The Five Mountains Every Man Must Climb to Achieve True Strength - Trea Drake

What does it mean to be a man in today's world? The answer lies not in choosing between strength or wisdom, aggression or calmness, but in mastering the delicate balance between them all. Enter the concept of the "balanced warrior" – someone who can harness physical power while cultivating profound mental clarity.

Trea Drake, with his extraordinary background in psychology, martial arts, and mindfulness coaching, reveals how modern men can develop what he calls "the five mountains" – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and intuitive capabilities that create true masculine wholeness. He shares how most men operate with an extremely narrow emotional palette due to social conditioning, leading to suppressed feelings that inevitably erupt in unhealthy ways.

Drake's personal journey is particularly illuminating. Initially resistant to practices like loving-kindness meditation that seemed "too soft," he discovered that expanding his emotional awareness didn't weaken his edge – it dramatically enhanced it. Within just 90 days, his internal dialogue transformed from 90% negative self-talk to 90% positive, revolutionizing his relationships and performance.

The most practical aspects of our conversation focus on integrating mindfulness into daily life without adding extra time commitments. Techniques like "background rest" – maintaining awareness of unnecessary tension during regular activities – and mindful transitions through doorways create cumulative benefits that prepare you for high-stress situations. When combined with proper breathing practices, these ap

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Chapters

• 0:08 Episode Introduction
• 2:47 The Five Mountains of Balance
• 4:57 Breaking Free from Emotional Conditioning
• 8:43 Mindfulness and Background Rest
• 14:29 Breathing and Meditation's Synergistic Effect
• 24:01 Becoming a Balanced Warrior
• 28:48 Non-Negotiable Daily Habits

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome back to another episode of Mind Over Masculinity. I'm your host, abhi, and today we'll start a bit different. Why? Because we'll start with a question. Because, like, because, like.

Speaker 1: 0:22

What does it mean to be a man in today's world? Right, it's a great way to think, right, dear listeners. So some say that it's a strength, others say it's a wisdom, and some maybe say that it's about mastering your emotions. But what if being a man, a truly comprehensive man, isn't about choosing one over the other, but about balancing all of them, right? So today we are diving deep into the brave mindfulness and the warrior's mindset. So not just the kind of warrior who fights battles, but also the one who masters himself, like his mind, body and the emotions. And I can't think of a better guest to guide us than trey trey drake. So welcome to the show, trey. Thank you so much. Happy to be here, lovely, lovely.

Speaker 1: 1:20

So, um, trey, like before we start, I'll quickly love to introduce which all of our listeners, their listeners. Trey's journey is nothing sort of extraordinary. So, with a background in psychology, uh, behavior analysis and the martial arts, he's blended the science of the mind with the art of movement and brain work. So he spent nearly two decades teaching krav Maga, helping the kids and the adults develop not just the physical strength but also the mental clarity and the resilience, and he's a certified breathing and mindfulness coach. And today he's here to break down how you can use these tools to become a balanced warrior. So I'll not take much of your time, dear listeners, so let's get started. Welcome to the show again, trey.

Speaker 2: 2:08

Absolutely so happy to be here.

Speaker 1: 2:10

Lovely, lovely. So, trey, like I mean, I love how you talk about the balance between strength and the stillness, like between being a warrior and a mediator. So a lot of men struggle with this and they think that it's kind of either, or like you are either tough and aggressive, or maybe you are calm and passive. So how do you see the relationship between the martial arts, breathe, work, mindfulness in creating that balanced warrior?

Speaker 2: 2:47

spirit, work, mindfulness and creating that balanced warrior. Yeah, I love this question. Um, we could spend hours talking about this, one of my favorite topics. I will say that, for me, first and foremost, this balanced warrior concept, the idea is that we have these mountains that we're climbing we call them the five mountains, and I won't take claim for the five mountains idea. I got this idea from Mark Devon and the idea is that there's the physical, the mental, emotional, spiritual, intuitive mountains and to me, balanced Warrior means that you have balanced your efforts and your ability in all five of those mountains right, and it requires that we're able to defend ourselves physically, we're able to defend the people that we love physically, so we have that ability to go from zero to 100 and be a dangerous human being. That's what I do every day is I teach people to be more dangerous human beings, be that. I'm in the Krav Maga world. We start really early. It's youngest five years old. I'm in the Krav Maga world. We start really early, youngest five years old. I have some kids that are four years old. My oldest client right now is in their 70s and through that age range. Our goal is to teach them to be more dangerous human beings, and what I mean by that is that they have the physical skills to hurt another person. But we balance that with trying to instill a certain set of values to make them work in the direction of being the best human being that they could possibly be. So that, to me, brings in the five mountains and addressing all five of them in a balanced way over the course of time.

Speaker 2: 4:22

One of the things that is missing to me when it comes to men is that our emotional palette is very, very narrow, so there are very few emotions that we allow ourselves to experience and there are very few emotions that we allow ourselves, due to social conditioning, to express. So for a lot of men and I don't think this is unique to men, by the way this is the same for women, right, but it's same but different. It depends on a woman's background, it depends on her conditioning. I can just speak today from the perspective of what this has been like for me. I noticed when I turned 40 years old that my emotional palette was very narrow and I just decided that, looking back on the previous 40 years of my life and then really considering who I want to be in the next 40 years, I decided that I wanted to do the best that I could to break free from that conditioning that I had experienced here in the States in terms of what it is a man can express and what it is a man can do.

Speaker 2: 5:36

What I found was that suppression of emotion that oftentimes leads to anger. Emotion is going to come out in some way, and if you suppress it, it's oftentimes going to come out in some way. And if you suppress it, it's oftentimes going to come out in a way that you don't want it to. It's not going to be skillful and it's going to happen at a time where it's least convenient, right. And so I just recognized that I didn't want to do that anymore. I didn't want to live that way. And there was Jordan. Peterson was on the scene at the time.

Speaker 2: 6:17

He's a Canadian psychologist and he kept saying I heard him say repeatedly in speeches and podcasts that which you most need to find will be found where you least want to look. And I was studying lots of meditation at the time. I've studied meditation since I was 18. And there was a meditation called loving kindness, otherwise known as Metta, and I didn't want anything to do with that meditation simply because of the name of it Loving kindness. Right, it just seemed sappy.

Speaker 2: 6:39

It sounded like if I did this meditation and I hear this from a lot of people who are type A personalities that if I did this meditation and I hear this from a lot of people who are type A personalities that if I do this meditation, it sounds like it's going to make me softer, right In a bad way, where I'm in some way going to lose my edge right as a person who is a high achiever and pushing hard. I'm going to lose my edge. I'm not going to be who I think I want to be. But I had been pondering that quote from Jordan Peterson for a while, and the way I interpret that quote is when you feel resistance to something, consider that that resistance is a cue. It's a cue or a clue for you in terms of the direction that you need to go. And so I decided to look at that resistance in that way, and I can tell you that it was one of the most life-altering things that I've ever done, and that is I did that meditation learning kindness for 90 days straight and it completely turned my mental chatter upside down in the sense that up until that point and I see this with a lot of people who are high performers and type A personality is they berate themselves the way they talk to themselves in their mind If I said to you what I said to myself all day long, it would be considered verbal assault, Right. It would cause fights. It wouldn't be good and it was all day long in my head. First, the simplest thing I drop a pen on the floor. That would result in me cussing at myself in my head, Right.

Speaker 2: 8:23

I didn't know at the time that that was affecting the way I relate to other people until I did that meditation for 90 days, and then it completely changed my mental chatter to the point that now it's over 90% positive mental chatter throughout the day in terms of self-referential chatter, and whereas before it was 90% negative. So that's a dramatic difference in just 90 days. It's not at all what I expected to happen. I had the misconceptions that it would make me lose my edge. In fact, the opposite was true. It made me better at everything that I do and, most importantly, it made me better at relationships. I had no clue that the way I was talking to myself all day long, that a mood, it had a direct impact on my mood.

Speaker 2: 9:17

And I later heard Joseph Goldstein, who is a famous meditation teacher here in the United States. He was talking about the power of mental chatter and he compared it to the power of music in movies and television shows. And the way he related it was you think about, you watch a movie and you have these dramatic scenes and you have this dramatic music in the background and you almost never notice the music. But you can't take the music out of the movie. Right, the music is there for a reason, whether you're aware of it or not, it enhances the emotions of the movie, whether they are, um, what we would consider negative emotions or positive emotions, right, it't matter. And he said that your internal chatter, the way you refer to yourself and to other people all day long, that is the soundtrack to your life. It has a direct impact, Whether you are aware of that. Chatter or not has a direct impact on your, and then that has a direct impact on the way you relate to others.

Speaker 1: 10:25

Gotcha Lovely has a direct impact on the way you relate to others. Gotcha lovely and okay. And then, um, what to say? Like, uh, it's really great. I mean I was just thinking like, uh, strength, uh, I mean how true strength is control, like not just over others, but over yourself. So it might mention, like how breathing and mindfulness sharpen awareness and how people can actually make more effective in high stress situations. So what do you? What do you? What do you say on this?

Speaker 2: 11:07

Yeah, well, yeah, I think, first and foremost, what's most important if you want to incorporate mindfulness and breathing into high stress situations, you want to make sure, first and foremost, that you've incorporated it into everyday life. When things are stressful, right, but what are we doing when things aren't as stressful? And using that period as a training ground to apply those tools so that they're readily available to us when we actually need them? The interesting thing is, if you apply certain tools throughout the day, I'll give you an example. So one of my favorite tools to apply is called background rest, right, so, regardless of what I'm doing, even now when I'm talking to you, the vast majority of my attention is forward. It's it's having this conversation, that. But there's another part of my attention 10, 20, whatever it is that is on rest in the background, rest in the body. So if I notice tension build, I relax it, and I'm doing that while I'm having a conversation with you. I can also do that as I'm transitioning from point A to point B. So if I'm transitioning from a building to my car, from one building to another, or just from one room to another in the house, I can notice as'm moving. Right, I can and I can move at whatever speed I want to, right? Uh, I love. Somebody told me years ago mindfulness is not a speed, right? So the idea is I can move at whatever pace I want to whatever pace. I need to be mindful of the body but also notice in that moment what is necessary, what muscles are necessary to go from point A to point B and what muscles are not necessary. I'm going to relax everything that is not necessary. I'm going to promote best in the body, right, right, and so what I? What I find is that when I do that throughout the day, no matter what I'm doing, I see, hear, feel everything that I need to be able to be skillful, and whatever it is, I'm doing at the same time, in the background, promoting rest in the body.

Speaker 2: 13:19

What happens is I'm less likely to experience reactivity when a stressor arrives. And when it does arrive and there is some reactivity, that reactivity is not as hot as it otherwise would be if I hadn't already been promoting rest in the body. And, thirdly, that reactivity that is present, that metabolizes much quicker, because I already had momentum of practice that I had already been doing when I wasn't as. And so I think the most important message is what are all the ways that you can put in these micro moments, micro hits, you might say, of meditation or mindfulness throughout the day, so that you have that momentum of practice, so that when that big stressor and it will arrive, when it does arrive that you are better equipped to manage it. You've already managed your nervous system as if you were waiting for that thing to happen. You used everyday life as a training ground for that stressor. So you know, we all know that stressors are going to arrive. So what can we do in this moment to prepare for it?

Speaker 2: 14:28

And it's just that those little hits of mindfulness throughout the day and one of my favorite things to do is apply mindfulness as I'm walking through doors. So if I open this door, I do that mindfully. I walk through the door mindfully and then I turn around, I grab the handle on the other side and I close it mindfully. Even if the door closes on its own, I close it myself, just because that incorporates a mindful moment into my day. I don't have, just because that's a that incorporates a mindset moment into my day.

Speaker 2: 14:55

That is our. I don't have to schedule that. I don't have to schedule an extra 30 minutes earlier in the morning to wake up. I don't have to schedule something later at night before I go to bed. It's it's already incorporated into my day, so it takes no extra time. Go through that door as quickly as I want to or as slowly as I. No extra time. Go through that door as quickly as I want to or as slowly as I can. But just imagine how many times we open a door or open a cabinet, or open and close a box, open and close a refrigerator throughout the day. It has to be over 100 times, and those can be built-in mindfulness moments. If we allow them to be, we choose them to be, and although they're short, they're significant. When you add them all together, they have a cumulative effect.

Speaker 1: 15:43

Understood. That's amazing, I have to say, and like we were discussing about this. So any um, what to say, like anything uh you want to share about? Uh, if to say, like fear experience, uh, what do you think about the breathing and the meditation, how it helps, how it push people uh towards the more positive sides of life?

Speaker 2: 16:18

Well, first and foremost, they work hand in hand. Right To me, there's a synergistic effect between the breathing and meditation. Interestingly, you know, I got quite a few certifications in breathing and meditation when COVID first started and nothing better. So I was like I'm just going to get as many as I can Already had a couple. Before COVID happened, I had been training kids at Krav Maga Houston in breathing and meditation and then, when COVID happened in 2020, I started teaching it online for free for the Krav Maga community so that just to help each other get through. And then, once COVID lifted, I just enjoyed teaching it so much that I decided I would keep doing it. So to me, they work hand in hand.

Speaker 2: 17:08

But what you'll find is when you, when you go work with these different organizations, you work with a meditation organization to get that certification, there's no discussion about breathing. The most you'll hear in a meditation certification is the initial instruction. When you sit and you close your eyes, that say sit down, relax the shoulders, relax the jaw, close your eyes and take five deep breaths. That's the extent of the instruction is take a few deep breaths. And when you go work in the breathing space, when you get a certification in breathing. There's almost no discussion about meditation, which is interesting because if you look at the teachings of the old yogis 2,000 years ago, there was a sequence right and to me, now I see the wisdom of that sequence, and that sequence is movement first, breathing, second meditation, third right, because the movement and the breathing prepares the mind for the meditation. You get more out of your meditation when you do it in that sequence. It doesn't mean you can't break them up, because clearly you can't, but what I found is there's some wisdom and putting that sequence together as often as possible. And then what I find is, just throughout the day, the breathing and the mindfulness have this synergistic effect when they work together.

Speaker 2: 18:29

So if my goal is to bring about more positivity and I love this topic there's some really fantastic research on what happens to us not only physiologically but also mentally, when we're engaged, when we're experiencing negative emotion, positive emotion, right, and I don't want to create this mindset around emotions, that they're good or bad. All emotions can be good. Anger can be fantastic if it propels you in a certain direction, right, in a positive direction. You're able to experience that anger as as a indicator. It's like an indicator on a car dash right, a light comes on. An indicator light comes on says you need to change your oil. Maybe you do, maybe you don't, maybe that indicator is incorrect, who knows? But you can look at your emotions the same way, right? So I don't want to promote this idea that emotions are good or bad.

Speaker 2: 19:31

So as we go forward, think about it in this way that we do know that frustration, anger, what it does is it makes us more myopic, literally, visually, you don't see in the peripheryy. But it also makes you myopic psychologically, cognitively, where it's hard for you to see any other possibilities. So if you get angry in a conversation, it's very difficult to start to see the other person's perspective and then it's almost impossible to see any other perspective aside from yours and that other person's right, it's just hard to see possibilities. But if you promote positive emotion, if you evoke yourself in that moment, authentic positive emotion, right, it literally changes visually what you see. You literally start to focus more on the periphery and you also do that cognitively. Think about it Other people's perspectives is the periphery of your cognition. And so when you promote positive emotion, authentic positive emotion, it makes it easier for you to see other perspectives and it makes you more skillful in that conversation. There's just fantastic research in that regard that is so fun to look at. One of the things that they'll do is they'll put glasses on your eyes that tracks where your eyes look on a screen and that's how they can tell these things. They evoke frustration in you or anger by showing you a scene or telling you a story, and then they see where your eyes go on the screen and they see that you focus on the center, to the exclusion of prejudice. Then they evoke positive emotion in you and then they see where your eyes go and your eyes start to go into the periphery more. You start to explore more. So that research is really powerful. It's really interesting.

Speaker 2: 21:32

I find that one of the greatest things to do in terms of combining breathing and meditation is to manage, notice your nervous system, check in with your nervous system throughout the day, right, and notice, when you check in, what's happening right now. Oh, I just realized that I was ruminating on something from the past. I was thinking about something that somebody said to me 10 years ago and I've done this a million times. We all have and I got wrapped up in it and that resulted in my heart rate going up, my blood pressure going up, my HRV going down and my breathing rate has changed. Right, I'm breathing faster than I need to given the metabolic demands of the activity that I'm engaged in, which is just sitting right.

Speaker 2: 22:16

And so when I notice those things, the mindfulness is waking up in that moment and noticing that I'm caught up in rumination. And then realizing sometimes what I'll do is I'll look at that rumination and I'll label it rumination or very rarely this can happen. There's actually insight with that rumination. So the rumination shows up and then there's a new perspective. Right, there's this insight and I can choose in that moment to like a window of opportunity to jump through and go down that path, see where that insight leads me. That almost never happens, so it's almost always just rumination.

Speaker 2: 22:56

And then notice what effect that rumination was having on my nervous system. Okay, I feel my heart rate is too high. Now I can incorporate the breathing. What are the breathing practices that I can do in this manner? To first bring the nervous system down and then promote rest in the body and then notice mindfully the rest that I'm promoting and kind of be in that space and that resets the nervous system. It also resets the mind, literally the whole body, and trains together. So your heart rate goes down, heart rate variability goes up, blood pressure goes down and your brain waves literally change so that now I can go into the next moment. Uh, potentially more skillful than I otherwise would have, I stayed in that elevated state exactly perfect, perfect, lovely.

Speaker 1: 23:46

So let's bring this all together, like if a man wants to become what you call a balanced warrior, where does he start?

Speaker 2: 23:55

I think he starts by um moving his body in. In america right now, we are in a lot of trouble with our physical health and it's primarily due to lifestyle choices, and one of the main choices I don't know if you've seen the graphs so, since COVID, if you look at the fitness industry and we're talking about this includes big box gyms that charge just $10 a month Um, that industry has been completely destroyed by COVID. So if you look at um since COVID, the three years since uh, 2024 numbers haven't been published yet but the three years after COVID, uh, that industry, the revenue that they made was the same as what they made in 2010. Right, so they they were. They were put back 10 years in terms of revenue. They lost 10 years worth of revenue, which is incredible, and there's been zero recovery. The line since then is flat.

Speaker 2: 25:01

And, at the same time, after COVID you think about, that was a disease that mostly killed people in the United States. It mostly killed people who had multiple comorbidities, so they were already out of shape, they were already obese, they already had heart issues, they already had blood sugar issues. If you look at the numbers since COVID, rather than reverse those conditions, all of those conditions have gotten worse. So we're not more healthy since COVID happened, um, instead, we're less healthy. People are moving less. All those people who no longer go to gyms. They don't work at home. That's not how it works. That's not how the vast majority of the population, they need external reinforcers and they need external accountability in order to live up to their own expectations over themselves. It's just a fact. And so all those people who left those gyms, they're not working out at home. That's not how it works.

Speaker 2: 26:03

And so, first and foremost is to recognize that you're not doing what you need to do to be physically healthy and get off the couch and start moving. Right, get physically healthy first. Start to climb that mountain. Uh, start to climb the emotional mountain and the mental mountain. Start working on the spiritual mountain and address the intuitive mountain along the way. Really balance your efforts in all five of those mountains and look at what everybody, everybody's suffering. Everybody's suffering from something, everybody's fighting something. And that's an additional mountain. Maybe you have, maybe you're fighting, financial issues, right? Well, you better climb that mountain, right? Don't? Don't turn your back to that dragon, right? You got to address it before it gets bigger. The best you can, right. Well, you better climb that mountain right, don't, don't turn your back to that dragon, right? You got to address it before it gets bigger. The best you can right that type of thing. So there may be more mountains, depending on the individual, but if you, if you really focus on those five mountains, uh, it can be profound and dramatic, in particular with men, that emotional and mental mountain right.

Speaker 2: 27:11

What I promote is let's broaden the palette of emotions that men can experience, or allow to experience, and then teach them how to respond skillfully with those emotions that they're experiencing, rather than suppress, Because suppression is not a scalpel. Teach them how to respond skillfully with those emotions that they're experiencing, rather than suppress, because suppression is not a scalpel where you oh, I don't like that emotion, so I'm going to cut that emotion out. The way suppression works is when you suppress one emotion. It's like taking a giant sledge hammer to all of your emotions. You get to where you're just emotionally flat, and that has a direct impact on a person's well-being. Quality of life goes down. And so, to me, being a balanced warrior means that you have those physical skills. You have the physical strength as well as the physical skills to protect yourself and protect your family and people that you love. But you also have that broad emotional palette and can respond skillfully within all of those emotions that are possible for a human being.

Speaker 1: 28:16

Very truly said yes, yes, exactly. So I mean that's really great. So what's one non-negotiable daily habit you would recommend every man should adopt?

Speaker 2: 28:48

mindfulness and breathing into daily life.

Speaker 2: 28:48

I will say that I started meditation when I was 18 years old, but I will say that for at least the first decade and a half, all the time that I spent on the cushion did not result in me being a better human being. It did not transfer from the cushion to daily life. I didn't know, I didn't have a coach, we didn't have apps. Back then, I didn't know how to make that transition and it wasn't until I came across an organization called Unified Mindfulness, founded by Shinzen Young, that I had a coach and they taught me specifically how to transfer those skills that I was working on, that that concentration power, sensory clarity, equanimity that you work on on the cushion, and how to take that into daily life.

Speaker 2: 29:35

And that's where started working on those things like how to be mindful walking through doors, how to do a background rest all day long, right, um, and there's so many other skills that you can apply along the way, um, so yeah, to me it's, it's the. I consider breathing and mindfulness to be in pivotal skills, similar to teaching a child how to read, write and talk, in the sense that they are that powerful, they're that important right In terms of managing our lives, managing our emotions as human beings, and so, yeah, I consider those two are non-negotiables. How do I manage my nervous system throughout the day and be as skillful as I can possibly be in every moment? Be the master of every moment through those two practices.

Speaker 1: 30:31

Okay, so that's just really awesome. So I mean, trey, I mean this is really really incredible and I love like how you break down the balance between physical strength, mental resilience and the emotional mastery, because too often we only focus on one piece of the puzzle. So, for anyone who is listening, who wants to start their journey towards becoming a balanced warrior, where can they find you?

Speaker 2: 31:02

They can find me at nervousapescom. They can also find me on Facebook and Instagram, also at Nervous Apes, yeah.

Speaker 1: 31:13

Lovely, great, great. So, dear listeners, if today's episode hit home for you, then take action. Start small, pay attention to your breath, challenge yourself and don't be afraid to lean into the discomfort. And if you got value from this conversation, share it, send it to a friend, family, someone who wants to listen to it and drop us a review. And let's keep building a new kind of masculinity, like one that's powerful, present and unsecure. So until next time, breathe deeply, stand strong and keep growing with this hope. Thank you so much.