#20 Maximum Impact | Ben Greenfield

Ben: I was pretty egotistical and pretty unrelatable all the way up until really until I did almost like an ego death ceremony with plant medicine, and that was only like three years ago.

Ronan: This is Field Tripping, a podcast dedicated to exploring psychedelic experiences and their ability to affect our lives. I’m your host, Ronan Levy. Ben Greenfield is an internationally known bio hacker, human body expert and brain performance coach. He’s an ex bodybuilder, Ironman triathlete, Spartan athlete, anti aging consultant, speaker and author of the New York Times bestseller Beyond Training: Mastering Endurance, Health and Life. Ben is highly influential in the health and fitness space and works as a conditioning coach, exercise physiologist and biomechanist to maximize the performance of ultra endurance athletes, professional competitors and CEOs. Plus, he was named Personal Trainer of the Year in 2008 and creates articles, videos, and new podcast episodes that reach over one million people monthly on BenGreenfieldFitness.com. His most recent book, Boundless, is an excellent read that offers a first of its kind blueprint to total optimization of mind, body and spirit. Ben was also the only outside investor to come into our last business CanvasRX, so I personally owe Ben a debt of gratitude because we may not be having this conversation had he not made that investment a few years ago. It’s my pleasure to welcome my friend Ben Greenfield onto the podcast today.

Ronan: Can you just give me a little bit background on how you ended up on the path that you’re on? I was reading through your book Fit Soul, and it kind of gave a story of your background in your childhood. And I find that fascinating. And and the reason I ask is because, you know, I kind of try to use these, these podcasts as a little bit of personal therapy session and sharing anything I’ve encountered in my therapy. And because recently I’ve been just reflecting a lot on my childhood and some of the things that came out for me and what my narrative as a child is and still carries forward to this day, which is what I’m starting to realize, even though I don’t care to admit it. But, you know, as a kid growing up and going through a parents messy divorce when I was pretty much too young to remember, that lingered on for years and years and being bullied, being the smaller kid, because I was always a year ahead of myself. It sounds like you went to university at a very young age as well. So maybe these are some themes that can resonate with you. You know, I realized that to this day, like I’ve never felt special. I’ve often queried when people who are successful, like really successful people like you or like Tucker, Max, are friends with me or engage with me or make time of day for me. I’m genuinely shocked and awed. I’m generally honoured. I appreciate it. But sometimes it does confound me. And it’s because the narrative I’ve I’ve always grown up with was that I’m not special, you know, I’m weird or anything along those lines. And I’m starting to recognize that, hey, maybe there is something special about me, but it’s been a long growth cycle to get here. But it sounds like you had a pretty fascinating childhood, at least a unique experience of a childhood. So curious to know, like know your path growing up and how you kind of got to where you are right now.

Ben: Honestly, when you’re describing your childhood, the first thing that pops up for me is mine was almost the complete opposite. I was raised home schooled K through 12 by parents who repeatedly told me that I was smart, I was gifted, you know, I was God’s gift to mankind. Almost more of like a messiah complex, a hero complex where I actually grew up, you know, very arrogant, very full of myself because I had decent chops as an athlete. But I was, you know, kind of smart, too, and did pretty well on all the standardized tests and school came easy. And yeah, I also did really well on all the all the athletic teams I was on. And then that combined with my parents telling me like I was a little bit smarter than my brothers and sisters and, you know, I was going to go on to accomplish great things. And I grew up pretty full of myself. I mean, I was like an arrogant asshole for much of my life. I mean, I would even argue that that I was I was pretty egotistical and pretty unrelatable all the way up until really until I did almost like an ego death ceremony with plant medicine. And that was only like three years ago. That really got me to the point where I could shove aside a lot of my shaming, and my judgment of other people and realize that every human being on the face of the planet is a human being made in the image of God and a great person who in no way deserves any shaming from me, any judgment from me, because at the end of the day, we are all humans and the universal language is love and forgiveness and acceptance. And I really had to come to terms with that. During college I played tennis, I played water polo, I played middle for the men’s volleyball team. And just immerse in a wide variety of sports and studying exercise science and human nutrition and pharmacology and wanted to be a doctor. You know, I took all my premed curriculum. I got accepted to six different medical schools and opted after working a short private stint in hip and knee surgical sales and becoming kind of disillusioned with modern medicine and the allopathic medical industry, at least in a Westernized format and insurance and everything else, to, to not go to medical school and instead pursue exercise physiology and personal training and fitness. And I opened up a string of personal training studios and gyms across north Idaho and eastern Washington, which is where I still live in Spokane, Washington, grew up in Lewiston, Idaho. And really because I was so steeped in science and kind of a nerd, kind of a geek, you know, but but yet also somebody who was into fitness carved out a name for myself as like the smart personal trainer, like not the meathead trainer, but the guy you go to when nothing else is working and you want somebody to take a deep dive into your blood work and your labs. And, you know, my my personal training studios were all like high speed video cameras and calorimeter equipment and physiology equipment. And all my partners were physicians. And so, you know, I had kind of a little bit more of a cutting edge approach. And I think partially as a result of that, in 2008, I was voted as America’s top personal trainer. And that kind of thrust me into the limelight of media like doing a lot more writing for these fitness magazines, a lot more speaking at health and fitness events and, you know, began a podcast. I began a YouTube channel. I started to write more books and really began to do a lot more of what I do now, which is more media production, podcasting, speaking. And then also, you know, I consult via Skype and phone with primarily an executive crowd. You know, initially for years it was an athlete crowd. And now I more work with executives on things like longevity, anti aging, sleep, gut, overall health. So, yeah, what I do now is I primarily do some investing in health and fitness and nutrition oriented companies, investing and advising, private coaching and consulting for a small number of primarily executive clientele. I run a nutritional supplement company where I mostly formulate supplements and then have a team who does a lot of the a lot of the marketing, a lot of the packaging and a lot of the social media, you know, customer service, all that type of stuff. And then I’ve got another company that’s all my, my media, my podcasting, my speaking, et cetera.

Ronan: And I think I read that the inspiration for Kion came out of some plant medicine work. I mean, it’s a podcast about psychedelics, even though we haven’t talked about psychedelics, even though I do think anything that changes your perspective is psychedelic, doesn’t have to be a psychedelic molecule or anything that changes your mind on something in some ways is psychedelic. But but let’s talk about that for a second.

Ben: Part of it was inspired by plant medicine. Surely in this case, probably about well, the company’s been around for about four years, but about five years ago, I did have a pretty hefty psilocybin experience on a beach and Kauai and spent a lot of time thinking about where I was at in life and how my entire brand and business was built around my personality, my name, me going around the world doing adventure races and Ironman triathlons and Spartan races and and how I really wanted to create something that was a bigger entity outside of myself. And while the name of the company, which is all based on key life force, energy, prana, you know, I’ve always been kind of interested in this invisible energy that flows through all of us and this this more Eastern concept of chi and life force and energy and flow, which is what a lot of acupuncture is based around, or energy medicine is based around, an emotional medicine, etc.. You know, I didn’t really have the concept of the company being based around Ki and the name Kion back then, but I did know I wanted to create something that could help a lot of people that existed as an entity greater than myself. And that was certainly influenced in that case, particularly by, you know, a lot of deep introspective thought during the use of of psilocybin. My experience leading up to that point was not as a as a psychonaut for sure, you know I’d uses psilocybin a couple of times, I’d used cannabis a few times. I grew up in a very strict Christian household where even wine would have been something that I wouldn’t have touched and, you know, got to college and drank a lot of beer and Everclear and tequila and everything else. But but really, I was not much of a much of a drug guy like I thought that was for the potheads. And when I was around 30, you started to just kind of utilize some of these other medicines. But even that was more influenced by my curiosity and my so-called immersive journalism bent and just guinea pigging creatine or whey protein isolate versus whey protein concentrate. And, you know, this blend of THC/CBD versus this other ratio and, you know, going to companies like Sigma-Aldrich’s website and ordering different laboratory chemicals not intended for human use, just just to experiment things on myself and then finding out, you know, different companies. And that was initially one of the reasons I got into crypto was so I could buy things like, you know, lysergamide and synthetic variants of DMT. And just, you know, I would just try different things, not in really a great set and setting, but more as just a way to to see how the body responds to certain compounds, to fuel my, you know, my blogging and my writing and talking about different things. Because like I mentioned in college, I studied pharmacology and took a lot of human nutrition courses and biochemistry and microbiology. And I just always been fascinated by how different molecules interact with the human body. But, you know, since then, I’ve certainly grown deeply in appreciation for marrying responsible use of plant medicines in a proper set and setting to this concept of integration and some pretty deep personal and business breakthroughs. And so for me, what that looks like now is a micro dose and primarily using micro dosing schedule that involves either psilocybin with the blood flow precursor and typically some type of neurogenic support compound, like a classic, you know, stamet stack of niacin, lions mane and psilocybin on days that would require greater amounts of creativity or for nature immersion, typically on on more productive days or days that require more focus. I’ll use a lysergamide particularly something like LSA, for example, I think is is very good, better than LSD in terms of increasing focus without creating larger amounts of irritability or almost like you know the robot mode that would be similar to something that Modafinil might induce. And then I also for social settings, date nights, cocktail parties, things like that, I’ve found micro doses of mesclun from like Sampedro or Huachuma to be very interesting. And then like I mentioned, I’ll get a massage once a week and typically use something like ketamine for a massage. Although I find that if you don’t have a guide for ketamine, you can kind of like have your own guide by taking either cactus or psilocybin, small doses along with ketamine. And that seems to kind of do a better job guiding you into different areas of introspection, especially either release of past trauma or business insights or things that you might not experience with ketamine on its own. And then typically anywhere from two to a maximum of four times a year, I’ll do more of a deep plant medicine journey, typically with kind of a blend of Amazonian and Native American medicines. All of that is under the guidance of a facilitator. And that would be when I’ve got a good three to five days afterwards. Typically it’s with my wife, it is for the purposes of things like family planning, business planning and, you know, and a chance to to really kind of set up with the next three to four months of life are going to look like and make some bigger life decisions.

Ronan: A couple of questions in there. So how much psilocybin do you typically microdose like what are the typical amounts? Because I’ve heard varying things from various people and I know it’s everyone’s biology is unique, but just curious to know what what the kind of amounts you usually use are.

Ben: For me, I do have a pretty unique biology. Like for me a trip dose is around 12 grams, for me and microdose is typically about zero point eight to one gram. And that’s just the way I’ve always been. I don’t know if it’s if it’s like leftover muscle mass from body-building or if it’s you know, I have really high CYP enzyme activity. And you can test some of this stuff with like a 23 and Me genetic panel to see how quickly you metabolize some of this stuff. But I tend to have a need for larger doses than would be considered typical even for micro dosing.

Ronan: Throughout my conversation with Ben, I was struck by one thing, just how similar and just how different he and I are. I mean, from the outside, one could look at us and conclude, here are two white males who grew up with a degree of privilege and have been successful in turning that privilege into arguably greater privilege through economic success. And in some ways, that’s a perfectly fair assessment. And yet to leave your conclusion there would be a totally misleading understanding of who Ben is and who I am. Sure we are both white males and we’ve had a degree of privilege. But me? I’m a white male of privilege who has suffered with a deeply held lack of self-worth. I’ve lived my entire life with a deep seated sense that just about everyone I know is going to abandon me, that when I look around at my friends, I genuinely wonder what they see in me. These are likely follow on effects of a messy divorce of my parents and from being a pawn along with my mom, brother and half siblings in a game of one of the worst forms of egotistical male pride between my father and grandfather. Ben, on the other hand, it seems, was born into a world where he may have lived the other side of that equation. Athletic, smart, loved, venerated, the ideal male specimen in so many ways. And the effect on him may be an overdeveloped sense of self-worth, but that has caused him suffering as well. Here’s a guy whose value quintessentially has been tied to performance, which led to struggles and a crisis of faith and meaning at the pinnacle of his career. So, yeah, maybe both of us are white males of privilege, but we were also victims of the effects of chauvinism too. Me directly by the stupid war of egos of my father and grandfather, Ben, by the cultural dynamics that reward him for being him. Or maybe we’re not victims at all. Maybe the common human experience is wandering through the various faces of the soul, as Irwin likes to talk about, maybe regardless of race, gender, sexuality, neurotypical or atypical, this, the common experience of humanity is that we are all here to grow. And if that’s the case, then maybe, as Tom Robbins says, we are our own princesses as well as our own dragons, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves. The thing I like about this perspective is that to accept this, it means that we don’t have to be victims of our circumstances, but rather authors of our experience, regardless of how privileged or unprivileged it is. Truthfully, I don’t know. The one thing I do know is that regardless of our human success in science, philosophy and psychology, we are still learning. As a species we still know so little. And so I implore everyone to not rush to judgment until you actually stand in someone’s shoes. You don’t know why they do what they do. Hell, most of us can’t explain most of our actions or decisions at any given time, let alone profess to understand the actions or decisions of others. So instead of rushing to judge, maybe rush to understanding and compassion, because the one thing I am sure of is that way lies grace and maybe even glory.

Ronan: I recently connected you with a friend of ours at Field Trip, Robbie Bent, who said he had tried your kind of body work and medicine work program, and he said it was spectacular, but I didn’t get any details on that. What kind of body work do you do along along with this?

Ben: Yeah, it’s kind of a protocol that you’re going to need a few things for, but probably this would be every seven to 10 days I’ll do this. And it just kind of sets me up for the entire week, not only physically in terms of just getting rid of a lot of fasal cross adhesions. And, you know, I still do quite a bit of kettlebell training, still the occasional race, and I train harder than average. And so my body’s usually beat up. And then I also do a lot of biohacking. Right. So I have a lot of different biohacking devices like hyperbaric chambers and infrared saunas. Because you know, I have like half a million dollars worth of just biohacks littered around my house just because I’m constantly experimenting and writing about these things. But what I’ve stumbled upon kind of gradually over the past couple of years is like the ultimate body and mind reinvention protocol that I also, with the use of selective nutrients, tend to bounce back incredibly quickly from. So not just like you know tired and serotonin depleted for days afterwards is typically in the morning. I’ll load up with either Sammy or 5HTP to ensure that I’ve got some good serotonin precursors on board, usually some selective neural antioxidants, typically glutathione. A higher dose vitamin C, fish oil and ketones. I treat anything except a micro dose very similar to how one might treat a TBI or concussion when it comes to neural inflammation. So I’m very cognizant of that type of thing. And if you go and look at any good protocol, like an herbal protocol for something like a TVR concussion, usually it’s a lot of like neural antiinflammatory, you know, particularly ketones, high dose fish oil, glutathione, vitamin C again for the serotonin, a little bit of Sammy or 5HTP. And typically that’s like the morning of and then continued for three to four days afterwards. And I’ll use that same type of approach for even like heftier plant medicine journeys along with high dose melatonin, where I like 200 to 300 milligrams of melatonin in the evening, because that’s probably one of the best antiinflammatory out there and staves off any type of sleep disruption.

Ben: How often do you take melatonin? That’s one of the ones that I’ve always been a little bit dicey on because of concerns about dependance and all that kind of stuff.

Ben: Well, I mean, if you have concerns about dependance on melatonin, you probably shouldn’t drink coffee or green tea either or anything else that creates a mild dependance. I use smaller amounts of melatonin year round, typically zero point three to three milligrams. And then any time I’m traveling or I’m in a scenario where there is potential for higher amounts of neuro inflammation, which would usually be with the use of plant medicine, higher doses for usually three to five days afterwards. And by higher, I mean 200 to 300 milligrams.

Ronan: OK. Wow.

Ben: So I’m always making sure my body’s kind of set up to to be ready for anything. And that would include even like on the day that I’m getting one of these massages and then I have what’s called a post electromagnetic field table. And the way postelectro magnetic field works is this is a common treatment for inflammation and for injuries. And there are some that have a very high milligaus potential and deliver a very, very high amount of PEMF. So typically it’s it’s anywhere from from about a three to a 10 hertz frequency, which is what you get, if you’re like, walking outside barefoot on the ground, which is one of the reasons why walking barefoot on the sand or swimming in the ocean or this whole concept of grounding or earthing is so good for one and so good for decreasing inflammation. But imagine if you took that and rather than increase the Hertz frequency, which is what would happen if you like, put your head next to a Wi-Fi router or hold a phone up to your skull, which I don’t think is healthy because we’re talking about like five gigahertz frequencies compared to seven to 10 hertz or seven to one hundred hertz max. You instead increase the power. Right. And so that’s what PEMF can do, is it can just kind of turn up the power that something like earthing or grounding would give you. And usually it’s via device, like a coil you would place around an injured knee or hip or a small pad you might place on the occipital bone on the back of your head to enhance sleep or shift you into a certain brainwave state like, you know, typically Delta or Elfa for focus. And there’s a whole bunch of different PMF devices out there. But one company called Pulse Centers produces the highest power devices that are out there, probably because they originated by working with horses. And so this company produces a massage table and so I can lay on this massage table. That has an incredibly high PEMF power, and one of the things that PEMF does is it opens and closes cell membranes. So anything that’s in your system gets into your system far more quickly and you feel it a lot more. OK, so I lay out on this this PEMF table and then I stack on top of that table a sound therapy mat. I used one made by the company Biomat. And so because of that, I’m still getting the frequencies from the PEMF unit. But then any music I play, like, you know, in this case it would be like an East Forest track or, you know, or something from John Hopkins or something designed specifically for journeying. I’m feeling through my whole body right along with the PEMF. So I’m getting this one two delivery of both the sound and then the electrical field into the body. And so the other thing that the bioacoustics mat that I use has is an external headphone output so I can also have headphones in. So I’m getting that left and right brain hemisphere triggering of the sound actually traveling in my ears rather than just on my body and so I lay out on the table. Typically I have an essential oil diffuser, kind of like underneath the table and I’ll usually defuse something a little bit more kind of grounding. Like I’ve got one called Three Wise Men that sets frankincense, myrrh and gold that I really like. And so I usually have the essential oil diffuser kind of somewhere where there’s a mini van behind it, either blowing at me. So I’m getting the whole aroma like blown right out me or the diffusers placed right underneath the table, and then anything for neural inflammation, that’s taken beforehand. So my therapist comes over to the house about eight p.m. or so, and on those evenings I eat a very light dinner or skip dinner. So the same as you would prior to a plant medicine ceremony, you know, very, very light dinner. And then what I’ll do is typically about 20 to 30 minutes before she starts her work, I’ll take five to 10 milligrams of THC, which seems to really help in combination with ketamine, especially with the relaxation component, anything more, and the THC can become psychedelic and interfere with a lot of the work that ketamine can do. In addition to that, something that is going to kind of serve as your guide, literally based on the concept of plant intelligence and biophilia, something that’s going to actually be like a like a guide to work you through the areas that you need to access as you’re on the ketamine. And like I said, the two best things for that are a micro dose of psilocybin or microdose of our huachuma, either one. And you’ll have a different experience with both. Sometimes the psilocybin can be a little bit more kind of like edgy and almost cause the ketamine to be a little more psychedelic. Whereas what you’ll find is something like huachuma, it induces a little bit more of like intelligent question and answer type of type of setting where you can kind of ask yourself questions as you’re going through the massage and then almost like guides you into the right questions to ask. And so that’s usually about 20 to 30 minutes prior to the massage session, I’ll dose up with those. So they’re kind of hitting you after you’ve had that discussion with your massage therapist, but by the time you’re kind of laid out on the table and then right before getting on the table, you get a Kleenex to take care of any post nasal drip. And usually what I’ll do is a few sprays of intranasal ketamine, which kind of shifts you into your ketamine state a little bit more quickly. Along with one three hundred milligram trokendy placed under the tongue. I found three hundred and four hundred milligrams to be the sweet spot for me. And that kind of gives you a slow bleed as the massage is occurring.

Ronan: Jesus. that’s intense, man, but very cool. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that with us. Here’s one question that we got from people who are tuning in live, and one of them touched on a question that you sort of hit on it. But they said, I’ve noticed in the midst of healing of my mental blocks during psychedelic experiences, my eyes will shed tears and I will cough up mucus. This is almost a physical effect that echoes the mental and emotional cleanse I’m experiencing. Is this normal? Is there a somatic explanation for this? Wondering if you have any thoughts on that just because you were touching upon some of that kind of stuff in your body work and plant work?

Ben: Yeah, I most often see that in people with with genetic pathways that tend to hardwire them towards histamine sensitivity. There’s one company in the US run by Dr. Ben Lynch called StrataGene, and you can take your 23 and Me results and upload them to StrataGene or go straight to their website. And I’ve done a pretty good podcast with him and I talk about these histamine pathways in my book, Boundless. But if you have some of these impaired histamine pathways, you can be a little bit more sensitive. You can get some of that post nasal drip and you don’t want to take an antihistamine. I mean, just because some of the downstream side effects of something like Benadryl or Zyquil or Nyquil, but there are some natural antihistamines, there’s actually one made by a company called Seeking Help called HistoBlock. And in addition to avoiding histamine triggering foods which are typically like leftovers, you know, moldy foods like blue cheese, fermented foods like kombucha, sauerkraut, kimchis or anything like that, that would tend to trigger that type of histamine response. You can use this compounds called Histo Block, and it has an enzyme in it that blocks the release of histamine and many people have that post nasal drip. That’s that’s kind of the fix.

Ronan: Question for you. And I know this is super big question and not necessarily easy to answer. And I want to be respectful of your time. But why do you do what you do? I mean, just talking through your body work and your plant work it’s intense. It’s a protocol. You’ve subjected yourself to countless things in the pursuit of biohacking and performance and optimization and all that kind of stuff. And yeah, the question is like, why do you do it? Is it just like deep curiosity? And I guess more specifically, has plant medicine or anything along those lines giving you insight into what motivates you and causes you to kind of go down these paths?

Ben: Yes, you know, I’ve always been deeply curious about the human body and brain and how it works. Increasingly also about the human spirit, the afterlife, fourth dimensions, quantum physics and how those weave in as well. It’s just something that I think I’m hardwired to be curious about it. I’ve I’ve always been interested in that since I was a little boy. Number two. Yeah, I’ve found that something like the use of plant medicine, as you’ve alluded to, just assists with personal growth, personal insights, relationship growth, et cetera. And then three, I believe that every human being is born with unique skill set. And I talk about this in that book you alluded to earlier, Fit Soul, this idea of life purpose and how if you can identify your life purpose and even be able to state it in one single, succinct, clear sentence, that you will have clarity about life that the Japanese would call Ikigai or, you know, in Italy called the plan DeVita. What rips you out of bed in the morning, prepared to go and live your life in a way that loves as many other people as possible and touches as many other lives as possible. And so if you know your purpose, ideally, you would be doing everything that you can to make maximum impact on this world with your life’s purpose striking a balance between that and not frittering away your entire life, you know, laying for three hours every night on a massage table with a bunch of fringe compounds circulating through your bloodstream. So, of course, you need balance and self-examination at the end of each day will assist with that. You know, what good have I done this day? What thing better could I’ve done this day and how I lived on my life’s purpose this day? That’s an evening practice for me and my boys and my wife every night after dinner as we sit down with our journals and we do a process of self-examination. But for me, yeah, it’s intense curiosity. It is the reaping of greater insights than I get in the absence of those practices. And it is the desire to make maximum impact on this world with my purpose and the unique skill set that I’ve been given. And I find that doing things that care for my body and my brain in that sense equip me to do so in a greater way than the one of those things are absent, whether it be exercise or plant medicines or healthy food or, God I want to start talking about these, but kale juices and ginger and tumor.

Ronan: I know you’ve sort of embraced Christianity and your faith and religion. Do you ever worry about a conflict?

Ben: I certainly do get some pushback in the Christian community that believes that the Bible specifically commands us to be sober or to, you know, avoid anything that might put one into a mental state that is anything other than pure sobriety, which would include wine, which would include coffee, which would include, you know, arguably pretty much anything that God made. Yet we are told in Bible that all that God created is good. And furthermore, we are told that abuse of certain things, you know, like in the Proverbs, honey, is good, honey is sweet. God blesses people with honey. And yet there’s a command from a king to his son, a wise King Solomon to his son, that too much honey will make you vomit. Right. And we see the same thing in other elements of scripture, apostle Paul, the greatest missionary known to humankind, certainly told people that sobriety of mind was an honorable thing. And then he turned around and told his disciple, Timothy, who had a little stomach issue to drink wine to settle his stomach. Right. And so it’s prudent and responsible use of anything that God put on this planet, from cannabis to lobster to wine to steak to honey to anything else. And that’s the lens through which I view a lot of this stuff when it comes to plant medicines, is everything was created for a purpose, everything was created for good. Some are called to heavier users, some are not. But ultimately, anything can be abused and anything can be used for good.

Ronan: I’m going to ask one final question that came in that I’m curious to know your answer to, if you can answer it quickly. But this came from a, I guess, a viewer named John who said, for many, mental health has been an added benefit of one, maintaining their physical health, egoals endorphin release, improved appearance. It seems like the merging of physical health and mental health is on a fast track. If you had a crystal ball, how would you see a health game evolve in the next five to ten years?

Ben: I think that as we see emerging research into treatment of everything from ADD, ADHD, OCD, any number of other mental health issues, that we’ll continue to see more of a functional medicine approach. We’re looking at everything from mineral deficiencies to autoimmune issues to gut stability to, you know, what type of exposure to negative ions and the earth and fresh air and sunshine is occurring. Like you cannot disentangle our physical existence and the fuel that we’re putting in our bodies and our emotions and just just the general way in which we’re living with our our mental health and our spiritual health. I just finished like a 700 page book about mind, body and spirit optimization. There’s a reason I had to weave all three into that book because, again, you cannot disentangle them. If you want a sound body, you must have a sound mind and spirit. If you want a sound mind, you must have a sound spirit and body.

Ronan: Yeah, no, it’s awesome. I appreciate that. And that’s exactly why the things that excites me about about psychedelics and what we’re doing a Field Trip is that, you know, I think it’s the platform that moves allopathic medicine from something that just treats the symptoms to recognizing that it’s a holistic system. And I think psychedelics are going to be a huge jumping off point in addition to the work you’re doing and many others like Dr. Andrew Weil. I mean, I think that’s the future. And I think psychedelics are going to be a huge springboard for that. So thank you for coming here today. Thanks for joining. Thanks for being an investor. Thanks for being a supporter. Thanks for being a friend. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I’m really grateful for all of it.

Ben: My pleasure man, that was a fun discussion.

Ronan: My conversation with Ben was certainly one of the most interesting ones I’ve had on this podcast. Here are a few ideas that I’m taking away from it. First, Ben’s work in biohacking shows us that the integrative medicine concept of mind, body and spirit is not just a nice, flowery concept, but rather is rooted in chemistry and physics. What we eat, how we act, what we do has real objective effects that cause different receptors in our brains to fire, like how certain foods can trigger opioid like responses in the brain, which clearly have an effect on our mood. It’s a good reminder to be more conscious about what we eat and how we live. Morality is a tricky subject and maybe the trickiest of subjects. While I respect Ben’s intellect and analysis, I can’t get to a point where I believe in absolute immutable standards of right and wrong. As a lawyer, I’ve witnessed firsthand how all laws, rules and regulations can and sometimes should get interpreted and reinterpreted based on new circumstances. But I also respect Ben’s point of view on the risks of moral relativism. Where I currently stand on this issue is that the universe doesn’t have morality. It has no compunction flying a giant comet into Earth and killing ninety nine point ninety nine percent of life. What it does have is energy. It doesn’t care what you do, it cares where you are. So simply seek to resonate at the energies of love and beauty and meaning. As Tom Robbins says The only authority I respect is the one that causes butterflies to fly south in the fall and north in the springtime. Finally, my conversation with Ben was a good reminder to myself of this simple principle: If you believe in peace, act peacefully. If you believe in love, act lovingly, if you believe in every which way, then act every which way, that’s perfectly valid. But don’t go out trying to sell your beliefs to the system. You end up contradicting what you profess to believe in and you set a bum example. If you want to change the world, change yourself.

Ronan: Thank you for listening to Field Tripping, a podcast dedicated to exploring psychedelic experiences and their ability to affect our lives. I’m your host, Ronan Levy. Until next time, stay curious. Breathe properly. And remember, every day is a field trip if you let it be one. Field Tripping is created by Ronan Levy and produced by Conrad Page. Our researcher is Sharon Bhella, a special thanks to Quill. And of course, many thanks to Ben for joining me today. To learn more about Ben and his work, visit BenGreenfieldFitness.com. Finally, subscribe to our podcast and sign up for our newsletter at FieldTripping.FM.