so spicy food sex caffeine alcohol all these things should be abstained from for a certain period of time usually a minimum of two weeks before especially with a New Age movement I think in many ways that's corrupted spirituality at least like what it's been for human beings for thousands of years this is like spiritual work spiritual discipline or required to take you to higher levels of consciousness it wasn't just a consumer fad so you're preparing your body a vessel to be sensitive so anything that's too stimulating affects you in certain ways before you do ayahuasca so probably young called it unconscious but at the end of his life he goes I was saying unconscious but what I really meant was soul today I am interviewing a very special guest his name is Luke Jensen he is one of the founders of Tiawa's Awakening and unfortunately like many Youtubers or content creators in the beginning we had some technical difficulties where uh the first part of the episode did not record so I'm gonna do my best to summarize the beginning and then we're gonna get right into the interview and we'll pick up the interview where Luke's talking about Tia's awakening so Luke is a Marine Corps veteran who served under the Marine Corps and the National Guard deployed to Afghanistan from his hometown in Omaha Nebraska and after his experience in the military it LED him to a bit of a spiritual journey where he was dealing with some undiagnosed PTSD he eventually ended up going to an Iowa retreat I guess you could say a spiritual retreat down in South America and from that moment forward his life was essentially forever changed he explained during that time during the retreat that he experienced somewhat of a metaphysical state where he saw everything as one everything in the universe or in nature on earth was interconnected we were all part of something bigger and this cohesiveness of the world around him LED him further down his spiritual path to eventually starting and cofounding Tiawas Awakening and Tiawas Awakening is a retreat hosted in South America by Luke and his partner where they take participants through variety of activities not just the ceremony the iOS ceremony but you know hiking and you know interacting with the the town which is very remote areas of Peru to Jiu Jitsu and all sorts of activities to really bring people you know ground people and help them with their own individual spiritual journey and then we talked a little bit about neural feedback which we are gonna have Luke again here in a couple of weeks to talk specifically about neural feedback and brain mapping and how that can help heal some of our emotional spiritual traumas so with that let's jump right into this episode I did not do the first half of this episode justice but I did my best to try to bring you up to speed as to what got us to where we are now yeah so t was awakening we hearken back to the original style of shamanism and shamanism is a deep word it's a philosophical word but it's not something should be taken lightly and I think so many ways these there's many big retreats out there that are overly comforting and overly new age right and shamanism is supposed to challenge you and just the same way that boot camp challenges somebody it's kind of it's own challenge and that challenge is to make you better to help you evolve as a person so that's been my view of retreats for the longest time to hearken back to that original meaning and depth to shamanism shamanism depth to it so in my opinion it's an experience people should prepare for and from experience as well that we've seen that people prepare for mentally um psychologically spiritually they usually get a lot out of it you know and people run into trouble if they just kind of do it at the drop of the hat like I'm traveling through I'll try this out you know or like just had a big party weekend like I might as well do ayahuasca I've also known people that prepare for it and you know do a strict diet and meditate on it and for months out sometimes or even one guy I met was a year out he was getting ready for a ceremony and those kind of people get a lot out of it so we hearken back to that in our retreats we do we do three ceremonies ayahuasca one of Wachuma and we do adventure hiking we take people to these beautiful places so often times in retreats you stay at the retreat center you don't get to go out but we make sure people experience the local communities the mountains and the nature and prove has so much beauty in it so that's part of our process as well which I really enjoy and really proud of and we have jiu jitsu we have neurofeedback we have brain mapping so we included all the things that have helped us heal help me heal and we're very proud of that so there's so much in it in it that we enjoy and but it's a it's a process so I remember when I did my first I was a retreat I knew that was an experience that I remember for the rest of my life and today I always remember that I know when people come down this probably one of the top three top five experiences they'll have you know that they'll remember and how important that is there's a certain obviously there's a certain amount of trust that goes into that so we create a place of trust as well I think whenever you do shamanism you'd be very careful the shaman you work with cause there's good shamans and there's dark shamans and you know very careful you're working with a good person with a good soul you know um but yeah that's kind of the summary of t was awakening t was is the rune the warrior rune and we want to bring back that warrior spirit as well so that's why we have the jiu jitsu in it we have some martial arts and we don't overly challenge people you know we whatever their level they're at some people get intimidated by that and but we just teach a couple moves and show them or if they're more skilled we'll you know spar and stuff like that but jiu jitsu and martial arts has been as healing for me as any other plant medicine I've really really been powerful and Chin Sia she's a co creator of Tiwa's Awakening and she's a purple belt in jiu jitsu and you know she loves it as well and and she's been teaching now and it's been healing for both of us and both of us have our own trauma so it's been really amazing on that and we really we really enjoy what we've created yeah I definitely I love that I collab with John Davis when he was writing his blog article along with uh rolling with master guns uh on uh the benefits of jiu jitsu and I don't think people realize that it's just like any sport you know people get a runner's high and they you know they love to do all these other things that takes their mind off of you know life but jiu jitsu is awesome and you know I'm just a measly little white belt like you know but I come from a Krav Maga background but yeah yeah I'm just you know your stereotypical white belt but I freaking love it just there's there's something so I don't know primitive about that style of martial arts but it really taps in for me it really taps into something I don't know I don't really I don't really know maybe you can describe it better than I can but there's just something about it that is a huge stress relief yeah I think there's multiple sides to it so when I got into the neuroscience and the brain mapping it's very intellectual and I like that side about me and I've always read books and stuff but jujitsu brings you back in your body you know there's no avoidance I think it's so healing because so much of modern world is we're out of our body and so much of trauma is too like we don't feel anymore that's why we avoid trauma unconsciously but now that that jiu jitsu brings you back and there's something about human touch and if you're trying to touch someone or choke somebody some of that human touch builds endorphins and things like that and that daily challenge so I've been involved in other martial arts but jiu jitsu can spar every single day that's not a striking martial art so you can always see yourself compared to everyone else you know you can't really lie to yourself with jiu jitsu you can't really think like you know you get humbled really quick and that's the beauty of it and also I would say with jiu jitsu is that it forces you to be comfortable and uncomfortable right like if you're in a tough position you have to learn how to like be comfortable in that position someone might be on top of you you might can't breathe and you have to learn how to deal with that and how much you know you just obviously just learn how to do that and prepare you for so many life situations including plant medicines which can also be uncomfortable at times so for me jiu jitsu is medicine and I've been healed so much by it that's why we include it and that's why I love it to this day I wish I had more time I'm busy lately I haven't been sparring as much as I want to and you know and I'm traveling a little bit but I'm so glad it's part of my life so grateful for that yeah I think that definitely says something cause I've seen guys even myself you know I come from Krav Maga background which is all about joint manipulation and you know I went through it when I was they do Krav Maga certifications for DOD if you're like VBS or Quick Reaction Force so I was Quick Reaction Force and VBS which is um like the navy's river on type but it's a it's a certain seizure aspect of getting on a small boat and searching and seizing and boarding a smaller vessel you're in the marine course you know so yeah um they have a VBS team as well it's visit board search and seizure so anyway so I went through Krav Maga and I was like oh jiu jitsu is gonna I'm gonna be fine right I got this I got humbled I got my ass kicked by like a 13 year old girl who just spider monkeyed me and you know like sometimes they spar and they'll they'll have like a rule like uh one point to whoever gets the other person's back or you know one point to whoever you know they touch your knees or something and it was uh getting her back so I'm face to face with this girl and I was like I'm gonna destroy her she's a 13 year old girl and I'm like at the time I was 29 I was like oh this is easy I don't know if she was a magician but before I knew it she was already on top of me and like behind me and I was like what the hell so humbling for sure and I remember her mom was like she's quick and I was like no shit should have warned me before I got on the mat but uh she was probably one of my favorite kids cause she uh yeah she was very very talented very sure of herself and whenever she executed any particular movement she just executed it with finesse and I Learned a lot from her even though she was much younger than me but I think that's one of the beauties behind jiu jitsu is regardless of belt color and age and things like that there's a lot that you can learn from somebody else I mean I guess that can be applied to all aspects of life but especially when they're kicking your ass on a mat for sure yeah so um you mentioned so it was awakening so what does the typical retreat look like like is there an itinerary that you have for participants yeah and uh just kind of going back to what you said I started jiu jitsu and I had previous experiences of black belt taekwondo when I was young I didn't really commercial arts so I thought I was like really ready for any kind of fight I thought I was like really ready for any kind of fight the guys half my size would submit me not just once but over and over and over again I'm like OK I gotta learn how to do this this is nuts and um that was a huge part of my process to being humbled and um but she was awakened yes we have an itinerary so it's a nine day retreat people usually fly down on a yeah we have people fly down or retreat starts on a Sunday so sometimes people fly down the day before and then we they start that day so it starts on a Sunday and we go to next Tuesday but so we fly down Sunday Monday Tuesday we have ayahuasca ceremonies Wednesday off Thursday ayahuasca ceremony and then we go to this mountain called ausangate this is beautiful mountain in the Andes it's really sacred and we meet these like high communities up there that live up there at these heights they there's communities are as living as high as any mountain Colorado like 14,000 foot oh wow so just seeing how they live is amazing and beautiful and then we will watch Shuma hike on that Sunday so that a week from that first day we also go into the mountain again called Puma Wonka and there's these people living in stone houses and it's really interesting to meet these people and appreciates what we have right cause we so we're often very spoiled in western culture and forget how other people live in the world so to see that can be very humbling as well in a different way than jiu jitsu and then we have our brain map and we're done and we have and different days in retreat we have jujitsu two jujitsu days two acupuncture days two brain training days and yoga and sometimes we do archery as well so we throw all that in in nine days but basically that's that's the itinerary so we so we fit a lot in and it's challenging but when you're done you you know you accomplish something what's some of the feedback that some of your past graduates have I I don't know if graduates is the right term um alumni yeah um some of those alumni maybe graduate I don't know cause you go through a lot I mean yeah um we don't formally call it anything I guess yeah but no I I'm really proud of the feedback we received and people have some had some really profound experiences and it's profound healing and we've received lots of skepticism about jiu jitsu being a retreat'cause some people just aren't into it but they'll yeah they'll do the retreat anyway if anything that's kind of what scares some people mm hmm but they're like or like why is it in there you know but once they do it they're like oh okay I get it and that's been really cool and for me as well martial arts has a long history of spiritual tradition if you look at samurai for example obviously very spiritual tied to Zen Buddhism and Zen Buddhism has long had a warrior tradition and The Bhagavad Gita the oldest spiritual text is a is a warrior spiritual text so I think if people think that violence or martial arts shouldn't be in retreat I was just reading it haha yeah so super super interesting super important right yeah like and it gives you perspective on who we are and we're not just these physical bodies and and the bag of idea talks about we have duty we have a soul beyond our body and death is just an illusion we have to follow our spiritual duty whatever that is so being a warrior you have to follow that spiritual path and I think especially with the New Age movement I think in many ways that's corrupted spirituality at least like what it's been for human beings for thousands of years and I think they neglected that cause for them that you know so many ways the duh movement like everything feels good and whatever works works but if you look at Hinduism or the vage traditions or Zen this was like spiritual work and spiritual discipline were required to take you to higher levels of consciousness it wasn't just a a consumer fad so I think when you look at it from that side of things this is why things like jiu jitsu are very important so so yeah the the people resonate with that a lot and they really enjoyed it and I think also people have really enjoyed the hikes we have and experiencing the country'cause like I said you go to some of these retreats and there's plenty of healing at different retreats but I'm proud we're a little different because those big retreats you never leave the property you never see anything and this medicine we get ayahuasca and wachuma it's from that country and from those people so I think it's important that people experience the country and meet the people and meet the land that's all important for what we do and it's also a way we give back as well so we travel through those communities we can buy you know a little piece of art or little textiles and things like that that might not be much for a Westerner but goes a long way for them and that's really cool I'm really happy about that yeah that's one of the things that I did when I was down there and I have some stuff hanging up is everywhere I went in South America and anywhere in the world that I've been I try to buy local art I have some stuff hanging on my walls from South Africa and I have a bunch of stuff from Peru and Morocco's and just random stuff that I bought when I was gallivanting through some of the neighborhoods a lot of where I was at was off limits because of certain crime but that's gonna be in any big city like if I had if I had to pull into port in New York City I'd probably not have people go anywhere so it's the same um but yeah no I liked what you said about martial arts really putting you like back in your body'cause you 100% have to be very well aware of where you are in space like right you cannot be elsewhere thinking about other things and you also have to know where your body is where is my hand do I have the ability of doing this being aware of the other person and when I first went into jiu jitsu it was a law enforcement thing it was a weapons retention class and so we're in like our gear basically with our blue guns and whatever and the whole point was kind of like a close quarter thing I won't I can't say combat but like close quarter confrontation with um what whoever we're dealing with and it was all about maintaining space weapon retention um and safely being able to execute safely being able to execute an arrest or detention whatever we were doing and that was like one of the guys said up you've been bit by the jiu jitsu bug cause I was back the next day and that's when that little girl kicked my ass so yeah that's funny but yeah no I think all that's true and important so if someone was so that someone's someone's hearing this podcast or they're seeing this ayahuasca thing they're hearing it on Joe Rogan's podcast or whatever where should that process start from the individual per like perspective before they make the decision to just sign up what's some of the things that you recommend some personal work that they do before they take that leap well one you gotta feel um yeah the words calling I would say but it's more than just like oh I heard this thing I wanna do this like something has to be pulling you in a certain way any kind of sense that if keeps coming up in your space and you have to have a certain feeling about it like oh something something inside of you has to speak or be spoken to by this idea and then I would say do your research you know I read a ton of books I did tons of research and to be honest you can read all the books in the world they're very interesting very good but your experience will be totally different than all those books you know it's not gonna like really prepare you for what your individual consciousness will experience and I think from there if you want to do it I think start meditating on it so anytime in the spiritual space no matter what you do intention is very important so maybe if you have a of a daily meditation put a meditation in what you want to accomplish for goals what you what you hope to learn and if you don't know you know it can also be I don't know like maybe the plants will teach me or you know help me and I think as you get like a shorter time period out sometimes it's two weeks or six weeks or eight weeks and then you want to be serious about diet and for at least a couple weeks you want to stay from sex or anything like that some people go longer and so basically what you're doing is you're preparing your body a vessel to be sensitive so anything that's too stimulating affects you in a certain way and so spicy food sex caffeine alcohol all these things should be abstained from for a certain period of time usually a minimum of two weeks before you do ayahuasca especially those early experiences because you really want to connect with the medicine the best you can and I would say the more intention people put into it the more they get out of it from my experience people that come with less intention don't don't have the same experience yeah like a spiritual detox sounds like I keep on hearing it come up and I know eventually one day I I might I might go down there and try it out but I it's hard for me to articulate what I understand what you're saying because I'm personally going through that where I am interested in ayahuasca and these retreats these spiritual retreats but the calling's not there yet like it's still some some steps I have to take to get to that point it's just articulating that and putting that into words it just is hard so yeah I think for anybody listening who is interested in this I think that unless that sign is clear or unless you feel like this is something you're willing to to do then maybe then maybe reach out yeah and if you just have a question about it you can always reach out to us as well or you can talk to someone else about it there's there's lots of people in um space now which actually I'm a little apprehensive about because I think a lot of these people are just I think the true workers are often not in United States like they've lived in the jungle they live with the Charmans and that's often their life I think a lot of people in United States like in California don't didn't mean to mean anybody but oftentimes it becomes like a cultural fad and it kind of attracts the wrong people yeah um especially when you're like Demi Lovato sorry God yeah yeah no I was thinking of like it was Demi Lovato or somebody had like an ayahuasca retreat in their house like they had the shaman come in and they put it on TikTok it's like yeah no that that's ridiculous and we never film that during the ceremony cause it's sacred yeah you should take it as this is sacred medicine as a sacred retreat and and I remember the first time I walked into a Moloka it's like their temple and I felt the energy difference I could feel that this is a sacred space and it's interesting I grew up Catholic and for whatever reason I never felt that in a church I don't know why but I could feel it when I reached this space cause all the deep healing that was happening there I could feel the difference so this is sacred work and but I think if people are called to it they should pursue it for me it was a it was a latch ditch effort cause you know I was never diagnosed with PTSD at the time but I was so under so much stress and I had these anxiety symptoms I don't know what was going on it's a last ditch effort and I wasn't gonna try pharmaceuticals even then I want to do something and um a lot of times people in a situation like you know they should look into it and be prepared you know like some people shouldn't do ayahuasca if they have schizophrenia or certain things like that that that I was not their medicine and they should look at different you know modalities but for some people it could be very very powerful and I think often people they'll they'll feel that calling if they should do it yeah I mean cut you off you were talking about the cultural fad of ayahuasca and I like the the concept of an immersive environment and not going to Beverly Hills for a spiritual retreat so um but you weren't you were you were saying about the the cultural fad and that you're a bit apprehensive yeah so I mean there's so many sites that that's one why we do in Peru I think there's something a it makes it a pilgrimage I would say when you travel to a different country especially it's home country it's not just something you just easily do over a weekend you have to get there you know and also it's part of it buying that plane ticket is part of it buying the retreat is part of it it's not necessarily a inexpensive process so that exchange of resources can be important now you're putting something on the line on it you know I think it's a lot different than just going to the local California shaman and you know having a weekend where he plays a tape for you music like down there it's gonna be you're gonna hear shaman singing holy songs called ikaros that are directly gonna affect you that they Learned from plants over years and years so that's not just ayawaska I think it's a very important thing to to bring up to people it's Ayawaska shamanism that shaman in the room is so important cause he's the vehicle for the plants he's the vehicle for the healing and once you experience it you'll understand or anyone that experiences understands like this is much different than say just taking LSD I have nothing against LSD necessarily but I think the plants have a spirit in them and it should be respected and and as far as um fads go when I first did ayahuasca it was mostly young adventurers and now we have like doctors and lawyers and professionals like that or even people you know at my time like I was one of the oldest people in the group and now sometimes we see people in their 70s come down which I think is amazing it's never too late to start a spiritual path you know some people come down and go hey I have the biggest business in town and I'm very successful but I'm not happy for some reason like well glad you're coming down and trying this out um so there's many good things of it being in the culture more a lot of people have access to it that wouldn't otherwise but anything in culture especially modern American culture it can become a fad it can become trendy and it loses its sacredness if people don't take it seriously so I think as a culture we have to make sure we take these things seriously even though if the media always doesn't you know we have to make sure we take these things seriously we need to bring we need to bring back the sacred into our culture we need to bring back the sacred into the way we live and we need to bring back the sacred into our environment like when you go into nature those trees are sacred those rocks are sacred everything around there is sacred and to have that mindset that we live in a world of sacredness and that everything has meaning it's not nothing has meaning everything has meaning when you start adjusting your mindset like that it can really affect the way you live and I think ayahuasca should be a doorway to that world and maybe well maybe it's not only the doorway maybe it's meditation maybe it's other things but for me ayahuasca was like the ayahuasca was the the breaking of the egg or the breaking of the cosmic egg just exploded those boundaries and some people I think need that especially maybe some veterans like like I was were so rigid in our thinking it sometimes it takes that explosion to really open things up and that that allows for novelty that allows for novel behavior and action it allows us to have the ability to be our true selves I would say so our true selves are not our conscious mind we always think like our true self is this conscious mind that thinks very linearly our true self is something deeper and we forget about that so Carl Jung called it unconscious but at the end of his life he goes I was saying unconscious but what I really meant was soul I was speaking to a skeptical western audience so get in touch with your soul it's so important so with the modern trendiness of ayahuasca it's important to remember it's actually soul medicine and spiritual medicine and to take it seriously yeah I love Carl Jung I think that he writes there's a few books that he writes specifically for men that I've read that I think break a lot of the stigmatism of having to be spiritually rigid um but going back to what you were saying and maintaining the sacred nature of of things that we take for granted I find that it's a lack of respect sometimes that you know the last few generations have for the natural world and I have a really good friend Tom he I mean Tom is in his 60s I believe retired Marine Corps was a civil servant or worked as a federal employee and then during Covid he didn't want to take the vaccine so he quit but Tom is probably I would call him a spiritual mentor of mine and when you look at him you see Marine but he has reached levels of consciousness and a deeper understanding for the world that just completely blows me away every single time I talk to him and we do these like monthly prayers where everybody who's kind of like friends with Tom we meditate um you know on the 13th of every month and like we do these certain things but Tom said something to me once that I think about to this day he has this like moral code and I've adopted one of those which is um you know with every conversation lift and be uplifted like try to bring something good to every interaction you have with people and with you know nature and with the natural world and he said something to me one day that was someone along the lines of like you know we're talking about a fly this is Tom this is how Tom is just very deep conversations about everything and it was like a a Nat a small little fly and I was sweating it away he's like why are you doing that and I was like cause he's annoying like this thing is he's like but is he though is he gonna harm you if he lands near you and I was like no he's like you shouldn't do that he's like just he's just interacting with the world that has presented to him he's like what would you do if you were that Nat and you were interacting with the world and I sat there I don't even know how long I sat there I felt like it felt like an eternity but I was like damn Tom like it just meant so much to me that he said that and it really like again like cracked that rigid shell and now I have so much more respect for all forms of life even something as small as this little nut and he just said it in passing like it wasn't even like he just stopped to tell me to appreciate the little things basically and I think that's that's important for for everybody regardless of where you're at but yeah no yeah Tom's Tom's awesome I don't know what he's doing right now but he has the mind of like a 20 year old like he's so on top of things but he's lived a long life and then you have to wonder like where does that that fly in that moment was there for you to learn that lesson which is even more interesting oh 100% and I I think yeah kind of bringing it back full circle I think that life lesson was important for me especially at that time in my life so I hope everybody can find a Tom or at least or at least interact with the with the world and you know as as secret as it is but um yeah no I mean if if there's anything else that you wanna talk about or that you wanna talk to the audience about um you know feel free while we wrap things up a little bit yeah no I think uh one thanks for having me on I really appreciate that super grateful and if anyone wants to look at my research we have two different websites one's called Neuro enlightenment.com and it's more geared for neurofeedback and we also do remote training so that's something also to think about neurofeedback has been very very healing so sometimes the people aren't ready for plant medicines or if they already done it neurofeedback is its own healing modality that's very important and we work with people around the world remotely so that's something that we can do um also we have a documentary that we're taking to film festivals right now but will be released soon next year and another project I'm working on is I want to run a retreat in Iceland next year that one's gonna be the one with with runes and I'm gonna have a couple elders talk about the runes the Icelandic traditions and Norse traditions so I'm really excited about that so that will be coming up and our retreat website is twasawakening.com TWAS the rune t I w a z awakening and trying to think of anything else no just really happy really grateful they had me on and I would say that you know some things you mentioned earlier about nature I think nature is around us at all times that'd be so healing and trying to get on nature is something that we can all do better and more of and sometimes I lose track of it because I'm working too much and a lot of what I do is with technology on a computer so nature is always healing so always remember that and yeah if anyone has any questions they can reach out to me as well so