yeah so I um graduated high school in 2003 and I joined the Marine Corps right afterwards I'm from Omaha Nebraska and yeah I joined the Marine Corps right after 9 11 I figured it's like my patriotic duty to um fight terrorism and that especially that time frame was very intense a very patriotic time frame that's why I joined them join the Marine Corps yeah and then we talked a little bit about your journey into you know a bit of a spiritual awakening that LED you to Peru and we really got into a lot of the science the neurology and cognitive science and even some psychology behind the benefits of things like brain mapping and the effects of um like ayahuasca for example we talked a little bit about and that your experience the first time you um were a part of one of those ceremonies so yeah I guess I would love to kind of pick back up where we left off which was about brain mapping so if you kind of want to start there with the bare basics yeah so a friend in Omaha Nebraska did a brain map of me about 2,014 I think right after Afghanistan and I think pretty around the same time of my first ayahuasca experience and the brain map showed a high bated pattern in the posterior in the back of the brain and this pattern is associated with PTSD and it was actually very empowering for me because I realized that oh this is a brain pattern I can work on this isn't like a you know I think a lot of times a psychological diagnosis it's something more deep and it's go down and figure out your childhood and go to talk therapy but oh it's a brain pattern and the idea is I can train it I can train it away with neurofeedback so that was very empowering to me and it gave me a path forward that really resonate with me yeah let's if you could cause I've never done this I read a ton I didn't realize how much more research had been published since the last time I looked into brain mapping but can you walk through kind of the process what happens when someone maps your brain like what is the like what what are they doing are they attaching nodes or you wanna get into that a little bit yeah so generally how we do it and there's different kind of styles but um for there's different kinds of brain imaging but the what kind we use we read brain waves so we put a 19 point electrode cap on and it reads your brain waves in 19 locations in the head so it covers the whole head so front back side to side and it reads your brain waves and there's four or five major brain waves delta theta alpha beta and gamma and how your brain waves appear in different parts of the brain tells us a whole lot about that person we can see a whole lot about what's going on we can see there's markers for anxiety there's markers for depression there's markers for you know so many different things focus issues and we can train the brain to be more healthy that's the idea but when you see the brain waves it's very empowering because you can see like oh here's where I'm just regulated and we try and find solutions to help them be get better so as the patient or client who goes to get a brain map what are the results that you're presented with cause obviously you can't most people can't interpret the um the raw data yeah so we do a Q E E G so the raw E E G is kind of what you've seen in like a hospital or maybe a movie the raw brain waves we pass it through a filter maybe not well does filter it but it passes it through um a software compares it to hundreds of thousands of other maps or a large database basically and so actually after studying hundreds of thousands of maps we know what different things look like depression like I said all these different things so um when you look at it someone as a practitioner we know what these different patterns look like so it's a topographical map of the brain so I see the delta waves I see the theta waves I see the alpha waves and beta waves and I see all these different markers and it takes a little expertise to read them but once you can read it it's very powerful tool and then I talk to the client or patient they can um usually got a lot out of it like oh okay this is why I have trouble you know focusing on tasks so I have a pattern that gives me trouble for focusing right for example or so usually most people aren't surprised it's actually okay yeah I'm experiencing depression and that patterns in the brain so it allows us a lens to view it and I think it's becoming more and more powerful because different brain imagery like for example MRIs is like blood flow but with the with the brain waves there's so much subtlety in it this will just get more and more advanced over time as we're reading more about it yeah so and correct me if I'm wrong here so someone might receive results that say that you have certain brain waves that are consistent with um other individuals who have depression like there's like there are patterns amongst the data is what I'm assuming so when they yeah so I mean very much statistical so we've done like questionnaire surveys with people's brain maps and that's probably how they first did it um when they notice people with depression tend to exhibit this pattern and over time we've developed the science behind that in the studies we understand why the brain changes in that way so yep it goes into the theory of brain structure and brain physiology combined with like neuropsychology but basically when trauma happens to the brain stress happens to the brain each brain manifests in a different way so you know for example someone with add might be might have trauma in the system and they're avoiding it by like not being focused or some people might have a busy mind or some people might worry those patterns are very obvious in the brain and there's shifts in the brain when that happens so depression is actually a subconscious avoidance mechanism so they don't feel as much so they don't feel that trauma as much so part of the healing process is gonna feel more and moving that brain in that direction yeah and I I remember last time we talked about kind of the the impact trauma has on the brain and there's tons of research now that that shows this but we see that um like things like PTSD or emotional or psychological trauma manifest itself as a almost as a physical injury so when I used to do clinical assessments on cognitive deficits and quality of life we found that intense emotional psychological trauma especially amongst veterans who are experiencing or you know PTSD or exhibiting signs of depression that uh their brains would look like someone who had been physically injured you know not you know not to mention a lot of them have like TBI's and things like that so there is sometimes actual structural uh issues and damage and we find that they they have the same deficits as someone who you know maybe maybe experienced a stroke so I'm curious someone comes in let's say they so they get their brain mapped and you see kind of these areas of um I guess I don't want to say concern but areas of focus yeah what what does a potential I don't want to say treatment plan but how do you determine the steps to take to try and correct these these areas of focus so yeah it's very interesting when we talked about like trauma hold itself in the physical body so it's a famous book called The Body Keeps the score that trauma exists in the body that exists in the brain so someone with a lot of emotional trauma it could be it could damage the brain as much as say alcohol or drug abuse or TBI because that that unresolved trauma that brain's constantly stressed try to release it and that stress creates a certain imbalance where the basically the brain can't rest so it can't do proper waste removal it's constantly on high alert and the chemical structures are wearing out the brain like the stress the stress hormones so yeah so it can be like an issue where a person might have PTSD that goes untreated for 10 years and they're seeing cognitive deficits because of that at the same time if you help someone with emotional um those emotional trauma and that emotional brain is the core part of the brain it can heal the rest of the brain cause that's the core part and then the cognitive parts are on top of that the cortex and stuff like that so um when I do a brain map it's like a road map it's so so cool so powerful I think most people like in the field of behavioral health cognitive health mental health they should definitely be using this because I think it allows such a powerful tool I mean I look at psychiatrists who prescribe medication without looking at brain map is like a doctor prescribing heart medication you know without taking blood pressure I think it's it's crazy because you know every medication does but for me what how I treat is through training the brain that's when the neurofeedback comes in um neurofeedback is the core of what we do it's where we put electrodes in the head we train the brain more healthy so um call areas of focus we look at ways are disregulated the brain that part of the brain is disregulated we want to bring it into like a healthier state or more into that normative state where they can function better we know those states are so we train the brain to become more healthy for example like like add is really easy to treat with neurofeedback classic add because the classic pattern is a high theta pattern globally where they can't focus and they lack a focus pattern which is like low beta so you simply train that high pattern down the the high theta and we train that focus pattern up so instead of a kid being on um powerful drugs their whole life we could train their brain with a few months and ideally get into a state where they're where they're operating effectively yeah you know it's interesting you mentioned The Body Keeps Score I I have that book I haven't read it but I've I've watched a ton of interviews by and I can't remember his name it's Van Burton I think I'll post it in the comments or in the description but um yeah I I've watched a ton of his interviews where he talks about concepts of how the body maintain like will retain the stress of trauma and um even as it relates to like the flashbacks of the event even if it's something minor just over time those minor events add up so um I was also talking to um kind of on another point that you made I was I was talking to a philosopher in my last podcast episode and we uh we talked a little bit about ADHD and um I sometimes wonder I've seen some other like um non pharmacological interventions for for things like ADHD and for me as a kid it was drawing so I wonder what that brain map would have looked like before and after that sort of intervention I mean obviously there are some situations where integrative you know an integrative approach would be required uh medication in conjunction with uh something that like you're saying um kind of brings you back down to like a normal pattern but so for the neural feedback so is that done after the brain map is done yeah so generally speaking you take a brain map and that's the roadmap and that gives me an idea of what areas the brain I want to train and generally I'm like a personal trainer for the brain you know it's kind of like going to a brain gym they do neurofeedback training they can feel tired afterwards often people need to take a nap or something or like you know the same thing is to go to the gym you need to make sure you're eating healthy foods cause you're changing those brain structures healthy fats eggs grass fed meat things like that and um generally speaking like three months of training gets most people where they wanna go and it's like three sessions a week and I train people remotely you know all around the world where they have their own home training device and I send the mail and today the technology is more advanced you know before we take like a big machine in a clinic but now it's a lot more portable which is very cool and I also use in conjunction with plant medicines because both of them use neuroplasticity so it adds that kind of like the holistic approach like you're talking about and um you know some people with a brain map I might advise a certain meditation for them so it's not always neurofeedback you know some people might not be able to afford it or they might not be ready for that so I can advise okay with this brain map this kind of meditation would be good for you or this kind of diet would be good for you you know like and it invites lifestyle choices and it's very powerful because then it empowers them to be the best them that's the whole point of the brain map is to like give them the tools to be the best selves yeah one thing that I was completely fascinated with and I I haven't had a chance to finish reading the study but the Mayo Clinic came out with a very interesting study in that brain mapping and neurofeedback has actually helped neurosurgeons has helped the outcome of neurosurgery it helps them like you're saying like get a better visualization of what they're about to do as well as uh better diagnose certain like actual physical lesions that require some sort of invasive procedure uh but they talk a lot about um the this sort of non invasive approach to any sort of neurological or cognitive deficits that could completely prevent the the need for surgery so I'm sure you know and that came out I think it was 2022 so I'm I'm waiting for the additional studies and see what if that was able to be replicated but I thought it was just an interesting concept and a place like Mayo Clinic implementing that is you know they're not the first to do stuff right the research has to be there yeah well that's really cool you got to send me that study because yeah you know most of the time you know for the last 30 years neurofeedback is kind of like a small little group of people doing what they think is like a super amazing but the mainstream scientific community hasn't picked up on it yet I think there's been over 300 studies about the efficiency the effectiveness of neurofeedback um that's really cool that they're doing it I can see that in many different ways because I know um they're trying to do like surgery for example like at Parkinson's they might put electrodes in the brain actually put like electrical currents into the brain that's hugely hugely invasive and we can do so much neurofeedback which is not invasive at all we teach the brain how to be more healthy and people been working that for a long time and people neurofeedback to specialize with Parkinson's for example so lots of those invasive surgeries that cost who knows hundreds of thousands of dollars you know it can be really treated with neurofeedback in a non invasive way and I thought also the neurofeedback what's really cool about it is I'm training the brain I'm seeing the brain change each session I'm watching those brain waves so each time they're training I'm seeing how the brain aligns I'm seeing how the brain moves in a healthy state where if you plant put electrodes in someone's brain for example or basic surgery you're not gonna know the changes maybe until like you you do another brain imaging or brain map where it like track symptoms in a certain way questionnaires or or different kinds of like cognitive tests so yeah I think brain wrapping really good but also I kind of thought about it too talking about like a a surgeon right he's like a he needs to be a performer in his field so brain neurofeedback it really help him out because you know it make him like much better what he does and we work with big performance with people like that too that's interesting yeah that's a good point yeah I um when I was doing I did a little bit more research last night because uh there were so many references that I found and and I'm gonna put all of them in the blog post um which will be in the link in the description cause there were a ton of um I guess therapeutic clinics that are hosted or endorsed by major universities that are utilizing neural feedback to you know to help patients all over the spectrum and um I would love to see the VA pick up something like that because I I think it would really help out veterans so but I'm curious so after you went through like this process what was the what was the like the plan like what was it like for you to go through you know having brain mapped being able to like pretty much see the areas of trauma and then work on those things well it was such a such a powerful tool when I use it myself I want to use it with other people it became really obvious that I tried so many different things I never went the pharmaceutical route or the traditional route for PTSD and you know for some people that's what they need to do and that's you know and it obviously has its place um but that was just it called to me and I was looking for like yoga meditation all these different things and then um the problem with yoga meditation is that when there's so much trauma in the system it's very hard to get into those states but with the brain training I can see those states I can see where the trauma is at and I can like train the brain how to go into these different states so immediately when I started doing I felt relief almost within a few sessions like in each session this huge tension in my body kept lifting and I started reading more about it you know like what what is this and eventually I started meeting people in the field and that's where I met my mentor I met him in Denver over five years ago now and I told him about my ideas and he said I'll train you you know I I think so my idea was combine it with plant medicines what I'm doing now he's like that's a beautiful idea I wanna train you I wanna work with you and that's that's where it LED to but I think the coolest thing about neural feedback as much as I love so many different treatments I love plant medicines I love ayahuasca and I love you know meditation all these things can be very effective but neurofeedback every time I'm I'm working with someone I can see how their brain is changing and and you don't always get that with talk therapy you can't really see sometimes like did it work did it not work where am I at and that's what's cool about the brain imaging you can see exactly what's going on yeah I think tangible results are sometimes helpful because it's um less interpretive it's you know I I agree I think sometimes when we look at when we look at therapy especially talk therapy it's you know when a situation similar to the event that the you know you and your therapist are talking about talking about unless it happens again or you're presented with a similar challenge you really get to see if you've changed or grown or whatever based on that experience so it's like if this triggered you then the next time you go there does it trigger you again and it's very um it's very immersive and I think sometimes it can be jarring for someone who is going through that kind of like emotional or spiritual journey so so I'm curious so okay so after someone so let's say there's multiple areas um that are kind of let's say you know out of focus every term that you use and you know they have ADHD they've also experienced some sort of trauma that's manifesting itself as PTSD or even depression are you able to work on each of those things at the same time in terms of lowering waves increasing waves and things like that yeah so that's that's where a good practitioner comes in so there's multiple things going on you wanna choose where you can make the most impact in the fastest way so someone might have a head trauma and depression they might have these different things going on and um the idea is like I have a brain map here's where I want the brain it's finding that the quickest course or best course possible so often I go after the areas I think are the most disregulated you know that I think that this person will benefit the most from quickly some things might take more time for example like head trauma you know a diet is actually very important for that because they need to rebuild the structures of the brain so diet and coaching in that aspect with the brain training is important um and often like you've you mentioned that a lot of people have PTSD and head trauma for example those things go really hand in hand and the cool thing about brain training is you just start working on the brain soon as everything starts becoming better um so I might be training one thing the PTSD but the the head trauma is going better and you can see those brain waves regulate so it's kind of like a mirror being put in front of the brain you're showing a healthier direction you might be training one thing but all the other brain parts of the brain are rebalancing to get to that one place so the whole brain is like reengineering itself all the time to come more healthy and wants to come more healthy and it's very intuitive and it's the first time in its life it's been shown how to do it in a very efficient way so you know for sometimes when I treat people or with people that brain train like okay I work with this and I see like there's kind of sometimes layers to it okay like we work through that now there's a different thing we can work on um so there's kind of layers to mapping but generally speaking that when you start training the brain if you're doing the right way everything starts aligning everything starts becoming better yeah I'm curious if if there's any talk at least amongst the field of potentially utilizing a similar technology or methodology for early onset dementia because it sounds like a lot of this at least what I've read and now that we're talking is rooted in creating new neural pathways that's that plasticity that we talked about and that is sometimes what is lacking in someone with um any variety of dementia so I'm curious if there's any I mean I don't even know what an IRB for that would look like but um it'd be be interesting to see but on another note um do you wanna talk a little bit about your mentor because I did look him up and he he has a he's a heavy hitter in the in the industry yeah I know I mean he really is I'm very I'm very blessed to to have met him it was a beautiful synchronicity his name is Doctor Richard Suiter he has his own uh neurofeedback company called New Mind Technologies and when I met him he was I looked him up later I'm like is he really gonna work with me he's this big guy he's remember books and stuff and sure enough he starts working with me because he's really passionate about um what I want to do and for him I'm kind of like a field researcher exploring stuff and prove and figure things out there so um but he's just coming out with he's just he just came out with a book he's coming out with another book he's written a number of books but this year he's coming with a new one on just the Alpha Theta protocol and it's a very powerful protocol for PTSD actually I think the book's called Alpha Theta and like trauma or PTSD this one protocol so we're doing neural feedback there's many different protocols this one protocol takes people into the subconscious and that's where trauma is released at so here's a whole book that just came out on that and um yeah I consider him a neuroscientist he knows tons about the brain but he's also a Zen Buddhist he's from shamanism so he has this wide variety of uh interest and passions which makes me work with him pretty much like perfect and ideal have you ever had anybody go through the uh brain mapping and neural feedback but then also attend an ayahuasca ceremony with Tiawa's Awakening well at t was awakening we we include both so we always have a pre map and a post map at our retreats I think we're pretty much unique in the world in that there might be like one other place that does the brain mapping as far as I know but we're the only ones that do the neurofeedback too so we do pre and post maps so every retreat we're seeing how people change and yeah because then after the retreat we go hey here's your brain here's what's changed and it's very interesting for people like oh wow cool like this is your brain on drugs yeah hahaha yeah and then I show them like um in our documentary we had a a fighter she's a Muay Thai fighter she got Ko'd knocked out right before she came down I saw that obvious head trauma in her brain and then after the the brain training and after the ayahuasca it goes down significantly after nine days so that was really cool to see and when people see that they go oh wow like something did happen it wasn't just a hallucination like this is changing me or this is helping me in a certain way that's why it's really powerful that way I think that tangible piece is that when people can say oh it's it's more than just a feeling cause you know there's the skeptics who call anything that's not standardized practiced medicine as like Woohoo but I think that tangible piece and seeing it slowly start to come out in the research is starting to blur the lines for them a little bit and they realize that like hey the stuff that we're doing has been around for thousands of years but now science is starting to catch up with imaging that allows us to show what is actually happening while we're doing you know integrating with with plant medicine but um so you contributed to the research in this field do you want to talk a little bit about um your contributions to to the research yeah thank you I mean it's kind of surprises myself cause not too long ago I was in Afghanistan and in infantry and then I worked in the railroad for a little bit construction and now I'm doing research in this field but you know I have a mentor and I have the equipment and there's not a whole lot of people doing it at least the style that I'm doing it so I use Q E G brain mapping for the neurofeedback field so with this technology a lot of technologies like in the medical way they look at in the brain often looking for like a trauma in the brain or schizophrenia but seizures things like this but we're looking for emotional states emotional effect which as a really need tool to see the brain because we can see like this depression anxiety things like that so um yeah I published two studies in the last couple years uh the ayahuasca and Wachuma San Pedro as far as I know it's the first ayahuasca study to track change over time and it's definitely the first study to ever brain image Wachuma San Pedro it's a cactus that has mescaline in it maybe somewhere peyote but different alkaloid in it and um yeah no it's been really really amazing to be able to make those contributions to the field yeah and I'll I'll definitely post links to all that stuff um cause I wanna take a deeper dive into this into this research I I try to summarize as best I can my takeaways from the research and there's just so much that goes into this because it seems as though the research that's coming out you can just see the researcher having this epiphany like I cannot believe we haven't done this before the writing is so passionate which you don't find in research studies are always super dry but you can almost get this sense of passion where the guy just the researcher just wants to say holy shit haha like I think like that's kind of like the the tone I get from from a lot of the studies that I read especially so the Mayo Clinic after they did that study they published a series of lectures and I think they're available on YouTube I'll find them and post the link where they basically talk to the research like this is the wave of the future this is how we can get even better and less practicing medicine and more actually implementing medical science so um it's incredibly interesting and anybody who can contribute to the research I mean we need that so are you working on anything now is there anything else that you yeah so right now we're doing a cocoa leaf study it's not exactly a psychedelic but it's um it's in Peru and they use it everywhere it's very sacred to them they chew on it right yeah they chew on coca leaves the farmers use it they do blessings to the mountain and I went through the research as well with that and no one's even uh brain images it at all and I thought it was kind of interesting to look into this that's actually a study we're doing this month and then um we'll see what we see we'll see what's next there's so much to do there's so much to look into yeah I'm curious in the Logitech tunnel studies as well because those are extremely interesting because I think a lot of people want immediate gratification in some of these things and I think that it's it the changes over time like you had said it's that overall delta that I think that we should be focusing on but um you know when I was down in South America certain areas we couldn't we couldn't go right cause I was in the military and one of the locals was telling me that um there's like there's cocoa farms out there and it's not uncommon to just grab a leaf and like chew on it and then they have their own like there is a sacred aspect to it in the appreciation in the and that's why they don't want like a bunch of crazy Navy and Marine folks going out there and causing havoc but um yeah that's that's really interesting so you're expanding kind of outside of ayahuasca into other plant medicines yeah and you know I'm in the country of Peru so coca leaves is kind of ideal because it's everywhere in hospitals you love coca leaves just getting their tea you know you put coca leaves in hot water and you have coca leaf tea or the farmers like every day they're chewing coca leaves this is part of their culture um but yeah I wanna look at the different things too I think peyote would be an interesting thing to look at I think the whole all mescaline containing plants have like hardly any research on them the brain imaging so I think that's really interesting and also I wanna build a database with ayahuasca so my goal is to have enough brain maps we can do a large like meta analysis of like maybe hundreds and that would be a really cool study to publish yeah I mean it would be groundbreaking for the literature because a lot of that doesn't exist right now yeah that that would be really interesting I'm curious about the peyote because I think that those sort of I would call them Native American but those traditions of native peoples has been around for thousands of years and they're starting to get some some visibility like the there's a few documentaries that came out about the process of that ritual and that tradition and um the sacredness of the peyote so I'm I'm curious curious how that would look it'd be great to brain map those those folks folks that have been doing it for so long yeah I don't think anyone's done that yet I mean I haven't looked at the research in the last year but as far as I can tell no one's ever brain damage what uh peyote with any any kind of brain damage yeah I I think the science writes it off it's extremely unfortunate and that's why I think your research is important but they they write it off they write it off as ancient traditions that are not grounded in science and I'm like we thought the same thing about a lot of a lot of the medicine that we use today I mean oh yeah acupuncture being prescribed by the VA 50 years ago they would have been like that woo woo stuff right well even like in the 90s I think it was like yeah really out there for most people yeah I mean when I was reading about acupuncture when Nixon went to China I think it was Nixon or maybe someone else but I think it was Nixon um he had acupuncture done on him or maybe someone in his like administration and it was in the newspapers like what is this this is bizarre this is crazy stuff like and there's tons and tons of research on acupuncture tons of stuff and so things are changing that's really cool the VA is doing I also I really hope the VA eventually incorporates neurofeedback I've met some people that have tried to do that and hasn't been successful yet as far as I know but it'd be really amazing if they do that cause it's so powerful I mean it's like literally an act of Congress I remember when the psychedelic research was first happening at the VA I went to UCSD so a lot of you know I worked at the TBI clinic things like that so because the campuses are so close they they share a lot so when the psychedelic research was being done it was actually a UCSD study but they were using the VA labs because they got a conjunction IRB approval or whatever it was because the UCSD was studying veterans so they kind of entered this deal with the VA to access the pool of veterans that they had down in LA Hoya and uh I just think about like even that was so pro like that nobody wanted to even pay attention to that study I'm surprised UCSD got funding for it but they they definitely push the limit sometimes when it comes to research thankfully and I mean like my mom I remember like you know 80s 90s even using things like turmeric as anti inflammatory rather than popping a Tylenol or something was seen as like so bizarre and now and now a bag of turmeric root is like 10 bucks from sprouts so yeah crazy that you know here we are everybody's like I told you so yeah no it's really amazing and really cool same thing with plant medicines like ayahuasca when I first went down 10 years ago it was no one knew what I was doing like I was going in the jungle hanging out with magicians and you know but things are changing it's been really cool yeah I'm um I'm curious now the uh so can we talk a little bit about Tia was awakening I know we did a whole episode on it but I'm I'm curious now that I didn't I think you mentioned it last time I might have just forgotten that you guys do the kind of before and after brain mapping have you had anybody who's returned so you can kind of see what their I guess brain map look like very beginning to like few like a few sessions later so they come back to the retreat come back to another retreat yeah has anybody come back so um those studies don't really exist yet and I don't I haven't had like a return I'm trying to think I don't think I've had a return guest yet because we just we just started this last year so last year and a half um but no like those studies need to be done cause we have the pre and post the post immediately afterwards but we don't have those longer studies like 3 months out 6 months out and um only studies exist are questionnaire studies and those are still very small I mean it's really amazing how much research needs to be done I'm kind of blows my mind but um no one's ever brain imaged it long term and that would be really effective to know what's going on because I think some people they carry the effect much longer and some people less and there might be differences in the people and why that is you know and the more insight we get the more insight we'll have in healing that's how I look at it yeah I mean even as a qualitative study I was talking about this before with the um with Brian McMahon who is a shaman um and philosopher which is pretty cool but we're talking about phenomenological qualitative studies that really look at the shared experience so everybody who has attended Tia's Awakening and looking for patterns and how it's influenced them even as a longitudinal study you know through the use of interviews for you know years or whatever the case is but um yeah I kind of wait can't wait to see what the the research how the research develops on that I I'm gonna be tracking it I'm signed up to every other scientific journal so I I look forward to to seeing that I I did want to talk a little bit about your movie though I'm not I don't think it's out yet but I know that you guys won an award we just won an award um best production in the South Beach Film Festival in Miami so right now we're doing the film festival circuit and I never thought I don't have a documentary be doing this because it's been very interesting and very rewarding um it should be out next year I think I'm not sure when we're releasing it yet but it's a very amazing beautiful documentary about um myself a veteran and a fellow veteran my old unit meeting in Peru so the name of it's called Cross Paths so it's his his path my path crossing and also ancient wisdom meets modern technology and that's the theme of it so um yeah it's been very exciting I'm really happy about it so yeah are you guys gonna do any viewings cause I'd love to host you guys in California if you were gonna do some viewings well I can we can definitely do that we would love to come to California and and do a viewing yeah that would be that would be awesome and there's such a you know huge veteran population here so especially Marines um yeah we I would totally host you guys out here um I have a really good venue that we can put the movie up um like in a movie theater well that sounds great actually I just did one in Iceland not too long ago and that was really cool yeah and um actually it's interesting my friend was doing a bachelor party out there and he's they're all veterans as well and I've always been called Iceland as well so it was really cool we did a viewing out there and I think in next year we're gonna do a retreat Iceland too so this can be a little different style than we've done but they have a special Icelandic mushroom we wanna work with interesting and all sorts of Icelandic traditions like the runes and the Nordic Icelandic traditions that'll be really cool yeah that's fine next I just picked up the where is it at it's on my bookshelf the Nordic Mythology and Philosophy Bible uh I try to buy when it comes to stuff like that I try to buy those books from authors who are from there um yeah like I don't want an Icelandic literature novel or whatever by like a British guy or like American who's like not even from there so um yeah I just picked that up cause that's also pretty interesting to me I think we talked about that last time too so OK yeah I would I think that would be pretty cool I'd love to see you guys um who was it what the hell is his name the guy from the the Punisher did a little stint on that the bear um TV show wow I can't remember his name he has a podcast too he just did a showing of a short film that he helped create and it was awesome so I took away a lot of ideas from that so if you guys do actually come out to California I can pull a lot of what he did just the way they set it up the vendors they had vendors there um it was pretty cool and there's a place out here called they're a little private non chain uh luxury movie theater I go I go once a week and they do events there and I've seen people that are doing birthday parties and their kids all want to watch Moana together and they will you know or like a home film or things like that and they do that which is pretty cool so it'd be it'd be cool to uh to host you guys out here cause um the film is awesome or documentary so yeah thank you we'd love to come down there yeah so what's the so okay so we talked a little bit about the future of your research and um and kind of that aspect of it but what about Tiwa's awakening I know you guys are kind of still in your infancy but it sounds like you guys are doing really well what's the future hold for you yeah right now we're still in the early stage and let's basically get our name out there because I think we have a really beautiful retreat that's very unique because no one combines all the stuff we combine jujitsu the adventure hiking the brain mapping and the neurofeedback and especially geared for veterans and I said adventures in general someone's looking for something a little different and that's what we provide so I have a huge passion for this and it's been building for 10 years I feel very blessed and we're running a couple more retreats this year I think one in September and one in like December or January I don't have that one yet our idea hopefully is to have um it's all a building phase to have our own retreat center have our own land and run more regular retreats so it's all a building process yeah I guess once I process my land in Wyoming you guys you guys could totally use that um it's like untouched land I think only one part of it has an access road I've only visited it once when I bought it and there's another non profit veteran non profit that uses um it my property ends at a mountainside obviously the I don't own the mountain as a parks department but the Special Operators Climbing Association um I am letting them use that to uh to host some of their retreats but um yeah we'll have to get you guys out there I'm wondering so what are the hoops you have to jump through cause I'm sure there are tons to run a retreat like that in the United States I mean other than the obvious barriers with the medicinal aspect of it you know I don't really know yet cause I haven't looked into it cause 10 years ago you couldn't run a retreat in United States that's why I was in Peru yeah and now it seems like last few years I've seen a lot more retreats in United States I've seen advertisements for it it kind of surprised me cause this wasn't a thing at all so I'm gonna look into it more in the laws and stuff like that I know there's been underground ceremonies for a long time I mean I had some friends in like Washington state that used to do that when I first looked at this 10 years ago you can't really find a place in internet you gotta know somebody or something so this is all new thing to me too but eventually um Colorado might be a good option too because I know some people out there yeah have retreat spots and stuff like that so that could be really cool but I haven't looked into United States yet yeah I know from my understanding a lot of these sorts of retreats I wouldn't even call them retreats they're they're done on tribal land they're part of the tribal culture and ceremony so it was not uncommon to hear about that sort of stuff happening on native territory I'm curious if that would be an option for hosting something like that but I know right now because of the classification of certain plant medicines that unless it's in like a controlled approved setting it's difficult like even the psychedelic research they I mean I think it was like 12 years of fighting the federal government to be able to do that and that's not even a retreat that's like I mean they have these cozy rooms with sofas and beds and stuff like that to conduct the research but um yeah I'd be curious I've been on a few other wilderness retreats I'd call them or nature retreats yeah and and now a lot of those retreats also have like the CBD component to it or like a THC component so it's like which one do you wanna go on um I haven't done any of that other stuff but um yeah I I heard that I heard a lot of really good things about retreat stateside I just curious if there's other aspects of what you do that could be could be done here no I'd love to expand here and maybe do a few retreats in the states every year and Wyoming's beautiful I love the state and uh yeah I used to work out there a bit in the mountains so I really really enjoy it but as stuff I mean my whole vision eventually was to bring this stuff back to the states and now it seems the laws are changing a little bit and the culture is changing a little bit so I have to start thinking about that more and plan it out more because I think that would be really powerful for people yeah I mean I think we we definitely have a bit of a road ahead in getting politicians to realize that we're not trying to hold many woodstocks it's like a less than 15 person type event in a controlled environment with professionals so I'd be curious to see what that looks like but other than Peru and potentially Iceland are there any other countries that are doing something similar or that accept this sort of treatment well Costa Rica is a big one I know that um I was actually thinking about flying down to Costa Rica just kind of checking out what's going on down there there's many retreats down there I actually have friends in Portugal too they do they run retreats out there with ayahuasca and there's a little bit in Colombia I think like Ecuador as well I think just Peru's one of the bigger ones but there's other countries as well so yeah I know that John Davis has some veteran he's a veteran network out in Costa Rica too and I think Panama but um yeah I mean I'm only familiar of this I guess by association cause I'm from South America but not from Peru so um you know just understanding the cultures of neighboring countries so yeah that's that's gonna be incredibly interesting so I'm curious um I guess kind of moving kind of back to the cognitive side of things have you had anybody who has attended your retreat and has gone through all of this that has presented your brain mapping and neural feedback to like a clinician um I'm just curious what the Salty Dog neurologist has to say yeah I'm trying to think I think I can't think offhand but I'm thinking that they've gone told their like their doctor or something like that and actually when people tell their doctors I'm kind of surprised like oh yeah you should go do that that was not a thing you know even a few years ago oh that's interesting I'm gonna do this I was for treatment oh cool you know like that's not that was not a thing before so come here yeah you know when my doctor prescribed acupuncture she has since received probably a well deserved promotion so she's not my primary care anymore but when we had first looked at uh ways to treat my PTSD she went completely holistic she was like well there's acupuncture we can send you to a massage therapist and I was like what since when does the VA have any of this I was expecting that yeah and then you know the doctor right after her just sent me medication to my mailbox didn't even tell me like oh you have PTSD here's the standard cookie cutter collage or assortment of the skittles that you have to take and I was like what the hell when is the why is the VA sending drugs to my mailbox I had to call my new PCM to find out what it was yeah just a little bit of a culture shock because I had just gotten so used to the the prescription of like holistic stuff so yeah yeah I'd be curious to see what um I call them salty dog cause a lot of neurologists besides having gone through like 20 years of school um there are a lot of them aren't as progressive or open to alternative medicine than I would like but no it's a new thing yeah and I know this is probably gonna be a bit of a shorter episode compared to last time cause we covered a lot last time yeah but are there any studies that you recommend someone who's interested in this um resources or certain studies other than your own um or including your own that um that you would recommend for someone to look into I mean I like my studies haha but the reason I like my studies because um it's a certain way of looking at the brain right so a lot of neurological studies it's gonna be very maybe complex for someone that's not in the field whereas mine I think it's more um easily read by a lay person it's it's more clear what's going on I'm not really going deep into network connections and different aspects of the brain like that I'm I'm showing brain imaging that's pretty easy to follow so I I like that a lot um I think there's I think lower barrier to entry is good yeah yeah I think there's also studies I don't remember the names but if you look at the default mode network like mushrooms for example there's been work how the the mushrooms quiet the default mode network and this is the same thing that happens in meditation for example so this is idea that the self becomes more activated the sense of self so that psychedelics mushrooms for example they lower those barriers so you're not so much an ego conscious you're much more one with the world and we can see that in the brain patterns which I think is really cool and I think also if you research I might have to send you a couple studies there's one study I really found interesting on like um peak experiences and went through all the literature throughout history on what these experiences are like I think it's very interesting because you know mainstream science we don't think of consciousness that way that one experience can change someone's life and what does it take to have that experience you know psychedelics and plant medicines are one avenue but these experiences happen many different ways and they happen to human beings forever so what goes into that experience I think that's really important and also keep that in mind when we're working with people too we want people to have those certain experiences that can like shift them so they can do what they need to change their life that's that's how I look at us yeah you know I'll have to yeah send me whatever studies you have because um what I'm trying to do I've been put putting out like my own like abstract of certain studies but I would like to actually post the studies along with my highlights uh to help people kind of absorb the material or you know pulling I guess just my viewpoint not it's not that it's the right one but um just to kind of facilitate any sort of like critical thinking as it relates to neuro like neurological studies cause they can be hard to follow um reading the abstract and the discussion doesn't really give you as much insight as you think so I like that your studies are have a lower barrier to entry where it requires a a little less of a PhD yeah to read another thing I think modern studies I think they overemphasize certain qualities and aspects they wanna like really isolate one alkaloid within a psychedelic drug or whatever they want to call it I don't consider it a drug but they want to isolate one alkaloid they want to study someone like in a clinic and reduce all these variables and obviously they make scientifically scientifically it makes a lot of sense but in many ways what I'm doing is field research so it's the environment it's the shaman it's all these plant medicines together and we're looking we want to look at the experience holistically I think it's very important because well we're experiencing a holistic experience and we might be losing things if we isolate them too much I think that that lens is important but I think we need other lenses as well because the holistic approach for example I've seen data sets or I've observed things I don't think anyone's observed yet but that's cause I'm looking at through that lens yeah it's just it's interesting that you you're mentioning this because again talking to to Brian McMahon um he mentions the hermetic kind of approach to understanding things that everything can't be scientific and in a vacuum human experience and the lived experience and the feelings and the personal or subjective results of whatever is happening of that you know that lived experience is just as important as the the data so that qualitative aspect to a quantitative research design would be incredibly important in this aspect um so yeah no I would love to have both of you guys on here I think that you and him he's like he calls he says he looks like Dumbledore he's like an older guy who's been a shaman and taekwondo black belt and now now he's retired he just does a he just has a podcast but um and paints but he has a similar a similar take on things he's not conducting research or hosting events or ceremonies but um it's just interesting that you two who don't know each other have uh an outlook that I think is so important to this field um of like no neurology and helping people through whatever trauma they're experiencing yeah my um so my mentor's journal um a New Mind journal and he goes into a lot about experimentation and the philosophy behind it and he goes into a lot what you just said that human beings are very unique and there's you know there's so much to us that we don't really understand yet and there's actually this whole quantum realm too so the the standard of the double blind study this gold standard and obviously has its effects and reasons but also has its limitations and I think it was 40% of those studies actually are not effective or relevant they have huge flaws in them so it's important to have different lenses when we look at things because the human being is very unique and when I write the studies and in the literature section I'm always emphasizing that like we're looking at the holistic process of what's going on here because yeah and many times there's an illusion that we can even isolate these things you know there's always a variable that we can't account for so but for me I noticed that I was it seems to really help with attention add and just because I was studying the way I was I don't think other people have noticed that now that I've seen that if someone else wants to go into that study more and do like a individualized study with people with add that could be really cool but it wasn't for that initial um exploratory study people would have noticed that so I think that's what's important yeah no that's a I like new fields of research especially since they kind of push the barrier so I think this is great so if someone wanted to okay so we talked about how someone can do some research and finding studies if someone's ready to to learn more to you know hit you up about brain mapping and and all this where would they go so I have two websites Tia's Awakening is our retreat website t I w a Z like the rune um that's where we do retreats and also we have Neuro Enlightenment and that website we have the neurofeedback and sometimes we partner through treats with brain mapping and neurofeedback but also say people aren't ready to go down to Prue yet or say they have a family member that's dealing with alzheimer's or add or something we can work with anyone remotely and that um has been very powerful for people or sometimes people with severe PTSD before they come to Prue it's a really good idea to do the brain training before they arrive that way they can have a more so is that Neuro Neuro Enlightenment or Neuro enlightenment.com the Neuro Enlightenment neuro enlightenment okay I make sure I put a link to that as well yeah no I think this has been a really interesting conversation and I'm glad we were able to kind of continue our conversation from last time because we definitely went down the neuro rabbit hole a little bit in that episode so um yeah thanks for being here is there anything that you wanna talk about before we wrap things up uh no that's it yeah I mean if someone's interested in coming on the retreats please message us like I said we're probably doing one in Iceland next year I think I'm really excited about probably around the same time this next year during like summer solstice so that should be really cool but um yeah thanks for having me on I super appreciate it's great talking to you and you have a great questions which I appreciate makes me think yeah of course and I'll make sure that I keep the you know newsletter subscribers and um everybody updated on what's happening with you guys especially if you do any of the film showings and uh about your next available retreat so I'll I'll post that um for our subscribers and uh you know I'll post it in the W3 magazine for anybody who wants to keep up with you guys as a matter of fact that's right you you wrote a you wrote an article for W3 magazine I have to shout you out for that oh thank you I appreciate so yeah that'll that will be in our July issue so if anybody wants to read your article um yeah they can check out W3 magazine we have a digital and a hard copy