, but I'll say it anyhow. Like most of addiction is working to cover up some underlying ripple, right? Childhood trauma, whatever it might be. So we dig in there and find that. It's been my experience that the three modes of recovery through this type of work is honesty, curiosity, and self-love. So honestly, where am I? And in a 12-step tradition, we'd call that rock bottom. Where am I? What is the truth? I'm drinking a fifth of liquor and 12 beers a night, or I'm shooting meth to wake up and shooting heroin to go to bed, or I'm watching porn for four out of the 24 hours of a day. Whatever, where are you really at? And then the curiosity piece being much more about how did I get here? What were the pieces that brought me to this place to where now this is what I'm doing? And so when those two parts start to dance with each other, and we start seeing, oh, okay, so there's a narrative here, there's a story here, there's something here that is causing these two lanes of traffic to run up and down the same track, parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous system. And we need to break that pattern. That's where self-love comes in. That's can I love myself enough to start breaking these patterns? Because most men I work with, they're addicted to shame, is what they're addicted to. And so they get locked into this cycle where if I can continue to be the victim of my own decisions, then I can continue to have my own decisions because the victim allows me to stay there. I'm just an addict. If I'm just an addict every time I go to use, then I have the same mechanism in me already to say, see, there, you're already an addict. So it just perpetuates. So I take guys and I say, let's just start with this basic assumption that you in and of yourself are perfect and healthy and whole and loved. That's who you are in the center of your being. That's tough, but you know, when we start at least saying, Let's stand on that premise, like even though there are these things that I have done, the things that I have done do not define who I am. They just define the things that I've done. Now that's pretty hard for most guys to hold into their body because they start having panic attacks or cravings or whatever. So I start with cold water every single time. And I've seen guys drop into an ice bath and go, what? What's the big deal? And I've seen other guys make it to their kneecaps and come unhinged. And I had to get my arms around them and literally get them to regulate through me. So everything in between. But the cold water begins to let some men for the first time feel not only their triggers or their impulses, but also feel their body. And what I try to do through that cold water immersion is I start teaching them how to feel an impulse, which you know, is in cold water, it's fight or flight. And I would argue that all impulse comes from that space through myelination, but that they would eventually be able to go, oh, wait a minute. I can just sit with this long enough and I'll be okay. If I can sit here long enough, I'll be okay. And so from there, we generally go into breath work. I use the Wim Hoff method because it taps into the autonomic nervous system, which is where we see those impulses lighting up in the brain. And then we use yoga and meditation. So it's like the cold water and the breath work are these big triggers, like the big moments. I want to pull into the liquor store, I want to text my dealer. The yoga and meditation gets down into the nuances of the micro decisions. How do I make these each small decision that compounds into the bigger decisions? And the self-love pieces, I just direct them toward. Man, if you get up every single morning and the first thing you do is do something that makes you feel good about yourself, feel like you loved yourself first. You are setting a ramp for the rest of your day that really puts you above your trigger. It puts you above your addiction because you started this morning, whatever that is, hop in a cold shower, do some yogurt, go for a walk, read a book, journal, whatever that is. How do I start my day in a manner that makes me love me first? And now I can start building upon that self-love. Because really, addiction is about things getting out of balance. So that's like you you start this addictive cycle, and it gets ramped up so big it's like a monster living in your chest. But it's just because you fed the monster longer than you fed the person that you really are, that perfect human being that you're created to be.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

So you mentioned the four things. We'll get into each of them: cold water, meditation, breath work, and yoga. So I tend to think of things very medically around cold water. Is it around stress tolerance? Is that what you're trying to train them?

The Brain Science Of Ice Baths

SPEAKER_00 9:03

Yeah, man. So the from a clinical standpoint, we're releasing stress hormone, right? We get in that cold water, we get the stress hormone release, we get the cortisol, all of a sudden our body's completely stressed. So it's a little bit about stress control, but it's more about literally just the absolute common sense of if I could get in the cold water and I can feel it, and that's the key. There's a lot of guys that can tolerate it. They're like, I can just white knuckle and stay with it. But what I teach is stay with it, feel it. And if they're in the shower, put your hands on the wall and feel the cold water hit your back. And don't just feel it in a way that tolerates it. Feel it in a way that goes, oh, wait a minute. Like I can feel this discomfort and I can feel it in my brain. And then I encourage them to imagine that their prefrontal cortex is attaching to the amygdala and that they're closing down their capacity to be able to come back to reason because that's literally what they're doing. You know that scientifically, right? Like they are literally setting off a fight or flight system, flipping their lid, the prefrontal cortex goes offline, the amygdala is firing. Get out of this cold water, get out of this cold water. About 20 or 25 seconds, they access the prefrontal cortex, they get that rational thought back and they go, huh? Wow, I can stay here a little bit longer. Now, when they do that in repetition over and over and over every day, I tell them it's like running a marathon. You just have to run. You have to do this every day. And we start to see across the board more and more control over the impulse. We get reports back of my godman, like I don't even feel like the same person throughout the day. I get all this access into the autonomic nervous system. So that's the cold water. There is physiological, there's tons of research out there, but for me, it's less about the brown fat and all the hormone release. It's really just about getting gritty with your impulse control. It's yeah, I can dance this dance. And it's with as with all mindfulness, it's about non-striving, right? It's just like with meditation. When you get in there, guys go, I can just stay here. I'm tough. That's not it. It's I'm not gonna push against it. I'm just gonna let it be here. And when guys get into that position of just letting it be here, it's almost like they are able to go, wow, if I can do that, I can do all manner of things. And so it's really a lot about that trigger control for the cold water.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

So I'm really interested to talk with you about breath work and meditation because I myself have tried them for various things and I couldn't get either one to work. So let's start with meditation because I tell my patients all the time, if you can meditate great, I personally cannot. So let's imagine that I'm your client. I've tried to meditate too many times to count and I just can't do it. What am I missing?

Meditation Reframed For Skeptics

SPEAKER_00 11:51

Yeah, nine times out of ten, guys are beginning to miss the point of meditation, right? So meditation, I think, and especially in a Western Christian culture, with most people that I work with, they see meditation as like this woo-woo trying to connect to something, right? But meditation, the way that I teach it, meditation is about being able to see your thoughts and let them go. And so meditation is about coming back to the present moment. Here's the thing, man. The only place on the face of this planet that anybody has control, bar none, is right now. There is no other place where you have control. This is it. You don't have control of the future. You certainly don't have control of the past. You have this right here. So meditation lets us see these thoughts that come in that are either drifting forward or drifting backward and go, oh, wait a minute, that's not here, and come back to here. The breath is a grounding thing. So it I have people use their breath. There's other people that have them use contact points to like where your butt hits your seat or where your back hits your seat. But the biggest thing I think that I would tell somebody is you have to start small, like five minutes. People jump into meditation and go, I did 30 minutes this morning. Damn, I don't do 30 minutes. I lose productivity in there somewhere. But when you're taking the cold water and breath work and you add the meditation, the cold water and the breath work gives you a break, a pause. And sometimes that's a nanosecond, right? To go, I really want to use. And so that space between thought and action, we start to widen that window of tolerance of discomfort. The meditation gives you a booty to go, I see it. There it is. And hold it long enough to go, ah, I see what that is and let it go. So it becomes much more about training the brain to see a thought, hold a thought, and let that thought go instead of it being like a woo trying to connect. I'm gonna put on wooden beads and connect to myself. Not that I'm making fun of those things, those things are beautiful as well. But for what I do, it's about being able to see a thought, hold a thought, catch a thought, and go, oh, wait a minute, I don't have to act upon that. So usually if I can give guys the way to see it in that manner, to say you're trying to literally take your thought captive. I don't know if your audience has any Christian background, but that's a verse in the Bible. Take every thought captive and make it obedient. That's what I'll use with them. Like you're literally grabbing that thought and going, oh, wait, that is definitely not what I want to do. And that's where the self-love comes in. It's like having the capacity to tip that scale to go, no, that's not gonna lead me to where I want to be as a human being. So yeah, meditation not so much as like a woo-woo way to connect to your inner self, although that all that is a byproduct. But meditation is the ability to go, oh, I see that moment and I can let that go.

SPEAKER_01 14:40

So do you use meditation for your clients daily and as needed? In other words, I'm gonna daily sit down and work with my thoughts, but I'm having a craving. I need to take five minutes and meditate and understand that thought before I act on it.

On‑Demand Regulation: Breath, Cold, Movement

SPEAKER_00 14:53

No, so they do that as a daily practice. So it'd be like somebody going in a CrossFit gym and they're gonna hit a workout. Meditation is like reps. Daily, when they feel that, I had this little breath thing I do where they take a deep breath in, then take another sip and then let it go, and then close their eyes and feel their body in contact with wherever they are and ground themselves. 10 seconds. And if it doesn't work, they go back and do it again. If it doesn't work, they go back and do it again. If they really get into a bad pinch, I have them get in cold water. That's how they'll regulate. And if they just can't get to cold water, and I've told guys before, stop and get an ice pack and put it on the center of your chest on your vagus nerve if you have to. But that regulating piece, 20 minutes of hard exercise. Some guys, if they really just can't get regulated, I'm like, dude, go find a steep set of stairs and just go up them for 20 minutes. Because all that part is stress hormone release. Like once once they get that sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system rolling in that that circular motion and they get locked into that addictive cycle, as I just gotta have it, I gotta have it, I gotta have it. There's no coming back from that unless they release the stress hormone. And grounding will work if they catch it early enough. But if they get too far gone, yeah, they're gonna have to get in cold water, go for a run or something to break that stress hormone and release it. And that way they can get their prefrontal cortex reattached to the amygdala.

Wim Hof Method And Micro‑Gaps

SPEAKER_01 16:17

Let me just make sure I get this right. So as you start, cold water is a first piece, stress tolerance, building resilience, getting the prefrontal cortex going again. Meditation is about really being mindful of the present, and your first step to I'm stressed, I'm craving is breath work. How many times a day would your guys do breath work?

SPEAKER_00 16:38

So I use the Wim Hof method, and I have them do three rounds every day. And the Wim Hof method is you take 30 deep breaths as deep as you can and let them go. So it's a and I'm just I'm flooding my body with oxygen. Now, what that's doing as I take those 30 breaths, I am telling my prefrontal cortex, I am loading my body up with oxygen. I'm getting oxygenated. Breath number 30, I let all the air out of my body and I hold. Now, when I hold, I put my sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, and I'm in a freeze, or I'm down regulated. I'm holding my breath, everything's calm. I am completely regulated. At some point in that breath hold, your autonomic nervous system goes, hey dude, we need to breathe. You can tap in your prefrontal cortex and go, not yet. We just took 30 deep breaths. We have plenty of oxygen in our body, and the amygdala will calm. You can literally feel this process in your brain. After a few seconds go by, you feel that impulse again. That's the amygdala. Hey man, we got to breathe. That's your fight or flight. The prefrontal cortex can go, yeah, but I think we're okay a little bit longer. When you get in there, you're literally negotiating with your autonomic nervous system. And you know the science that how the myelination process of the addictive triggers, it wires into the autonomic nervous system. That's why so many guys are like, I just can't help myself. When we get into breath work, we start learning how to help ourselves. We get that autonomic nervous system and the prefrontal cortex communicating with one another. Now, we're talking nanoseconds, dude. I'm not talking like somebody's holding their breath for an extra 20 seconds, but it is about just the tiniest little gap of space to go, oh, wait, I can stay here. Now, if the cold water is about setting off big triggers, the breath work is about working in the nuance. So if I had to think about someone who's, I really want to text my dealer, right? The cold water's, oh, hang on a minute, I can hang on to that. Then after that, they may regulate themselves through the breath that I told you about earlier. But what they're really doing is accessing these reps in the morning. They're going, oh, I know what this territory feels like. It's I haven't ran a marathon in 10 years, but I could go run one tomorrow because I'm in good shape and my brain remembers what it feels like to go 26.2 miles. I know that I can. I know that I can do that. There's no doubt in my mind. It's the same thing with these practices. Guys are getting this anchor point to go back to and go, oh, wait, I can do this. I know what this area feels like. I know what this discomfort feels like. And so the breath work starts to give that notch, is what I think of it as like I can drop into that groove and I can stay out of the other one, which is the one that gets me in trouble. Neuropathways and brain science is what we're rewiring, Samskar and yoga philosophy. So it's like I'm just creating a new way to handle the stress in my brain.

SPEAKER_01 19:37

How does the yoga piece fit in?

Yoga To Give The Body A Voice

SPEAKER_00 19:39

Yeah. So yeah, it's the hardest one because guys are like, I ain't doing yoga. But the yoga piece is about learning how to hear your body. Every single impulse that we have begins in our body. When we have a craving for sugar, it's our body sending a signal up to our brain. It's not our brain sending a signal down to our body. Same thing for methamphetamine. The body goes, I need this. It feels something, it's in The nervous system goes up to the brain. The brain goes, okay, if it's trained to do that, it just goes right to it because that's the neural pathway. Yoga, and even if it's just 10 or 15 minutes of it, yoga is about giving your body a voice. For it doesn't have to be a getting in all these wild positions. Those are fun to get in the poses that everybody enjoys doing. But it can be something as simple as a forward fold, man. It's literally about giving your body a voice to send the signal up to your brain that goes, we need to get out of this. And your brain goes, No, you don't. We're sitting in the living room floor, brother. You're fine. And to send that signal back down into the body and the body go, oh, I release. And you start playing with that tension in the different parts of the body. Maybe it's in the low back, maybe it's in the hamstrings, maybe it's in the hips, maybe it's in the shoulders, maybe it's in the neck, maybe it's anywhere. And it could be done sitting in a chair, but the yoga is all about giving the body a voice. So the way the whole thing works together, you're literally creating a relationship. The cold water sets off this primal impulse. I've got to run, I've got to get out of here. The breath work gives you the nuance between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. The meditation gives you the ability to grab the thoughts and to be able to hold them long enough to make a loving decision toward yourself. And the yoga just simply gives that upload information. So we're creating these pathways. We're letting the body and the brain communicate to where we're no longer either living straight from the prefrontal cortex out of reason or straight from the body out of impulse. Most guys will say to me, I know I don't need to do this, but I just can't help myself. I'm like, yeah, dude, of course. It's because your body is sending signals up. Your brain's not, it's not equipped to process. Your brain has a wired away to give the body what it thinks that it needs, but the body needs to be regulated, and the brain can regulate the body. So it's just connecting those two things back together. It's really simple at the end of the day, but it's complex because you have to do it over and over and over and over to see the results out of it. And Americans, we love our pills. Give me a quick fix. I'll take that over having to suffer. But for the most part, my guys are spending somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes a day doing a very short practice, hopping in a cold shower. I have one of my guys, I call him a client. He's not really a client, he's one of my best friends. He lost his son in a tragic ATV accident, flipped over the ATV and killed his son, 16 years old. And he just couldn't get his life put back together. He just depression, anxiety, just didn't really have an addiction, but life was falling apart. And I was like, come, let's give it a try. And we got that prefrontal cortex attached to the amygdala. And he was able to go, oh, I can see the response I'm having is 100% logical, but I don't have to have it. And he started learning how to regulate himself. And so it's not just addiction. We see it work with all manner of mental health issues with men.

Integrating The Four Practices

SPEAKER_01 22:53

You talked about regulating the autonomic nervous system. Is it more about decreasing the amount of sympathetic fight or flight time and increasing parasympathetic calm time? Or is it more just an awareness of understanding when people are feeling what?

SPEAKER_00 23:08

Yeah, it's a more awareness of when people are feeling what and knowing if it's rational that you're there, right? Because if you're feeling fight or flight and you never know that's what you're feeling, and somebody goes, no, dude, that's fight or flight, and go, oh shit, that's fight or flight. Okay, I get that. And you can learn how to downregulate. So yeah, it's so much more about awareness than it is about control. Because if I can say I'm in fight or flight and then ground myself for a moment and go, there's no reason for me to be here, I can downregulate. Or if I'm downregulated when I really need to be upregulated, I can go, oh, wait a minute. I should probably access here and move forward in being proactive and making better decisions. But most of my guys, they live in so much reactive stimula, right? Something happens, they react. Something happens, they react. I try to teach them how to proact. If you get the tools in place and then you start to learn the landscape, before you ever get into the thick of the battle, you already know what you're doing when you get there. It's just about being prepared before I ever step into that process. So that would be the same thing. Parasympathetic, sympathetic. If I know where I'm at and what at what point I am in that process, I can grab that thought. There's meditation and go, oh, wait a minute, I know exactly where I am. Let me get myself regulated.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

Is that then part of the cold water immersion that it allows people a place to feel a stress and feel their response and understand what they're feeling? Is that part of the cold water immersion then?

Awareness Over Control In ANS

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Yeah, and regulate it, right? So it's not only can I feel it, not only can I understand it, oh wait a minute, I can actually downregulate sitting in this cold water. A lot of guys start with cold showers just because they're a little easier. They're actually harder in this process on who does a cold shower on the regular. They it's a little harder to get downregulated. If you get into an ice bath, you're able to just sit still with the cold and you downregulate a little easier, about 20 to 30 seconds. The cold shower, not quite as easy because you're having to move around to get yourself cold. But yeah, that's exactly what it is. It's like I feel it, I can name it, and I can downregulate it. And when I do that, I'm like, okay, I got this now.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

So it almost seems like then the other thing that you do meditation, breath work, and yoga, it's that same thing of now I'm in a more parasynthetic state and I need to know what I'm doing and feeling. Does that sound right?

SPEAKER_00 25:33

That is exactly right. You're actually controlling it's the proactive piece. It's you're actually controlling your dysregulation, seeing it and regulating it on your own. So the tools in the toolbox are there. The thing about living our lives as happy and whole human beings means that I can live my life in control of my internal world, which is the only thing that I can control. Most people, when the external world impacts their internal world, they have a handful of reactions: anger, use, sugar, a cigarette, caffeine, whatever that may be, I have this external, I have to respond. I teach men how to go. No, I'm in command of my internal world. I have my internal world under control. So whatever happens out here, while I need to respond to it, and those responses may be hard. That doesn't mean that I the other thing, men don't like feeling emotion. I'm like, dude, just cry. Like it's no big deal. Just cry. And if you get it out, now you know what it feels like instead of just pushing it over here so that later on you got to pour a little alcohol on it. Just get it out. And once it's out, now you can say, oh, there it is. And now I can regulate it. It's why so many people say, I feel so good after I cry. Or sometimes I'll take guys on hiking trips and we'll just scream. We'll just sit there and think of a very cathartic moment or a moment in our life where we felt anger or fear and just scream and they'll go, God, that feels so good. I'm like, sure it does. You released all that stress hormone. You feel great. You feel amazing. You did something with it instead of pouring beer on top of it later on tonight. So it's yeah, it's very common sense. Just the application of it is a little bit difficult to get people to do it.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

How long before you start working with someone with this methodology, do you see significant results?

Practicing Downregulation In Cold

SPEAKER_00 27:15

Immediate. As a matter of fact, they usually see results in the first few days, and it's about the two-month mark where they'll have a little bit of, oh, I'm not seeing the results I was seeing, and I'll have to go, let's go back and recap. But all that usually is at the two-month mark is they've just reached a point to where they found a new normal, or the brain itself starts to want to go back and root into that old person. And because most guys don't know what it feels like to be whole. So I'm teaching them, no, dude, this is what it feels like to be a man. This is what it feels like to be happy. This is what it feels like to have joy. I don't know, dude. Like I feel all off. I'm like, of course you do, because you're happy. You I don't know that you know what that actually feels like. And you guys will feel guilty. I feel guilty, all the things I've done in my life, all the all of them. I'm like, listen, man, that's where forgiveness comes in. Like, you gotta let that shit go. You can't hang on to that because that's what drug you there in the first place. The first time that people start getting to that poor, pitiful me, I'll tell them that's what will drag you right back to where you were, because you're justifying your actions by saying that's who I was, but it's not who you are now. Yeah, but as far as result immediate, every guy I have leave a retreat when they'll send text back, dude. I am a different person. And it's true, and it worked for me immediately. The first time I ever tried cold water, I was like, holy crap, this is exactly what I've been looking for. And that's almost four years ago, and it's just been a beautiful ride ever since.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

It seems like the meditation bit is where guys can work on those emotions of guilt and trying to bring that back to being in the present and focusing on positivity. Is that how you recommend that they deal with some of these negative emotions as they think about what they've been and maybe not deserving that they feel happy or something like that?

Owning The Internal World

How Fast Results Show Up

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Yeah, we do. We use meditation, but a lot of that comes down to just get right back to just a good conversation. The thing that starts to happen when the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala connect to one another is that line of communication has to have new language around it. And that's affirmation, that's gratitude, that's having a journal, that's having a conversation with yourself. And men notoriously hate a journal, but I tell them if you get one paragraph done, man, you're great. Get two sentences done. But that conversation, because you're rewiring that narrative, if that upload and download information from the brain to the body has constantly been negative, you got to get some new positive talk in there. And I'm not talking about, rah, we're gonna all jump up together and talk about how amazing we are. But I am talking about being able to grab that. Oh, I'm just a piece of, no, I don't think so. I'm a good man. And the thing I'll ask people, I'll say, what if you just started to believe you're perfect? And they'll go, Well, I know I'm not. Well, tell me why you're not. You don't know the things I've done. Like, that's the things you've done. And then they'll say, You don't know the things I'm capable of. Like, that's the things you might be capable of. But tell me why right now, sitting where you are in your chair, you're not perfect. And they'll usually have a look like, I can't tell you that. I'm like, Yeah, you're right, you can't, because you are. In this moment, you're perfectly who you are. And the next decision that you make right now is painting what your future is going to look like. So if you can grab that decision and go, oh, let me look at this before I make it, the small ones, walking to the refrigerator and grabbing a water instead of a beer, or going to a restaurant and ordering healthy food instead of fried food, going for a walk instead of sitting down and binging Netflix, whatever that may be, eating an orange instead of taking a dip, chewing a piece of sugar-free gum instead of smoking a cigarette, whatever that small tiny decision is, every one of those compound on themselves and they'll paint this beautiful life for you. But you it's it's recovery. I tell guys all the time, I'll say, listen, addiction is a choice. They'll say it doesn't feel like one. Yeah, but that doesn't make it any less of one. Just because it doesn't feel like a choice, being sober is a choice, and nobody can make that choice for you except for you. And if you think that you're gonna go from using heroin on a regular basis to deciding to not use heroin without stacking that small decisions on top of one another to get you there, you're already setting yourself up, man, because the strong pull to go back to the drug is stronger than your decisions that you've made. So we're talking about building decision-making resilience to be able to go, oh, okay, this is what it feels like to go for a walk. This is what it feels like to eat fruit instead of junk food. This is what it feels like to have a diet that makes my body feel good. This is what it feels like to be strong, healthy, whole. And then those decisions go, oh, I don't really even want to use anymore because I know what it feels like to be whole. That makes sense. I think I'm making good sense.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

Now you work with men. Does this work for women as well? I assume, yes, but I just was curious.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Yeah, it does. We've seen it work with women. I just don't work with women because I understand men. And I have worked with some women in the past, and I work with wives. Usually when I have men that they're a couple and they may be struggling through some damage from his decision. So I'll work with them. But yeah, we see it work with women as well. Most women do a lot better. You know, the cold water is a bit of an aggressive thing. It's it speaks to the male brain because it does make a man feel like he's got a little bit of a line of attack. It's hard. I can get in here and get after it. But women do really well with the breath work, really well, and they seem to gravitate toward that a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 32:54

What's what's next on your to-do list as you work on building and improving the work that you do?

Guilt, Affirmations, And Tiny Choices

SPEAKER_00 32:59

Next on the to-do list is just building up the podcast, the Sacred Grit Podcast. It gets all this information out there. I have practices on there, I lead the breath work on there and then just philosophical understanding. And then the one-on-one coaching, trying to grow that platform. But man, my biggest goal in life is to see men heal through this. There's no doubt that it works. And I believe in the 12 steps, I use the 12 steps. As a matter of fact, most of my guys are going through some version of the 12-step recovery program because that's programming the brain to think sober. So it's all about the information for me. As much as I can get it out there, as much as I can do it. And I have to live my life. I have to make a living. And I spend a lot of hours doing this, but that's secondary to me. The primary goal is to get this information out there to help men survive.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

So let's say one of my listeners has a patient in mind that they think could benefit from your approach, or I'm in clinic this whole week. I know some of my patients would be interested. What's the best way to learn more about what you do?

SPEAKER_00 33:59

Theseacredgrit.com. That is the place to go. It's all there. You can reach the podcast, you can see the retreats, the coaching. I don't have a whole lot of information up there just yet. I'm going to start posting blogs here pretty soon, but the podcast is the place to go. The Sacred Grit Podcast and thesacredgrit.com. Both of those spots are going to give you pretty much all you need to know. It's all right there to get done. Where does the name Sacred Grit come from? I sit the pastor for 13 years and I read the Bible all the way through the first time when I was eight years old. And I would not consider myself an evangelical Christian anymore, but it's the platform by which I understand the world. And so just the sacred to me is something bigger than grandfather in the sky. Sacred to me is a sunrise, it's a smile, it's loving somebody deeply. But first of all, the sacred is to love yourself above everything else and begin there. If I can love myself enough to take care of me, then I have something to give the rest of the world. And grit just means that I have the grit to do it, man, because most people, they're really good at loving strangers. I just want to give my life to these strangers, but they suck at loving themselves and certainly their family. So yeah, sacred grit is about having the grit to do what it takes to love yourself, your family, and the people around you.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Jason, as we wrap up, I just have to say this is fantastic. I will 100% be sharing this with my patients this week. Is there anything that we didn't cover that you wanted to go over?

SPEAKER_00 35:31

Nah, man, I think you got it. I love the questions. That's great because it makes me think through. I do this stuff so much and I react to what you guys are telling me because some guys get it immediately and others, it takes a little bit longer, but nah, you did great. I appreciate you, man.

SPEAKER_01 35:47

All right. I will be checking out the sacred grit, and I just appreciate your time and your expertise.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Thank you, brother.

Does This Work For Women Too

SPEAKER_01 35:56

Before we wrap up, a huge thank you to the Montage Health Foundation for backing my mission to create fun, engaging education on addiction. And a shout out to the nonprofit Central Coast Overdose Prevention for teaming up with me on this podcast. Our partnership helps me get the word out about how to treat addiction and prevent overdoses. To those healthcare providers out there treating patients with addiction, you're doing life-saving work and thank you for what you do. For everyone else tuning in, thank you for taking the time to learn about addiction. It's a fight we cannot win without awareness and action. There's still so much we can do to improve how addiction is treated. Together, we can make it happen. Thanks for listening. And remember, treating addiction saves lives.