PF# 34: Brandon Day - Rejecting "Normal" Chronic Pain Through Pain Science

In this episode, Brandon Day shares his journey from professional athlete to pain recovery expert, exploring the foundations of pain science and how understanding the brain unlocks new pathways to healing. Discover practical tools for chronic pain management and learning mechanisms to transform your relationship with emotional and mental pain to break free from suffering.

Follow Brandon:

• on Instagram: iambrandonday
• on Skool: www.skool.com/evolved/about

Learn more about Brandon's work at evolvedathlete.coach

The Pain Factor is a Project Fourtress podcast.

Project Fourtress is a secular, humanist project, dedicated to find answers to the physical, mental and emotional pain people experience, as well as offer help to deal with these issues. To learn more about Project Fourtress, please visit fourtress.org.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:12

Welcome to the fight. Welcome to the pain factor.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

On this episode of The Pain Factor, it's been a long journey trying to understand what pain actually is. And there's a couple different ways that we could talk about pain. Um, but my definition is pain is a subjective experience that is created by the brain in order to affect some kind of action or outcome that the brain wants. Full stop, that's really what it is. At its core, it's just a signal. It's a signal to action. I remember specifically one day on the practice field, we had this drill. It was called Bloody Alley, and you'd line up the whole team on either side, one row here, one row here, and then two kids would lie down on their back. One had a football, one was the tackler. The coach would blow the whistle and you jump up as fast as you can, and you just run straight at each other. And it was simply a drill uh to show toughness. Who is gonna own up and go at it with all they got and who's gonna fold? Well, I'm not the type of person to fold, and especially when I'm playing with the big kids. So I remember that was when I got my first concussion when I was nine years old. Somewhere deep down, I knew that everything that I was hearing about pain and these ideas and mindsets around, well, you just have to live with it, well, you know, it's just you played a violent sport. Well, you know, you're you do you have bad knees, quote unquote. Oh, you got weak ankles. Like there was just a part of me somewhere in there that was like, this is just BS. Pain is not optional, but at the same time, pain is really important and can be worked with and can become a, dare I say, an ally and a friend, right? Suffering, I don't I don't view it that way. I view it more as a mindset, maybe a protective one, yes. It has a purpose, sure, but it's also chosen and it's unnecessary, and it leads to further damage and you know, bad scenarios.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

And it's a story that resonates with anyone who has faced challenges in pursuit of their passions. As I reflect on my life and career, I am grateful for the struggles that have shaped me and the accomplishments that have inspired me. By sharing my story, I hope to inspire podcast listeners to embrace their challenges, seek out innovative solutions, and ultimately unlock their full potential. Our guest today holds a Master of Science in Kinesiology and Exercise Science. He's a precision nutrition L1 coach, a fitness professional, and a certified personal trainer. He's the creator of the Evolved Athlete Method, a two-time national champion, and a former All-American linebacker. Brandon Day, welcome to the Pain Factor. Thank you for joining us today.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Glad to have you for having me, Gustavo. It's a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Tell us a little bit about yourself before uh we dig into our conversation.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Yeah, I am a uh uh small-town country boy from Montana. Um I'm back in my childhood home right now, and I uh recently had triplets with my wife. They're almost two, so we're taking our summer soiree up here in the cooler weather, but I live in Phoenix, Arizona, and I've been there for about 13 years um and working, building my own business as a a neurocoach and flow state coach that helps um mainly men, athletic men that are have moved on from competitive athletics to their next sport uh in life, which may be building businesses or or just being the best dad that they can. And they usually have some kind of chronic pain that's holding them back or something that's been hanging around that they've just been having trouble getting rid of and moving on from, and it's holding them back from reaching their full potential. And that all came out of my own journey down that same path, which I'm sure we'll get into today. But that's kind of me. I grew up playing American football, um, played in college here in my hometown of Helena, Montana, and I was fortunate enough to win some national championships and you know, became being all-American, as you said, and end up on the cover of Sports Illustrated even. So I had a pretty interesting experience there that um, you know, led to some darker times, which, you know, at the end of the day, I have much gratitude for because it made me the man that I am today and gave me the tools to be able to help people coming through that same journey. So that's the short, short version.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

And we will get into all of that, but let's start with my preferred question. What is pain for Brandon?

SPEAKER_00 6:10

That's such a great question because it's so misunderstood, at least with the people that I tend to work with. And myself included, it's been a long journey trying to understand what pain actually is. And there's a couple different ways that we could talk about pain. Um but my definition is pain is a a subjective experience that is created by the brain in order to affect some kind of action or outcome that the brain wants. At its core, it's just a signal. It's a signal to action. And if you imagine, like when my young kids reach up and touch a hot stove, that pain is an immediate signal that gets an immediate reaction to pull your hand away. Right? The tricky thing is when b when pain the signal becomes disrupted in some way, and then we tend to add or place some different meaning to it because of past experiences and expectations. And then the word takes on a new form, which we can talk about, but at its core, it's just a signal. It's just a signal to motivate you to action.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

I agree with that. The uh neurology of pain is something that I have just learned about in the last, I don't know, three or four months, and it's really fascinating and very deep uh issue to discuss. Let's start with your personal journey through not just through pain, but through success and uh the personality shifts that you went through. You were on the gridiron fighting for your team, fighting for you, fighting for a championship. But then that battle became your chronic pain. Tell us a little bit about how that happened. What happened to you physically and how whatever happened to you physically affected you emotionally.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

I you know, it goes back a long way. I started playing football. Uh I snuck in a little bit early. You know, I'm a I'm an 80s boy. I was born in 86, so when I started playing football in the mid-90s, I think I was just about nine years old when I started playing tackle football. Which these days, no chance. That's that's that's a big no-no. Because we know more we know so much more about the brain now. Um correct. And I remember very vividly being on the practice field. I got in early because my best friend's dad was the coach. And so he let us he got us in to play with the big, the big dogs, the big kids. And while that really helped me develop as an athlete and as a football player to learn the game and to play with people bigger and better than me. I don't know how good it was for my brain. I remember specifically one day on the practice field, we had this drill, it was called Bloody Alley, and you'd line up the whole team on either side, one row here, one row here, and then two kids would lie down on their back, one had a football, one was the tackler. The coach would blow the whistle and you jump up as fast as you can, and you just run straight at each other. And it was simply a drill uh to show toughness. Who is gonna own up and go at it with all they got, and who's gonna fold? Well, I'm not the type of person to fold, and especially when I'm playing with the big kids. So I remember that was when I got my first concussion when I was nine years old uh in football. I had others elsewhere, but just head first wearing helmets. We thought we were invincible, and we just go straight at it. So, anyway, that's um it started early for me. And while even before I was playing football, I was riding bikes, I was out in the woods. You know, if I could show you out my window here, it's just national forest as far as you can see. And so that was my playground as a kid, and we were jumping off rocks and building forts and really living um a uh nature-filled life and playing every sport I could I could get my hands on. And my pain journey started early too. I remember it was around the time that I hit puberty, I think. Um, you know, I had taken some hits to the head, but the other physical pains didn't start until around then. I hit a growth spurt and um I was playing basketball and I started spraining my ankles and my knees were starting to hurt. And that carried through all the way through middle school, high school, and even college, to where at a certain point um in high school, I just kind of surrendered to uh the thought that I had bad knees or weak ankles. And I was going to physical therapy in middle school, you know, to rehab ankle sprains. I think I sprained each ankle 10 to 12 times, which is a lot. Makes sense that I would think that I have weak ankles. They just didn't seem to hold it together, you know. And then the chronic knee pain was a one that I I couldn't understand because there was no injury, but I just had, you know, bad knees. They just ached and they would hurt until I would start getting going and they would seem to, you know, warm up and I would feel pretty good. And I could play the game, no problem. But then afterward, they would start to get sore again, and I could barely walk that night or the next morning until I started moving, and and I, you know, we just had no idea what was going on. So we just kind of chalked it up as, ah, you know, do what you can, wrap them up, maybe, take some ibuprofen, and keep going. That was the mindset. And that was certainly the mindset up here. Uh, you know, I live in farm and ranch country, so there's a there's a certain kind of toughness that comes um with those mindsets and a and also a mindset of you know showing pain was showing weakness. So that's kind of baked in. So you always push through. There was nothing you couldn't push through unless you were physically unable to do something. And so there was always this distinction between what is pain is what is injury. If you're injured, you can sit out. If you're in pain, you push through, right? So I had that instilled in me uh as a very young man, and that's what I did for many, many years. And so there were little aches and bruises and and the things that came with playing a pretty violent sport. And that too kind of came with the territory. You just accepted that that was gonna happen, and to a certain extent, it was. You're gonna go get in a car wreck every single day, right? And you're gonna have some aches and pains. But again, there was a very blurry line between what is injury, what is discomfort, and what is pain. Right. So with the mindset, with the history of just always being in pain. I mean, I've been in chronic pain since I was maybe 12 years old. There was some acceptance and surrender that was a very good thing.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

That is absolutely crazy.

SPEAKER_00 14:24

That is crazy. It really is. When you when you stop to think about that, from the time that I was 12 until 35, I was in pain every single day.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

So to you, pain was just a part of your life. It was nothing foreign, nothing alien to your existence. It was just quote unquote normal. It was the the way to be, to feel. Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:51

Yeah, that's right. And the mindset that came with that, the toughness mindset, the push through it, the you know, don't be a wimp, be a man, whatever, just you know, made it harder to deal with and actually fix it. Because with that came a sense of like this feeling that if it, if I even talked about it, I was I was weak. If I, you know, because I I would see so many other people going through the same thing as me. A lot of my teammates were also in chronic pain every day. And we all just accepted that that was part of life. And we were playing a sport that was probably going to leave us somewhat broken in some ways, and we would have just have to deal with it and manage in whatever way that we could. And so it's part of the reason why I'm so fired up about what I do now, because when I finally found the trick, the key to unlocking my own chronic pain, I just thought about all of those people out there that are just still just dealing with it and not realizing how much it's sucking their life away, you know, and that there is a solution. If you just keep looking and you find the right tools and you understand pain, you know, from a neurological lens, um, then you can change your relationship with pain and then apply the tools and find the things that work for you. And you really can make a very, very significant difference or get rid of your pain completely, as I did. And many of my clients have done. So, long story longer, the culture and the expectation and everything that was built into my mindset around pain may have been the biggest hurdle. I know it is for a lot of the people that I speak with and and and work with. Um maybe not as much for me, which is maybe why I'm in the position that I'm in. Because somewhere deep down, I knew that everything that I was hearing about pain and these ideas and mindsets around, well, you just have to live with it. Well, you know, it's just you played a violent sport. Well, you know, you're you do you have bad knees, quote unquote. Or you got weak ankles. Like there was just a part of me somewhere in there that was like, this is just BS. There's no way. There's no way that, you know, God put us on this earth and was like, yeah, I'm just you're just gonna live with pain. That's just your journey. There's no way around it, right? Like, no. I knew there had to be a version of me that did not have to live with pain. And I was gonna stop at nothing to find out how to do that. So again, you know, I go back to the gratitude thing. Like I am very grateful for starting so early, being in pain for for so long and so uh early on, because I think somewhere in there there was kind of a shift in mindset early on in my days of pain that that there had to be some some better way to go about this, which is kind of why I took a very unconventional journey to figure all that out.

SPEAKER_01 18:02

But I want to dig more on how you dealt with chronic pain and what it cost you after you left your athlete life. I believe an athlete is always an athlete, even though you stop playing professionally or consistently. You carry many things with you and you are always an athlete. It's just something that you are totally something that is part of your life. But before digging there, you were uh on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Doesn't get any better than that. Or at least, correct me if I'm wrong, that's what it is. I mean it is a prize in itself, correct?

SPEAKER_00 18:36

That's the top of the heap as far as sports journalism goes. So yeah, it's pretty interesting and awesome company up there.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

An achievement like that didn't make you ignore pain more through the lens of you see, you are in pain, but look at what you are getting. It's not such a big deal. Look at what you have. Didn't that being on top, being on the on the cover of Sports Illustrated make things worse in a way? I am pretty sure that it as a prize, as an achievement, I can only imagine how great that must have felt. But at the same time, wasn't that a double-edged sword?

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Yeah, certainly. That's a great way to put it. There was a I sometimes say the uh the brightest light creates the darkest shadow.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:36

And for we for me what that means is Yeah, the Sports Illustrated cover was an incredible experience and what a what an insane thing to happen to somebody from from a small town in Montana, you know, playing for a small school uh in the NAIA, which you know, uh I would say half the country doesn't even doesn't even know what that is, right? And for all of you listening that don't, it's a different organization than the NCAA. Um and for football, we kind of get lumped in with division two of the NCAA as far as competition goes. So you know, we're not the the biggest and the fastest guys on uh in the world, right? And we don't have the endowments and the big media budgets that the NCAA has at any level, right? So we're really playing the game for the love of the game. Most NAI schools, there are kids that wanted to continue to play, wanted to get some school paid for, right? And just enjoy the game. And that's what we were there for. And I happened to get recruited and play for a team that was very good, and it was already a dynasty by the time I got there. We were on our fourth national championship when I was a true freshman. And then um, I got to play in three over my four years, which we won two. And that Sports Illustrator was after the second national championship win on this super muddy field, a high school stadium in Tennessee, in Savannah, Tennessee, real small town, you know. So I'm saying all this to say that there was no way in the world that I thought that I would like end up on the cover of Sports Illustrated, right? The odds of that happening are so small. That when it did, it was like, wow, that's insane. It really, the the craziest thing about it is that just three years before that, um, in high school, a friend of mine and I, he made in his like uh Photoshop class, his media class, a cover of Sports Illustrated with him and I on it. We did a photo shoot of us playing football, like in our with our helmets and everything, and he put it on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Like some manifestation going on there, right? So three years later. I'm on the cover Sports Illustrated. Wild, wild, amazing set of circumstances that allowed that to happen. Like we could go into all of the things that had to align perfectly for that to happen. But at the end of the day, it was an incredible experience. On the one hand, I mean, I was uh, you know, thrust into a little bit of a spotlight. I had my little mini 15 minutes of fame, at least around Montana, right? But that really highlighted a lot of deep insecurities in me as a person. That's the dark shadow part. Because I didn't feel worthy of that fame and that um those accolades, I guess. Not that I got a bunch of accolades from it, but I didn't feel like I had done the work to do to be deserving of being on something that big. So there was a big, like, like some cognitive dissonance that just exploded. And I felt like I wanted to hide from it, but I also relished in it a little bit. Like, I can't lie, I loved the attention because it was really positive for the most part. There were some haters out there, and that was really uncomfortable. I remember specifically a girl that I went to high school with. I saw her on like a Christmas break, and she said, Who are you to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated? Who do you think you are? What did you do? And it just it was like she saw straight through me. Because that's what I felt. In my heart, I was like, uh I don't know. I don't I don't feel like I deserve it. I didn't work any harder than anybody else. And you know, so there was a still mindset part of it. This was yeah, before social media, really. This was 2000.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Imagine how different things could have been.

SPEAKER_00 23:55

Oh. It could yeah, I can't even predict. I mean talking about haters, how much different would have been. Yeah. Um, I can't even predict. I don't, I'm so glad that there was no social media then. Um there was Facebook, but it was nothing like what we nothing like no and and kids deal with now. Not even um exactly. Yeah. So I'm very, I'm very grateful that I didn't have to deal with that. But maybe it would have been a good thing. You know, at the end of the day, I still say that, you know, that that one event was kind of the impetus that forced me to go on this journey, right? You're familiar with the hero's journey? Yes. Yeah, that was my that was my call to action. Like that was my call to uh to adventure, right? I I fought it for a while. I did not answer that call for a while, but it was because of that that I really had to do a lot of soul searching um because it uncovered some really deep mindset and insecurity issues that I had. Now, on the pain side of it, you're totally right, Gustavo. Like it really, it made me feel like more of a uh, you know, weak person that I was even thinking about complaining about pain or any of that after I had just, you know, been given this great gift. It's like, how could you, how could you complain about anything? Right? You're on the cover of Sports Illustrated, you got nothing to complain about. And so there was a while there that I really I really suffered a lot mentally and physically because I didn't feel deserving of both the the positive feedback and the warmth coming to me from the people that were just like genuinely like happy for me. And for like it's so much bigger than me, by the way. This is where, you know, things like depression and things like um maybe anxiety to a point, but things like getting stuck in your own um wallowing and sorrow and which which chronic pain can lead us to or burnout or things like this. They become very selfish. And I realized that later on that all of that was so selfish to be so stuck in my own head, worrying about what other people think about me, worrying about if I'm deserving of this. Because that event, it wasn't even it wasn't even about me. It was about so much more. It was about the team, it was about football as a sport, it was about my community, it was about the state of Montana, it was about so many things that are bigger than me. That putting that all on myself and wallowing in that suffering that I really put upon myself was was very selfish in a lot of ways. Um, it took me a long time to start to, you know, reframe it and realize that. And I think it was also extremely helpful for me when I did go through bouts of deep depression to realize that when I start to reframe these things and attach myself to something bigger than myself and start to take my focus off of myself and onto others, then I very quickly come out of those holes, the that darkness, right? And it's just a such a simple like reframe, a turning of the looking glass, so to speak, that again, I don't know if I if I actually get to go on that journey and experience that growth if I don't have an event like that to kind of force the issue. So it took a little longer for me to find the keys to unlock the chronic physical pain because I really had to take a pretty far and dark slide down to hit rock bottom um to really make the the switch, to flip the switch in my brain.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Yeah, please. Let me interrupt you there because that's the next thing I want to discuss. But uh the reason I was mentioning this uh price, this success, is because it is incredible how far we can go to justify pain. And that is pain that we will eventually have to face. There's now a question of if we face pain. We will have to. And it could be physical pain, emotional pain, it could be mental health pain. In your case, it was just years and years of having your body subjected to severe continuous punishment and accepting that pain as something normal. For other people, it's just tolerating abuse because they don't want to be alone. There are different ways to suffer pain, but at the end of the day, most of us eventually go to extreme lengths to justify that pain. And then we will have to face it. It could be in a month, it could be in a year or a decade or 20 years. It will come back to bite us. And and you were getting there. I wanted to ask you that change when you had to face the harsh reality of the pain, because there was no more football. There was pain. There was no more magazine covers. There was there were dark days, and correct me if I'm wrong, but we also dealt with suicidal thoughts, correct? A at times. So that's right. I just wanted to add that comment before you move forward talking about the moment where you face that reality. So now the uh cover of Sports Illustrators is in the past, your athletic accolades are behind you, but the pain has settled in. The pain that was worth it to stand because it gave you so many things. What happens then? What is the mental shift or the identity shift that occurs in our brain, in this case in your brain, that made you realize you were facing a new life, a new reality.

SPEAKER_00 30:53

You know, I didn't um I didn't consciously recognize it until years later. But the instant that um my athletic career ended, my competitive athletic career, you know, in college, because I still play sports and I'm still an athlete, as you said earlier. We're all athletes. But when that level of competition was over, and more importantly, the the reason and the purpose for my life ended, right? My entire identity was wrapped up and entangled in being an athlete and then being that guy that was on the cover of Sports Illustrated. As much as I uh like talked about and kind of trying to distance myself and downplay it because I was, you know, practicing humility, which it was like toxic humility, I sometimes say, right? It was it was it was very self-serving and kind of egotistical in a lot of ways. But that's a that's a different that's a different tangent. When that was taken away, and I say taken away in a um, because it wasn't like uh I knew it was coming. It's not like I got injured and then I couldn't play anymore.

SPEAKER_02 32:17

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

I did know it was coming, but I did not prepare myself for it at all. Like I had no plans for after college, really. I just figured it would work out. I'd find something, right? Because I was just all in on what I was doing, which was playing football and being an athlete and doing all the fun things in college and just living that life. So it came to an abrupt end. And I was not prepared for it. And I didn't understand how much my identity was intertwined with this idea of being an athlete and being out in cover sports illustrated, being a football player.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

And when I don't it was everything you knew.

SPEAKER_00 33:00

Yeah, exactly. It was. I mean, it was a yeah, it was an 80-hour a week job on top of school. Right. Um, it really was all that I knew because I put everything into it. And so that was just abruptly gone. And I didn't have anything to fall back on. And so there was there was a time when I really was just like lost and no idea what to do and what was coming next. Uh and, you know, very fortunately, a close friend of mine and teammate was an actor and he was studying film and he made a great film, and they were gonna make it into this full feature film, and so he asked me to act in it. And it was a very easy transition, even though I'd never acted before, to go from one performance art to another. Like I understood the mindset of it and like the preparation and then the performance. Like that I got and that I enjoyed. So I'm like, okay, let's try this. It'll be I think it'll be fun. And it was, it was fantastic. And I ended up producing a couple films with them and um spent the next like five or six years doing that. But there was still a disconnect in the identity piece because it wasn't really my passion. It wasn't really my, I wasn't super skilled at it. I was kind of like back at the bottom and trying to find my way. But I still had an expectation and I was still holding on to the identity of being a very high-level, like skilled athlete. And so that that gap there created a lot of turmoil. And it just kind of like heightened my sense of like feeling um not worthy, right? Or not good enough. And so I'm going through this identity crisis and trying to find like a new thing. And, you know, many years later, I will come to understand that what I had really lost, while yes, the identity piece was part of it. The real thing that I lost was access to a state of consciousness called flow. When I was on the football field, everything was easy. Everything aligned. I knew what I was doing. I was very skilled at it. I was a like on the field kind of coach. People would come to me with their questions and I would be able to guide them and know where everyone was at every time. And I could like effortless effort is one of the ways that the flow states are described, right? In this sense of time disappearing, time dilation is what it's called. And it is a shift in consciousness where you get also these huge surges in endorphins and endocannabinoids and anandamide, which is part of the andocannabinoid system. This a molecule that is very similar to THC, that um ananda is actually Sanskrit for bliss. So it's called the bliss molecule. And it makes you feel so good, right? With that comes a ton of pain relief. Like physical pain drops drastically when you're in a flow state. So I was experiencing this almost daily. And I didn't, I had no idea what was going on. I just knew I loved the game. I loved being around all the people. And we as a team were finding flow quite often. And that amplifies the experience on the individual level. So I had constant, consistent access to this. And then that was what really was taken from me. And I had no access anywhere else in my life. And I was getting stuck trying these different things that I wasn't very skilled at. And then I had this expectation, right? So the challenge there was too high, and I was getting frustrated and like going to the next thing. And so I was constantly stuck in this state in the flow research, we call it the struggle phase. At the beginning of every flow cycle is the struggle. It's that first part where you're like getting going, you're getting amped up, right? And there's some frustration there, and you got to get all these stress chemicals heightened, and you actually hit a threshold where you go into a physiological fight or flight state, and you have to choose the fight in order to find flow. Right? There's a great paper by Stephen Cotler et al. that talks about the first two seconds of flow states. And they talk about this in the brain, where you have to choose the fight. And that's where you'll make the transition to this altered state of consciousness called flow. You know, uh, an easy example is like a mountain biker that is gonna go down a steep hill. You don't go down with uh uh any hesitation, right? Any leaning back or hesitation, and you're gonna fall. You have to attack the hill. Right? Same thing with the surfer. You attack the wave. You got to go all out. That's the struggle. So I was just going and doing all these different things, getting stuck in the struggle, getting frustrated because I expected so much from myself, and then I'd go do something else, and I'd have to start it all over again. And so this led to a state over the next few years where I was not getting the pain relief that Flow provided. I was not getting the fulfillment and the meaning in the things that I'm doing that Flow provided. Flow is an autotelic state, meaning um it's an end in itself. So, you know, we most flow activities that we choose are things that we love to do that we would do regardless of the outcome. Right. Because it's an end in itself. It feels so good. We just love doing it, right? So I lost all of those things. And so that left me in a state of declining mental health, declining brain health, also, by the way, because I smash my head against large humans every day for, you know, 15 years. And then physical chronic pain that wasn't getting better with the traditional methods that I was doing. The physical therapy, the chiropractic, the massages, the corrective exercise. You know, it just wasn't, it just wasn't doing anything for me. And so I just kept, you know, declining down and down and down until the point where I ended up on a deflated air mattress in LA, um, living in a small apartment with my cousin, trying to make it in the film industry and just completely out of my death and so depressed that I hadn't left my house in, I think, around three weeks. And I woke up one day and I was out of money. I couldn't afford to buy cigarettes, and I just felt like the biggest POS in the world. And at that point, you know, Gustavo, I'm sure you know how the chronic pain cycle and depression and things can just spiral out of control. And you you can reach a point where you are no longer even sane to say it, you know, like like I don't know how else to say it. You're not even the same person anymore. You're not even in your right mind. And you start thinking thoughts that you would never think if you were in a happy, healthy, just even a normal state of mind. And so in that way, I understand, I understand how people get to that point and how they take that step. Because I was there knocking at the door in that moment. I knew what I was gonna do, I knew how I was gonna do it, but something deep inside of me just said no and said, You're not gonna do this to the people that love you. Again, it's that outward focus in that moment that saved me. And I made a switch. And that really began the journey. Like the Sports Illustrated, the National Championships, and then the what came after that, after my career ended and everything, that was kind of the call to adventure, so to speak. But I fought that for a few years until I ended up on that air mattress, and I said, okay, I surrender, I'll do whatever it takes, because I can't live like this. And so that's when the journey really began.

SPEAKER_01 41:37

Before we go to that turn, could you give us some examples or mention some common misconceptions or myths about chronic pain that come from ignorance, which makes us stay on that pain loop?

SPEAKER_00 41:56

Yeah. Yeah, gladly, because I see so many people suffering uh in pain because of these myths and mindset that we've really been conditioned with. I guess mainly because of ignorance. Because, as you know, this neurological side of pain is pretty recent where we're starting to understand how pain actually works. Yeah. Yes. And it wasn't until we really start to get a look at the brain and what's happening in the brain that we started to understand that okay, pain isn't like a localized thing. And that's kind of one of the one of the most pervasive myths, I guess, or just, you know, um wrong ways of thinking about pain is that my knee hurts. There must be something wrong with my knee. With my knee, exactly. And sometimes there is. I mean, if you tear your ACL, there's something wrong with your knee. Yes. There's a structural problem there. But I always give this example that in times of great need, like survival need, pain is optional. So if you imagine you're out, you know, on a hike in the woods, and all of a sudden you hear this big roar from behind you, and you see, uh-oh, there's a baby grizzly cub, and mama's behind me. That's not a good position to be in. I got to get out of there real fast, right? So you take off running, but you trip on a tree root and you break your ankle. You hear it snap. That's not good, right? That should be super painful. And pain is super important to protect you from further injury. However, the brain's only job really is survival. It's just there, it's a big, beautiful, gelatinous mass of it's a whole universe in itself, but. Really, its core function is to keep you moving through the world, right? To keep you alive. So in this scenario, where you got Mama Grizzly coming after you and you just broke your ankle, is pain going to be a good solution to keep you alive? No, definitely not. So there are little places in your brain, right? One of them specifically is called the periaqueductal gray that sits in your brainstem at the top of your brainstem that can actually modulate your pain level and say, you know what? We need to get the heck out of here. I'm going to take away your pain so that you can run on that broken ankle. It's not going to be a very pretty run, but you know what? We might make it out of here, right? So you're going to run on that broken ankle and you're going to tear your ankle up. You're going to cut some tendons in there. You might like, you might just like actually cause great damage and you could even create like internal bleeding. Like it's a dangerous scenario for sure. But it's still better than being bare lunch. So you're going to run on that until you get out of danger. And then that pain is going to come back with a vengeance, right?

SPEAKER_01 45:18

We will deal with that later. Right now, we need you to not die. Exactly right. Dying is worse than aggravating the uh the wound.

SPEAKER_00 45:27

Yes. That's right. So, you know, pain can be optional, right? And we can actually leverage that to take, this is what neurotraining does in applied neurology, to actually go and activate those specific areas of the brain because they do other things. Like most areas of your brain are sharing responsibilities, so to speak. So this area in your mesencephalon that we're talking about, this periaqueductal gray that can inhibit pain, it lives right next to an area that controls eye movements. And so we can actually do specific eye movements, in this case, a saccadic movement, a quick jumping movement up and down. By activating that area, which lives right next to the periaqueductal gray, we can sometimes get pain relief just from that one thing, right? So there's lots of little tools and techniques and little, I don't, I hate the word hack, but sometimes it's it's applicable. Sometimes we can get a, we can do a hack, like um to kind of shortcut the process and give some pain relief if need be, right? So the original point is that pain is not a localized problem. 100% of the time, it is an output from your brain. And the pain doesn't actually live in your knee, even though you feel it in your knee. It's actually living in a map of your knee that is represented in your brain, right? You might get a signal from your knee, like take the uh touching the hot stove. You get the signal, it's called no susception, from that tissue, goes up to your brain, and then very quickly you get a motor command that says move away, right? It's just like a reflex, basically. That lives in your spinal cord. But that feeling goes all the way back up to the other side of your brain, and then the map of this finger that lives in the opposite cortex, the parietal lobe, that's where you actually get the pain sensation. That's where it lives. You feel it here, but it lives up here, right? So that's one of the biggest misconceptions around pain is that pain is local. It's not. Pain comes from your brain always. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:58

And it's a good one to know because we tend to simplify things, oversimplify things. I I always talk about running because I am a runner. But it's amazing how when you get injured, you learn a lot about your body. Uh you have to. But it has been very humbling to me, besides interesting, very humbling to understand how a bulge desk is affecting my left calf. Why? I mean, they they are not even close. What is going on there? But it is a trickling down effect. And while I was just worried about my calf because it hurts and it was not hurting last week, I was not paying attention to maybe uh situation with my bulge desk becoming worse. And it's it's really, really interesting. And once you understand that, you feel a little dumb. Your brain goes to this place where you ask yourself, why didn't I learn, how didn't I learn this before?

SPEAKER_00 49:04

But oh, I certainly felt that way too. Yeah. And that's a great example too. And it made me think of another kind of a thing that we often say in the neuroworld, and and that is that when you start to understand how neurology works, your nervous system works, it really is. My mentor calls applied neurology the science of hope. And I love that. And she says that because we tend to work with a lot of very complex cases. People tend to come to me after they've seen just about everybody. Because they're kind of like, what the heck is going on? And and they're like, at that point, I'll try anything. And okay, tell me about this neuro stuff. What is this? And we kind of get into a conversation, and um, when you understand how the nervous system is just one big nerve, like a spider web, then you can start to see that if pain comes from the brain, and the brain's just trying to keep you alive, and if it's perceiving threat from anywhere, then it can create pain to get you to motivate you to action, right? Then that really opens the doors wide open for opportunities to change your pain. And we often say that with neurology, anything can affect anything. And there's many examples of this, but we'll use your calf for an example. Running is an awesome example because it it kind of shows this process really well, or it's easy to understand at least. Um, and I'm talking about, I want to talk about like everything going on above the neck. Okay. All the traditional methods that you know I was trying to use to do my own chronic pain healing. We we consider those below the neck. Physical therapy, chiropractic, massage, body work, basically, these are all what we'd call advanced proprioception tools. They're working with the body. That's great. They're super powerful. Oftentimes, a lot of them are really great. And I'm not trying to disparage or like downplay any of them. But if the threat is coming from somewhere else, maybe above the neck, then those are only going to get you so far, and that pain's gonna keep coming back. So the ones above the neck specifically are your cranial nerves, which there are 12 of them, they go right into your brainstem, the vagus nerve being one of them, your visual system, your eyes, and your vestibular system or your inner ear. Okay. Now, let's let's use your running as an example. If you have a vestibular system that is a little bit out of balance, right, and your vestibular system is always answering these two questions, like where am I at relative to gravity? Like which way is up? And where am I going? Right? Because it's always sensing acceleration in any direction. Okay. If you're out of balance, then that is gonna increase your brain's threat. Okay. It kind of thinks it's falling all the time, so that's not good. And it's gonna take more brain power to process the world if I'm out of balance here. If I'm nice and level, then it's easy.

unknown 52:30

Right.

SPEAKER_00 52:30

I know where I'm at, I know where I'm going. If I'm out of balance, it's like, well, I got to compensate for this a little bit. So it takes more work to process. And now this is just going at what we might call first gear, if I'm just walking around the world. But what happens when I go to third gear or fourth gear when I'm running? Well, now processing is gonna happen even faster. So eventually this system can fatigue, just like your eyes can fatigue, right? But the problem is that you're you're you don't really have like pain receptors or fatigue, you don't feel fatigue in your inner ear. So the brain has to give you a different signal to get the outcome that it wants, which in this scenario, if we can't process the vestibular system and we can't process where we are in the world, right? How good of a survival strategy is that? Not very good. You might fall, hit your head, and die, right? The brain's very black and white, right? That's not good. That's not a good survival strategy. So we need you to do what? Slow down so we can process or stop. All right, how am I gonna get you to do that? Well, would shoulder pain be a very good way to get you to stop running? Probably not. You could probably work through that. That's okay. Uh, what about calf pain? Okay, we're getting closer. That might get you to slow down. If that calf hurts bad enough, uh, we're not gonna be running much. If you keep ignoring those signals and pushing through them, generally what happens is the signal gets louder and louder. The pain might increase, or maybe you'll get something like dizziness or nausea or something that's gonna be like, okay, now I have to sit down. Actually force you to stop. Exactly. Mission accomplished, according to your brain. So a lot of the people that have some of these chronic pain issues, like runner's knee, jumper's knee, um, patello femoral syndrome, IT band syndrome, any kind of bilateral lower body pain. Um, I'm always thinking, vestibular system. What's going on up here to where the brain doesn't feel safe moving around in the world? And it's creating pain down there to get you to slow down or change something.

SPEAKER_01 55:05

Yeah. Neuroscience is just it's so amazing what the brain does to, as you were saying, to stop you. The lens it goes to to just prove that he's the boss. Um but uh talking about pain and the neuroscience of pain, why do you believe that there are so many traditional treatments that either fail or don't deliver exactly the results that they sell? And I know you are not trying to disparage any specific treatment or method, I understand that, but help us understand why there are so many methods that promise things that will not happen or that don't work.

SPEAKER_00 55:47

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:50

Um if you can provide some example if you if you want. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 55:56

Yeah, so to your to your point earlier, too, I just want to re-emphasize that yeah, I'm a I'm a big proponent of below-the-neck methods. A lot of the traditional methods are amazing, right? And that is my traditional training, right? I did get a master's degree in kinesiology, and my focus was in orthopedic rehab and corrective exercise. I did that for many years, and I still use those tools. I worked in physical therapy, you know, I've done all the things. But where most of them fall short is I mean, very simply, it's because they don't understand the neurological foundations of the treatments that they provide. They don't take into account what is actually happening at the nervous system level when they're applying these treatments. So there's so many examples, but let's take like corrective exercise and posture retraining as an example. Like a lot of people have pain because they have kind of these rounded shoulders and they get neck stiffness and pain and maybe back pain, and they think it's their posture is their problem. So they go to physical therapy or they go see, you know, um, a personal trainer or someone like what I used to do, and we'll we'll prescribe to them many different corrective exercises to open up their chest and stretch these muscles of the anterior chain and strengthen the posterior chain so that you stand more upright. And then what happens? They do a thousand reps and they feel a little bit better because they've tensioned those things. And then as soon as they stop thinking about it, it goes right back. As soon as they get a little tired or something, they slump over. Like, what the heck is going on? Can't tell you how many clients come to me and they're like, oh yeah, I've been doing my physical therapy, my corrective exercise for 10 years, and my pain goes away as long as I do my 45 minutes of exercises every single day. And I'm like, that is crazy. You should not have to do 45 minutes of exercises just to stay out of pain. Like you're just barely breaking the threshold. No, that's not like building capacity, that's not like chasing your potential. You're barely making it. That's silly. Right? And so if we start to dig deeper in all of these modalities, um, a massage is another great example. Like you could feel so much better when you get a massage, you're so relaxed, and then you get up off the table and you start walking around, and then an hour, maybe a day later, maybe three days, if you're lucky, the pain comes back.

SPEAKER_01 58:46

If you're lucky.

SPEAKER_00 58:47

So you gotta Yeah, so you gotta go back. I gotta go to the chiropractor every week. I gotta go to massage every week or two weeks. Something's missing here. And if you keep peeling back the layers of all these things, you always run into the nervous system because it's the governing system of all systems. Every change that happens in your body happens in your brain first. Your nervous system is what tells your what your muscles to change, to be tight or to strengthen up, right? And hold tension, the proper amount of tension. So you always run into that. And, you know, I think that our education model has got it upside down. In my view, everyone needs to learn neurology first. Like we should all have a very good understanding of the nervous system in the brain before anything else, because it is what governs everything else.

SPEAKER_01 59:40

Is that improving, by the way? The knowledge of these professionals?

SPEAKER_00 59:45

No. I mean, there are there are companies out there, like the company that I teach with called Next Level Neuro, that are really making a good dent in trying to get this information. But they're a private education company, right? There's other companies like Z Health and other individuals that are out there teaching this. But as far as like institutionalized uh education, no. There's very little neurology outside of the specialties that are neuroscience focused that are using applied neurological principles. And there are some reasons for that. First of all, um, clinical research and education, they they're very slow moving. So adopting these new techniques and things are hard for them because they work in an insurance model and this big, you know, research-based clinical models that really take it's it's I can't remember what the actual number is. I think it's like 17 years for clinical research to reach frontline practitioners. That's a long time. And we've only had this imaging and these tools for, in some cases, like with the visual system, these tools have really only been around for maybe 15 years. So we're not quite there yet, right? In that one area. And even then, they're usually reserved for specialists that you have to go to many, many extra years and many, many more letters behind your name in order to be qualified to use them. One example is in optometry or behavioral or neurooptometry, sometimes called, where they're actually doing vision training exercises, but they're only in a clinic and they have a very specific protocol that they use, which, to be honest, doesn't work well for a lot of people because it's disregarding the whole person and the nervous system as a whole. For example, I do a lot of work with um post-concussion or TBI people. And a lot of them have seen a vestibular rehab therapist or vestibular PT. And in those clinical settings, they have a very specific protocol for how much and um how often they need to do specific exercises for the inner ear. And these clinical protocols are based on clinical research, and the average or general like protocol is for the average person. But if you've ever seen or worked with somebody that has had an injury like this, they are all wildly different. And because these tools are so powerful, I can't tell you like how many people have come to me and they say, show me what your vestibular therapist gave you to do. And they start doing one of these exercises, and I can see on their face that they want to throw up. And I'm like, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, please, stop. I don't want you to throw up on me. What's going on? And they're like, oh yeah, this I this is what my therapist told me to do. It's like 30 seconds. And I'm like, okay, and how's that been going? They're like, it's horrible. I hate it. I feel worse and I don't want to go back. That's why I'm coming to you. And um, I ask a little bit more questions, and it usually comes down to like, they gave me 30 seconds and they said, I don't care if you feel bad. Um, you have to do it. Your brain will adapt to it eventually. They call it habituation in the literature. But they're not taking into account what we in applied neurology call like the level of threat and minimum effective dose, which is how we can individualize all of the exercises and drills that we do with everyone based on this really simple assessment process and basically just some observation too. Like you're about to puke, please stop. Because your nervous system is saying that this is a threat. I do not like this. You have to stop. And by just pushing through it, yes, you may get an adaptation, but is that going to be a positive adaptation? Or are you going to actually create compensations, maybe more pain, or some other kind of, you know, neurological neurotag or some kind of other response, quote unquote, like trauma response, or, you know, we could use also different words for it, but a maladaptation, like a negative adaptation to this drill. Yes, your system works a little bit better, but at what cost, right? And most importantly, is this patient or client gonna continue to do this if they feel like garbage when they do it? Probably not.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:50

Because that's the other the other thing. Not only that it doesn't work, but they will not keep on doing that because it's just not exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:58

And that's the most important piece, right? Is adherence. You got to keep doing this to rehab something completely like that. So we don't work in that model in the applied neurology world like a neurotrainer like myself. I don't work with insurance anymore because I was a big racket and I and I did not enjoy it and it was too confining. And so uh it's cash pay practice. Um, and I can do, I can work outside those bounds. And most importantly, I can see this person in front of me and see that they're going to throw up. And I say, stop doing what you're doing. Let's dial the dosage down. And we use this assessment process, like a balance assessment or a range of motion, or I'll watch them walk. And I can see in an instant whether or not the input that I give them was the correct dosage. We use the concept of minimal effective dose, right? I'm going to give you the minimum amount of stimulus that your brain will be able to handle. And then if your reassessment is better, your walk, you know, uh smooths out. And you're more upright, or your range of motion gets better, or your balance improves. I know that your threat level has now decreased. Your brain took that input and said, Oh, thank you. That's nice. I like that information. Now I know what's going on in the world and where I'm at. I'm going to take the brake pedal off and allow you to move more freely, faster, more efficient. Okay, now that is going to be your level of input. That's your minimum effective dose, and we're going to continue to do that. I'm not going to push you to some clinical protocol just because that's what the research says. I am going to actually pay attention to your nervous system and what's going on and what it's telling me in the moment.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:44

I guess that that is part of why or how evolved athlete came to be. Can you explain to us a little bit what Evolved Athlete does? Yeah. Absolutely. And what your mission in and your expectations for your work is. I know that you're trying to uh make neurology more widespread, but I can also I can also say and recognize that it's not going to be an easy task. But tell us a little bit about what you are doing and where you're headed.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:15

Yeah. Yeah. So Evolved Athlete kind of came out of my journey, right? And so it's really steeped in all the traditional methods that I am trained in sports, nutrition, and conditioning, performance training. I was a strength coach for many years. I worked in physical therapy. So that's kind of my world, like the world of the body, right? But now with a neurological lens underpinning it, right? So it's much more precise training. But it grew out of that. Um, and then layered in kind of the two big pillars that it's built upon are the pillars of applied neurology, which all of these traditional methods, remember I called them advanced proprioception before? Uh-huh. That's part of neurology, right? And so within that is also the neurology of your respiration, breathing, um, vestibular training, visual training, cranial nerves, like areas of the brain. We can assess those specifically and precisely and come up with a really good individualized training protocol to maximize your nervous system and brain function, which will then make your body function better and get you out of pain, right? So that's kind of the one pillar, is the foundational pillar. And then we have flow states and flow state coaching, which is kind of the next pillar that it's built upon. And so I've kind of taken those two worlds and combined them into what I called uh the evolved athlete. That's the business, and sometimes uh refer to myself as the neurobro, and I call this the neurobro method because really I'm a bro at heart. I'm kind of a meathead, right? So I'm taking like bro science and meathead stuff, and I'm taking neuroscience and flow states, and I'm kind of marrying those things. So I call that the neurobro method. And that's who I tend to work with too, are uh are bros like me, you know, athletes and and guys that are really hard charging and have those mindsets, for better or worse, that make them very successful, but also usually leave them really needlessly suffering with a lot of pain. So anyway, we take those two pillars and we take somebody through that process of shifting the mindsets and fixing the the body, rebalancing the brain and optimizing it for the capacity that's needed to access flow states on demand more consistently, more predictably, and more sustainably. So that's kind of the method, and we go through a few different phases of that. I generally work in like a hundred-day sprint with people and and then we re-evaluate and just shoot for higher goals. And my mission is really to just empower, you know, I got big goals. I want to empower 100 million men to understand their own nervous system and brain and start to achieve flow states more consistently. Because when that happens, when a man can consistently and predictably achieve flow states in his life and is done with the chronic pain, and it can really chase his own potential, that ripples out to his family and then to the community, and it just creates massive change on a global scale. So that's the real, real big, hairy, audacious goals. But it starts with it starts with the individual man, right? And um really shifting perspectives and getting out of pain so that we can chase that potential.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:41

And at the end of the day, you're doing two things. Number one, I mean, you're doing many things, but more important for me are that you are exposing your own experience. You are telling people, hey, I'm here, I have found some solutions, uh, this has worked for me, let me help you. And number two, you don't want people to be depending on you forever. You want to give people tools. So you help them. You were saying you work on this uh hundred days setup, but you want to help people learn stuff so they can then become independent. And you were mentioning how when you are at your best, when you are, of course, pain-free, when you feel that you have realized what you wanted to do, you are a better person. I always say that I don't know, I have never, ever, ever known a single happy SOB. Never. If you are happy, you're good. Of course, we can talk about how happiness is an state that you will experience here and there, and it's sort of a destination in itself. But when you feel realized, when you feel that you can achieve that happiness, and when you are pain-free and you feel that you are closer to be what you want to be and where you want to be, you are just a better person. Cliche as it might sound. I want your better version because I am selfish and I want you to be better for me. It's just it's uh simplistic, but I I do think that is that is the case. I agree. How has your own experience that you are putting forward helped you shape the approach to coaching and helping others when you see a patient or a client? What do you see? Do you see maybe it is too personal a question, but do you see yourself 10 years ago, 15 years ago? Has that affected your approach?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:54

Absolutely. Yeah, it certainly has. And as a business, business owner and and uh creator, I've gone through many iterations of this method and this program that have evolved with me. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And it's it's so interesting. It all started with me trying to fix myself. Um, I mean, I will never forget I took a job as a personal trainer very early in my journey because the film um stuff was kind of petering out and I needed a change. And I was living in Arizona and it was the summer, and I was bartending at a golf course. And summer golfing in Arizona is not really the hottest. Well, it is very hot, but it's not the funnest thing, right? So I didn't realize it was my first summer there. And uh, I was like, oh, I really need a job. And so I had just started going back to the gym with my younger brother, teaching him a little bit about training and trying to figure out how to fix my own pain. I knew basically nothing at this point. And a friend of ours that worked at the gym said, Do you want a job as a personal trainer? We need trainers right now. I'm like, I don't have a certificate. She's like, Well, you got a four-year degree that's like a sports management, that'll be fine. Okay. So I go in, no certificate or anything. I got one very quickly in corrective exercise because that's kind of what I was interested in. And one of my first clients had just been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. And I was so scared to work with him. I asked my mentor in the gym, um, will you take this client? I don't think I can work with him. What if I screw him up or hurt him or something? And he just looked at me and he's like, dude, you know how to work out? I was like, Yeah. He's like, well, then go help him work out. You'll be fine. And I was just like, okay. Removed those expectations that had plagued me so much, right? In my journey. And I just went and I helped him worked out. And we got him to lower his medication by half within a first couple months. His mood, he started going back to work as a veterinarian. Massive changes for this person. And, you know, I am who I am. So I was diving into the research and like trying to find the golden ticket for Parkinson's disease. And I learned a lot of cool things about exercise and Parkinson's that I still use to this day. But the point was is that that changed me. And I was like, okay, this is awesome. I'm helping this guy. Like, I could do this, right? And so then I just went all in on that journey and started studying everything I could. And then, you know, it just evolved. The way that I worked with people evolved. And I started learning more about how to fix myself. And, you know, and then the story continued. But every iteration has just evolved as I've added these new tools and the things that work really well for me and my clients. And then I disregard the things that aren't moving the needle as much. And I've really honed it over the last 15 years to um the top, top tools. And it all comes back again to the nervous system and all of those modalities and the connection with the nervous system because it makes us so much more precise and we can understand in the moment whether or not things are changing in the right direction, right? And so everything's come out of that. And so the long journey that I've taken is like, oh, who am I going to work with? I work with everybody. Um, then I worked with, you know, people with this condition or that condition. But it was always started with me. Right. And so again, back to the hero's journey, right? The mentor, the best mentor, is not someone that is at the top of the mountain. It's someone that's just a few steps ahead of you. Right? Someone that's just gone through the tough parts. I think it's very fresh and they know. Yeah. I'm so glad you say that. So the people that I really enjoy working with the most, right? Um, this is why I've kind of uh I'm testing out this whole Neurobro thing because it's kind of organically come out of the people that I've been working with. They are me. They're me from five or ten years ago that was kind of lost trying to figure it out, right? Testing things, and it's like, hey, buddy, I see you. I've been there, I am you. Here's the pitfalls to avoid, here's what works. Come with me, I'll show you.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:55

I was saying that I love what you said because sometimes we just look for the sensei, and we don't understand that a fellow student, a little more advanced than us, can teach us so much. I especially experienced that in jiu-jitsu, when of course you're going to learn for a black belt or a brown belt, but the white belt that started jujitsu six months before you, or a year before you. And maybe that is already around your age, it's an adult, has kids, has gone through what you are going through right now, has a ton of knowledge and experience to share, and can be your mentor. You you don't need to look years ahead to find the the guide or what you what you would call quote unquote the perfect guy. After all, we have talked about pain and suffering. You have mentioned both, you have referred to both of those feelings, emotions, challenges. Would you say that there is a difference between pain and suffering? And if there is, where does that difference lie?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:04

I definitely think there's a difference between pain and suffering. I think because you have experienced both. Yeah. Yeah. And when I talk about suffering, I I view suffering as optional. I think I think suffering is part of our suffering is more of a mindset issue. Whereas pain can be a physical or neurological issue. And whereas like the the trying to think of a good example. Um maybe someone has back pain and set up Yeah, okay. Me too. I used to have back pain a lot and it still comes back every once in a while. I also don't want to give the impression that I'm totally pain free 100% of the time. No, nobody's pain free 100% of the time. Because again, pain is a signal. So when things get a little out of sorts, my pain can come back, right? But I have the tools and the knowledge to deal with it and to work with it. Exactly. Right. And so I no longer have to suffer in the pain, right? Because I choose to work with it, to understand it, to say, you know, what is this trying to tell me right now? And I have the tools to deal with it. Whereas in the past, I would have some back pain, and then I would start to choose to not do things that I want to do because I might, you know, have pain or something, or or I self-select out of activities. I would start to get down on myself and start to feel bad about myself because, you know, whatever. I don't get to do the things I want to do. Uh, now I feel sorry for myself. And then I create suffering for myself that came maybe the, maybe the first impetus was like, oh, I have this pain. But then I create a mindset and start making choices that lead to further suffering that is just not, it's not necessary. It has a purpose, right? We might choose that suffering as a protection mechanism. Right? So that we don't make the choice that might injure us further, quote unquote. Right? I feel like everything has a protective purpose. Depression, even, has a protective purpose. Like don't go out and hurt yourself further. Stay at home, it's safer on the couch, right? But we choose that. Even if it's subconsciously, we're choosing that and we're creating that reality. And suffering is optional, as the the the Buddhists would say, right? Pain is not optional, but at the same time, pain is really important and can be worked with and can become a, dare I say, an ally and a friend, right? Suffering, I don't I don't view it that way. I view it more as a mindset, maybe a protective one, yes. It has a purpose, sure, but it's also chosen and it's unnecessary, and it leads to further damage and you know, bad scenarios.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:44

So it's so interesting to it is clear, and it always amazes me how different guests define pain and suffering in different ways, because there's not a right or wrong question. It's just how you interpret it and how I am not talking about physical pain or mental health pain. I know that there are things that are just pain, but specifically when it comes to suffering, one of my last guests told me that to him suffering was our emotional relationship with pain. And to me it was very interesting. It was interesting. Yeah, it's good. Again, there's no reason to agree or disagree, it's just how he views it. I like that. Brandon, what is your pain factor? What is your Achilles heel? Yeah. Even today, after all you have evolved as a person, all you have discovered. What is your pain factor?

SPEAKER_00 1:23:44

Yeah. Uh I'll give you a a real like physical, practical one, and then more of a mindset belief one. So I still am working through my visual system. Your eyes, they sit at top of the neural hierarchy. So your brain takes in more information from your eyes than any other system by a factor of 10, like a huge amount. Uh-huh. So that creates a lot of threat. And my eyes have been a problem for a long time. So I'm still working to um to fix that. And when things get a little out of sorts, it my eyes are the first point of threat, right? And so then I'll I'll get pain and headaches, and it comes back to my eyes are a little out of sorts, right? Um, simply put. So that is a pain factor for me. I still need some work done there. Okay. So that's the main reason I get pain these days related to my eyes. Okay. Okay. All right. That's like, yeah, that's it, is what it is. We're working through it. That's fine. But I would say overall, the biggest pain factor for me is still working through um long-held beliefs that we talked about earlier around not being good enough. Uh, this idea of like imposter syndrome, um, or uh not feeling worthy for some of the successes that have come my way, to the point where sometimes I self-sabotage uh for fear of success, right? Um, so that's my big pain factor that I've done a lot of work on, and like I'm doing fantastic, right? I mean, I all things considered, I'm doing great. But that is one thing that continues to like poke up with a little head. I do a lot of mindset work. Where do you go to? I do a lot of journaling and mindset work, and okay, um, you know, I I I do therapy. Uh, I'm married to a therapist, but I do therapy elsewhere. You are constantly analyzed. Yeah, she's super good. She's either so good that I don't notice that she's analyzing me or she's not doing it.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:09

That that either way, it's all good. I will go with the first one, but yes, probably.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:14

But um, yeah, our relationship is amazing, and that is because I do a lot of work. Um, it's uh my I have a mindset coaching process that I go through with clients, and it's very simply like the hardest part is awareness, right? The recognition when the belief or the story is holding you back. And then uh reframing it and then just reinforcing that. So it's a constant process all the time, becoming bringing awareness to it, bringing consciousness to the story, reframing it, you know, and then reinforcing that on a loop always. And so it pops up in little ways all the time. Um, less than it becomes less and less and less, and you just kind of, you know, you keep growing out of it. But it's a pro it's a belief in a story that's been around for so long, from probably when I was a little kid, right? Um, that it just keeps coming up, and that's okay. You know, that's just that's the life that I'm living. That's my journey. Uh, I'm much more aware of those things. But there are times when it does still hold me back, and it's part of being human, right? So I'm okay with it. But um, that's probably my pain factor is those those core beliefs from so long ago that kind of show up in interesting ways still.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:38

Before we finish, uh let's say I I hope that someone that has gone through what you have gone is listening. And I say I hope because I I am really certain that listening to you would help them. What would you say to that person, someone that is in a place as you? Where where pain is normal? This is the way it is. It is the price you have to pay. You should not complain about this. Or on the other side, you just deserve the pain. It is what it is because that is your life. What would you say to that person that has accepted pain as the final stage?

SPEAKER_00 1:28:24

Uh give them a very nice slap. Say, hey, this is not the end. Like this is not Yeah, wake up. You do not have to accept this. I've worked with all sorts of pain conditions. Um some that, you know, people came to me and said, this is incurable. There's nothing that can be done. My doctors said there is nothing to do about this. You have to just accept it and manage it. And we've got great results when we start to understand what's going on in the brain, where is the threat coming from, and how do we make the brain and nervous system feel more safe in the environment? We've gotten great results for all sorts of conditions that the white lab coach said you just have to deal with. So I'm not saying don't listen to your doctor, but I am saying take some ownership and take some responsibility for where you are and where you want to be and keep searching. Okay. You like for that person, if you want to come hang out with me, join my free community on school, or follow me on Instagram, start learning a little bit more about applied neurology, I highly, highly recommend that. 100% do that, please. But even if they're not ready for that, please just accept uh the that you have some responsibility here. And if I can give you some little bit of hope that there are answers out there, you just have to keep searching. Keep moving forward, right? You're gonna have bad days, you're gonna have good days. As long as you keep moving in the direction and keep staying curious, you will find relief. You will find the right tools for you. Never stop. That's my advice.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:32

Is there anything that you'd like to add? Maybe something I forgot to ask you. We have covered a lot of terrain. Everything that we touched on could be discussed for much longer. But anything else that you would like to add?

SPEAKER_00 1:30:48

Yeah, uh, just one thing. And it's something that I say to all of my clients and everybody in my community. I say it often because it's such a game changer for me in in terms of mindset. Um and it it just ripples out and permeates everything when you really, really own it. And that is that when you make flow the goal, the outcome takes care of itself. And what that means is when you make flow the goal, the outcome takes care of itself.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:18

Yep. I don't care if it's a championship or a business deal or um playtime with your kids. If you stop focusing so much on the outcome that you want and you start focusing on the process, and that's what flow is it's the process. When you just live in that present moment and you find flow states, and that is your goal, you are by definition achieving your peak level of performance in whatever it is that you're doing. Whatever your skill level, that's your peak level in that moment. Okay. So if you make that your goal, you will accelerate your progress faster and you will reach the outcomes that you want. The they will take care of themselves. You'll make the deal because you found flow in the process. You'll have the best time with your kids and your family because you're present and flow was the process, right? So when you focus on that, you focus on finding flow in the things that you do, then these things just start to magically fall into place. So if you make flow the goal, the outcome will take care of itself.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:29

I know that I have heard about flow and the flow state, but I don't know anything about it. I I I know more right now because of what you have shared today. But uh I will look into that. You mentioned that you have a school community. How can people follow you? How can people learn more about your work or become a part of Evolve Athlete? We will include all this information in our episode notes, so please share them with us.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:03

Sure. The two best places to find me are on Instagram at imbrandonday, all one word. And then I do have a free school community. That's SKO L dot com slash evolved. Uh, it's a free community. There's a bunch of resources in there. In fact, there's a very quick, free mini course. It takes about 20 minutes to go through it. And it's some of the top neurotraining drills that help people get out of pain or at least see a shift in their nervous system state very quickly. So that's usually where I send people first to try it out and see if it can make changes, and then that can be the start of your journey.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:46

On your website is evolve athlete.com.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:50

Evolvedathhlete.coach. This is my website. Yeah.coach.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:57

Brandon is offering you free resources, so there's also need for accountability, and whatever we can do on our side, we have to do it if we want to break free from pain. Brandon, thank you so much for your for your work, for your experiences and telling us how you have dealt with that, and for sharing with us these resources and for not closing down or shutting up about the things that you have found. I believe that if you can help, you have to help. That is the way it works for me, and that is what you are doing. So thank you. I appreciate your time and I appreciate your help. And you have made me thought about some things that I have just heard about, but from now on, I I promise I'm going to do better to learn more. For instance, the flow state. I hope we can do this again sometime.

unknown 1:34:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:55

Okay. Thank you, Gustava. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:57

And for everybody listening and watching, we will see you next time when we continue to explore the pain factor. Ciao ciao! The Pain Factory is a Project Fortress podcast. Project Fortress is a secular humanist project dedicated to find answers to the physical, mental, and emotional pain people experience as well as offer help to deal with these issues. To learn more about Project Fortress, please visit Fortress.org. That is F-O-U-R-T-R-E-S-S.org. I am Gustavo Varela, am not a licensed medical professional, nor am I a nutritionist or hold a degree in exercise or sports medicine. All of the advice given on this podcast is what I have learned from my own experiences and mistakes, navigating through depression, anxiety, and chronic physical pain. Project Fortress is not responsible for any actions that may occur as a result of your listening to and implementing the advice we provide. Use all of the information that we give at your own risk.