Say Goodbye to Stress and Anxiety | with Kevin Russell

Michael: Hey, what's up, Unbroken Nation? Hope you're doing well wherever you are in the world today. I'm very excited to be back with you with another episode with my guest, Kevin Russell, who's an energy healer and transformational guide. Kevin, my man, what is happening in your world today?

Kevin: Michael, it's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on. Beautiful, sunny day here. I'm coming to you from Southern California, San Diego area, and it was good day to be had so far, being in the doing as I like to say.

Michael: I love that. I'm happy to have you here, man. It's been a long time coming here and I love what you do, I love what you're trying to do in the world, and we'll get into all that stuff, obviously. But before, tell me something that I would need to know about your past to understand who you are today.

Kevin: I appreciate that question. I think one of the biggest experiences I had that only in reflection was really pointing to that monumental kind of paradigm shift for my life was when I was 18 and as I know you have experienced as well, um, more viscerally was con contemplating suicide or thinking about just the idea of what, if I wasn't here, would it be easier for me, for everyone else type of thing. And almost organically, it didn't even feel like I was the one kind of choosing it, but what I heard in my head was a challenge like, oh yeah, you're gonna do that. Alright, do it. Do it. And I was like, whoa, that and like that scared the heck outta me. But then I kind of, you know, gathered myself and I was like, okay, I will. And I've never owned a firearm, but in my mental construct in this internal space, I took every step. And in this instance, it was with a firearm and in my mind's eye, I was feeling what it would feel like to go through that process and be in that place and actually take that action. And I didn't have a framework for it at the time, but now what I would say is it was a post death consciousness experience or exercise. And it scared the hell outta me and I just, I really let myself go there about every microsecond of what it would feel like and what I did was kind of in the experience, pulled back and saw myself after the fact in my room and even though it was a really gnarly experience, the place I got to in a feeling state afterwards was very peaceful, very connected really just what I would say now is connecting with the isness of all that is there was just, there was no separation. And what really solidified it more for me was taking the next few steps of like fast forwarding the tape and seeing what the impact of family and friends would be if I was to take that action.

And that was senior year, I was 18 senior years in high school. And going through a lot of stuff, you know, as we all do, especially in, in the teenage years, which are kind of the, the bootcamp of life, so to speak. And so that was what I would say probably like a portal I went through and experience I went through that really shifted my perspective and my perception on life. And what I felt afterwards was an expanded state of presence internally after I went through that whole, that whole process. And so I didn't know what to make of it at the time or label it, and it was one of those where I was like, okay, I'm glad that's over and afterwards I did feel lighter and freer and really non-attached to anything around that so, I kind of moved through it in my own way. And what I recognized was my system's only going to give me enough fear or enough whatever to keep me within a framework of what it's known, keeping me safe, so to speak. And when I blew through that stop sign, when I blew through that kind of construct, what I arrived at was more freedom, more presence, and just more peace in a lot of ways.

Michael: One of the things I think about in my own experiences, obviously, which I've shared publicly. You know, the first time I attempted to kill myself, I was fucking 14 years old. And then again at, at 25 and you look at that and dude, I'm so far removed from that, I cannot imagine that possibly, ever happening in my life. Right. But in those moments, the thing that I always sat in, and this is the thing, I think people misunderstand when they have not had these experiences. I was just like, f*ck it, I'm done. I'm just over this. What I'm curious about, there's always a path, right? There's very rarely, and you can find this historically in a lot of data that we can extrapolate from people who walk down this path is, you know, very rarely is it just kind of a last second decision. Right. The action itself is but the actual, the lead up to it there's a lot of thought, there’s a lot of back and forth, but also there's a lot of turmoil and suffering and hurt and chaos and pain and loss. And just, you kind of get to that point where you're like, I'm just done. I don't wanna feel this anymore. What actually led you to that moment at 18 years old?

Kevin: So pulling back the lens. I always find it interesting how unique our experiences are in our dis-ease in the traumas that we experience. And for me it was very much internal. So, from an early age, like before the age of five, I was  in and out of the hospital with ear infections, strep throats, high doses of antibiotics. And so, I wouldn't say I was sickly, but I definitely wasn't the healthiest kid, I had like this distended belly my uncle would call. He'd call it a Buddha belly, kind of jokingly, but I was always uncomfortable in my own body and if we're looking at kind of epigenetics or generational ancestral things food allergies and allergies in general had been present within my family. So sometimes these generational things expressed differently for me, it happened to be that, so I was on an elimination diet in second grade back in the 1980’s where allergies are kind of just starting to come into practice and into being known. So, I was dealing with very restrictive experiences from a health standpoint, I bring rice bread sandwiches to school that are just crumbles and, you know, kids are pointing and laughing and being like, what's that? And I'm just like, I'm just eating. So, there was this kind of separation in that regard a little bit, like this awareness or feeling like I'm different from others somehow. And that was something that kind of, I was always shifting into observation, I think looking at other people and being like, why can't I have that cheese pizza and the hamburger and the grilled cheese that everybody's seeming, like they're absolutely loving and I'm sitting over here with, you know, health food.

And then another one happened when I was 11, around 11. My dad worked for a communications company and there was some transfers with his work. So we moved around a little bit not as much as a military kid, but as we were preparing for a move back out to the west coast from Chicago, which is the company's home base and also where a lot of my parents' family's from, there was a lot of turmoil, a lot of dis-ease, a lot of disagreement, a lot of fighting going on. Some things were kind of flowed my way that I wasn't ready for at 11 as far as kind of being brought into the more intimate dynamic of those disagreements with my parents. And I didn't have a framework for how to address it or deal with it at the time.

And so, I just stopped eating. And so I experienced anorexia for about four or five years, and that was the first time I was in therapy when I was 11. And so that was an eye-opener again, in the sense of like, who am I? Where am I feeling these things that are triggering this response within my system to just lock it down. And what we came to with the help of this great therapist was, it was an issue of control where I felt like I had, I was out of control in my life. I had no control of anything. And one of the few things I could control as 11-year-old is what I ate. So there is a power struggle dynamic there with between my parents and I there was this internal power struggle dynamic of being in a situation that was just untenable, not happy. And while the therapy really helped to kind of move me through it, there were still these threads of really deep-seated resentment and anger and frustration and blaming and a lot of real negative emotions and feelings that I carried with me into high school and then, I mean beyond, well into adulthood. And so those, that was really, I feel like the, you know, if you're tracing back, like in the movies an action movie where you, the gas trails away from where the ammunition is or whatever, and then you light the gas and it makes its way to the ammo dump.

The ammo dump for me was that experience at 18, but the match was lit a lot earlier with those types of just feeling like I didn't have any control, blaming everyone and everything around me for what I was experiencing and really carrying a lot of anger and frustration. And then around that same time in high school, I was dealing with some, some friend group breakdowns that were going on. And so there was this feeling of really being alone, really being isolated, not feeling like I mattered and not feeling like you know, really was worthy of love for different reasons or of acceptance or of being. And so those were really the big signposts that in retrospect, kind of led right up to that.

Michael: Yeah, and that makes sense. I mean, you know, you go look at that from bringing rice sandwiches to school, you're like, you're an outsider, you're ostracized. You know? And then those little things get planted in our head and childhood 'cause we're just evaluating our environment for survival. And then the next thing you know, you're like, f*ck, I don't matter. Well, if I don't matter to them, well that must mean I don't matter at all. And so, since I don't matter, I'm gonna just be invisible or, you know, take the alternate route in which you're in your life. And I recall, you know, being in high school myself at 14 years old, downing a bottle of ibuprofen that wasn't because I felt like the world loved me. I can f*cking promise you that. Right. And I think that this is a difficult conversation to have 'cause most people don't wanna have the conversation about how awful some childhood can truly be for some people, how that depression, that anxiety, can lead down these paths. And the opposite of you, like what, you know, one of the things I had to do as a kid was steal food to survive. We were so poor, so impoverished and so I would gorge myself sick constantly. Every chance I got. And so you look at that and now all of a sudden, you know, I'm the chubby kid in school so, you add that factor to it. And people don't recognize the turmoil 'cause we forget that we were once kids and it's like, dude, the suffering that children go through and not in a growth-oriented way, you know, really, really sucks. So, eight 18 years old, you have this moment, you have this experience what starts happening in the years or just after this? Like, what does life look like? What's going on?

Kevin: Yeah. You know, similarly, I feel like there's an aspect of escape to it. Like, my situation is so untenable, I need to escape, so, you know, you had your experience with ibuprofen. I started, you know, stealing beers and drinking and smoking when I was probably 12, 13, 14 right around those same ages. And it was just to escape. And so, that was another factor, kind of, you know, looking from escape and like I don't wanna be here in my head, so I'm gonna get blackout in whatever in whatever capacity that is. And so then direct almost directly after that. So that was fall of senior year when I really moved through that, that post death consciousness experience. And then, it's interesting, right? I couldn't tell if it was foreshadowing or if there was a connection to it. But then that spring my core friend group completely disintegrated. So, kind of leading, going out of high school, everybody's gonna go their own way, college work, whatever and everything deteriorated with me getting busted. I got busted for possession of marijuana when I was 18. And a lot of times people say it like it wasn't mine like it wasn't mine, officer. And this time it was actually, it wasn't mine, we were camping at a state campground and it was spring break and kids that we knew had camped earlier in the week. And they got popped and so the Camp Rangers were on lockdown, they were not mincing words anymore, and this was back in the nineties where you could just drive up to the campground, say, I'd like, I'd like to camp for a couple days. You didn't have to go through the bells and whistles of, you know, the explosion of camping where it's all online now. And so, we had this awareness and I told everybody, Hey, let's just nobody bring anything. No nothing. No beer, no, not even a joint. Let's just keep it, let's just have fun. Let's surf camp. It'll be all good.

So it was, the campsite was in my name, the tent was mine and I was on the beach hanging out, surfing all day, came back, made food Camp Rangers come in, we're, you know, eight teenagers. So of course, there's that kind of, you know, predisposition to suspicion. Look through absolutely everything 'cause I have the confidence that my friends listened and that we're clean pop, you know, looking in coolers, looking in trunks, looking in cars. Whose tent is this mine? Can I look in it? Absolutely. And they go in and they see some remnants of making joints on the sleeping bag. Well, whose sleeping bag is this mine? Whose cigarettes are those? I don't know. And they open up this pack of cigarettes and there's like, eight joints in there. And my heart sunk, my belly dropped, and I was just like, oh my God. And so there was, I mean, I didn't know whose it was, I had some ideas based on the way my friends were reacting, and I just locked it down. I just told the line I wasn't gonna throw anybody under the bus, but I also wasn't going to take the blame other than it being foisted on me. So,. I don't know whose it is. So we got kicked out and told my parents the next day, and that was the most nerve wracking conversation 'cause it was just like, you know, parents grew up in the Midwest in the fifties and sixties, social drinking, social smoking cigarettes, but never really dipped into any other substances.

And so, one really funny thing, my mom was super distraught and she goes, oh my God, you're on the pot. And I had to really stifle and laugh 'cause even in the intensity of the situation, I was like, okay, that's really funny. I can't remember if it was after or before that but I had a dream where me and all my friends were walking along like a cliff side, and it was like this little trail and there was a rope hanging out of the cliff and I don't know if you remember it, the first Superman with Christopher Reeve, there's a kid playing, like switching hands, grabbing on the railing at Niagara Falls. So, he is grabbing with one hand, letting go, grabbing it with the other hand. And so, I started doing that in this dream on this rope and I had this moment where I held the rope and I was looking at all my friends and I was looking down in an empty space below me, and I made the conscious decision to let go of the rope. And as I was falling, I'm turning over and the ground's racing up to me and at the time I was kind of aware like, oh, if you die in your dreams, you die for real. And I was like, all right, let's test that. And so, as I was going, and this is all in the dream, as I was going to hit the ground, it shifted from a first-person view of rushing towards the ground to a third person view of seeing myself hit, like in that instance. And again, it was very peaceful, there was no pain, there was no fear, it was just very in just the isness of being. And to me that was kind of the final separation I think in a lot of ways from childhood. And then, in very practical ways from this friend group.

And in retrospect, everything happened at the absolute right time. I went to school and I'd been getting my explorations and kind of substance stuff out in high school. So by the time I got to college where a lot of kids who maybe had less freedom were just raging. I was the one leaving the party at 11 or 12 so I could get up and go surf the next morning 'cause that was my thing, that was my cathedral, my salvation, the water, the ocean. All that was really just the thing that was the through line that was really helping me get through life. And I could go and I could let it all out and just feel relaxed and peaceful coming back to land and then the next day it's like, oh, gotta get in the water again. You know? So keep going back to those kind of self-soothing behaviors. And then everything kind of normalized, so to speak, twenties were good I met my wife mid-twenties, we dated, got married, had our daughter, and then thirties is when my stuff started to come up again and it started.

Michael: I'm glad that you said that, but before we segue there, 'cause I think this is a really pivotal part of the conversation. I wanna say this we often get caught up in this idea of just because certain people are in our life means they have to be in our life forever. And I look at those transitions that we go through and you often hear people go, well, you know, it's a season. But I've found tremendous value in, and this is just me being frank and looking back at my community from my twenties and having none of those people in my life today, And that's not to say that I don't value and love those humans tremendously because I do. But my God, man, if you want your life to be different, you really need to acknowledge your circle. You know, somebody in your community brought weed to this thing after you had the agreement and you're like, do you really want that fucking person around you? Like, do you really, you know? And I think trust in relationships is absolutely everything and we often, I think it's important to forgive. I think it's important to have like catharsis around these things but man, you know, life could be very different under different circumstances based on the people that you're spending and invoking your time with. And as I look at now, heading into the end of my thirties, very close, my community is everything, it is literally the cornerstone to everything that I hold near and dear to my heart from my siblings, you know, up through and to including my mentors and coaches for me. One of the things though that you hit on, and which is why I paused you, is, you know, I have found that consistently, the level of work that I do grows. And what I mean by that, I mean it in depth, not necessarily in width and when I look at the first time I ever went to therapy, I was only seven years old. You know, I've shared this openly, I was molested and from a member of the Mormon church and I had to go to therapy and blah, blah, blah. And so, I've kind of always been in personal development, not by my choosing may I add, right? But you know, in my thirties it was like, luckily I f*cked my twenties up so badly that maybe I'm just a little bit of a ahead of you in the timeline. And so, I would love for you because the transformation you've had since that I think has been pretty profound but I think this is really kind of the meat of this conversation. I think about how our past leads us to the moments of significance, whether we like it or not. And so, I'd love for you to tell us a little bit more about what started to transpire in that window of time.

Kevin: I really appreciate that. And to your point, there was I think probably 20, 23, 24 so five, four or five years later, there was a reconciliation and there was that kind of reconnection in order to release. And to your point, it was a yes and so it was, yes, we were able to come together. You know, there wasn't really any beef to squash on my end, it was just, I was in acceptance at that point of just, hey, that's how it was we're all at different places of consciousness and awareness and fear and whatever it is that's contributing to the behaviors that we experience that we moved through. So, there was that catharsis recognition and also the recognition of still friendly, but we're not gonna rush to be spending every weekend or every day together type of thing. And I think that's such an important point because it's so true and so often we do look at our groups as so necessary, but a lot of times that can stifle or limit where we're going or what we're doing, and so we shift into different phases of life and you know, there is that coming and going of different people in our lives and we'll have deep connections in certain parts. And sometimes there's the ebb and the flow where we pull apart and then other people come in. Are you asking for specifically kinda that early twenties?

Michael: I'm thinking more just transitioning into the thirties and kind of what started to happen and transpire in that space.

Kevin: Yeah. So, you know, a lot of times you hear that seven-year itch in a relationship. For us it was a little bit more of like a 12- or 14-year itch so, worked in restaurants and my life career was as a designer. So, I was going to school, working nights, restaurants, worked with that lifestyle with what I was doing at the time helped put me through school. And then, I met my wife at a restaurant actually. And so, we were very much kind of in that lifestyle of, you know, decompress after we get off work, go out for drinks and food. One, two in the morning. You're working 4, 5, 6 nights a week. Wake up, rinse, repeat. We we're having a blast. We really connected on our, you know, I feel like we, both of us were ready for the relationship we had at the time our first date we went to a concert, but in line to get into the concert we were talking about, so where are you on religion? Where are you on kids? Like, where are you on, you know, where are you at with all these things? Which, you know, I don't think I've ever had a first date to dive into that depth, to your point. And so, you know, it felt good, build a life together, our daughter was born and when our daughter was about seven or eight was when our stuff started coming up in earnest and it was expressed through our daughter, unfortunately.

And at the time, she just had this nervous habit of picking any blemish that she had, and it was to the point where it looked like she had chickenpox and we were putting those little circle band-aids just so she would, you know, leave them alone so, whatever it was could heal. At the time my wife's friend had been dealing with her own stuff and was gain, was having success working with a Western MD who also practiced a form of muscle testing and subconscious inquiry and she recommended that Kelly take our daughter, my wife's name is Kelly that my wife take our daughter to see this doctor. And it took him seven minutes, I think one muscle test and a few questions to guide her to her own answer that she picks when she gets anxious because mom and dad are fighting. So, and at the time we would semantically dismiss that, like, oh no, we're not fighting, we're just disagreeing, or we're just finding different ways to say it. But underneath it, we were just lying to ourselves we were really fighting. So he turns to my daughter and says, you know, thank you so much. I do wanna talk to your mom for just a minute. Can you wait in the waiting room? She said, yeah and with that seven-minute conversation and one muscle test to connect with the answer of the why behind the symptom, behind the expression, she never did it again that was the end of it. But then the doctor turns to my wife and says, okay, now you two on the other hand, that's where the work is. And that was really what in my early thirties, mid-thirties in earnest, started this whole journey of unpacking the traumas that I thought I had healed or left behind in my twenties with kind of, you know, it's like we're living life in the twenties, we're in the moment and we're not thinking about, you know, 401Ks or you know, retirement plans or anything like that.

So, a lot of this was just under the surface, not even needing to be addressed, but with time and space, it really started to bubble up and it was some real tough gut check conversations guidance to answers that I wouldn't have even imagined that were there, but as soon as I hit on them, it was like this vein of truth and it was just this knowing of like, oh my gosh, this is underlying all of this bull crap behavior that I've been expressing and acting the fool, you know, as a trigger of or from. And that was really the starting point of the more intense journey to feeling lighter getting closer to my intuition, to getting more comfortable listening to that internal voice, that inner guidance that so many of us are conditioned out of, directed away from, you know, having, a lot of times we have it beaten out of us and it's just been this progressive process of reconciliation, letting things go, healing if you were, and I'm using finger quotes there. You know, all paths led that way and just so grateful that they did because if we hadn't had the resources and the signposts and the people in our life at the right time and the right place, we could very easily be divorced. And I'd still be doing design and just head down and turling up and staying angry at the world and resentful and in a state of feeling unworthy or unloved. It was really this, I look at it like the theory of gestalt, which I learned through art school, where the sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And that was really an aspect that stuck with me from a design standpoint. But then I really started applying that to us as humans and it was just truth in my mind.

Michael: Yeah, I found, it's funny you say that. People always will ask me like, well, how do you heal? My first answer is always honesty, and then in the back of my head, I'm always filtering that through the gestalt mechanisms because, you know, at the end of the day, I think we're all very analytical and what I found in Gestalt, outside of any other form or diagnosis or of therapy, it was just, man, this all just made sense. You know what I mean? And I think there's obviously the emotional capacity, the energetic capacity, the physical capacity, but the mental capacity around I believe this is for me, I'm not saying this for everyone. But I believe that that mental capacity of actually being able to say one plus one equals two is fucking incredible because what it really does is it gives you the thing that people need, and that's logic. Like when we can get out of our emotional way, not saying to stuff down emotions 'cause that's stupid and it doesn't work, but to really sit in it and look at it and go, oh, the reason I behaved this way in conflict is because when I was three years old, eight years old, 14 years old, 17-year-old, this happened. And so that kind of leads me down into the next question because I think this is really, really important. A lot of people struggle in relationships saying, we are not fighting, we're disagreeing. And so, in this therapeutic setting, in this growth setting that I'm sure you both did individually and together. You said this a few times, and so I'm wondering what was the this? What was the big anchor and cornerstone of healing, of growth, of change for you? What was the moment of, dare I say, either reckoning or reconciliation, where you're like, oh, I get it now?

Kevin: Yeah, thank you so much. And that's absolutely, it's a hundred percent it. And the challenge is a lot of times we get stuck at the emotional, like flare that goes off and we point fingers 'cause we feel like we're living life looking through a window, but we're really experiencing life in a mirror. And that was really one of the big awarenesses that I had where nothing anyone else does has any impact on me, it's an internal reaction that I'm experiencing and because I don't have a framework for it, I'm looking outside myself because in this material world we're born into that is the reality that we're provided that we're kind of given.

And so, the big one for me, kind of getting through those layers of guessing or, you know, assumption. The biggest one that really got me to this place of getting to that truth more efficiently was no matter how much we were fighting or how much we disagreed when we went to bed, I don't think I ever slept on the couch and, but we've slept on opposite sides of the bed, but we would always have at least like a toe touching. So, our feet would be touching at night. And sometimes I tell this story and people are like, Aw. But on the backside of that, the question that this doctor asked was, okay. And we explained that like, oh, when we fight, we still wanna touch. And he challenged that. He said, oh, do you? And I'm like, absolutely. And he muscle tested me and the muscle test was super weak. And I was like, oh, well I thought I did. He's like, how far away do you want to be when you're in a disagreement or when you're fighting? And I was like, well, okay so not touching, but in the same bed. Nope. All right. I don't want to maybe in the next room. Nope. And then, so I'm like, you know, kind of pulling at threads here, trying to figure this thing out. And I think he said, okay, just give it a breath and just let the answer come to you. And it didn't, it scared the crap outta me for what, at the time I felt it meant. And the answer was in another galaxy. I wanted to be in another galaxy away from my wife when we're in a fight because of all those reasons that I was feeling unworthy, unloved, unheard, unseen, unvalued. And when I said it out loud, it was this, it was such a feeling of release and relief or my, it felt like my system, my mind-body system was like finally he got it. Oh my God, we've been beating this drum for years. And all it took was the awareness, recognition, and admittance to really release the triggers that were behind it. And so, it was this admitting to myself, I didn't wanna be not only in the same room, not even on the same planet, in a different galaxy from the person that I love most in life that really enabled me to start really making strides and getting to that radical honesty for myself for what the answer was, and stop spending so much time guessing and blaming and pointing fingers.

Michael: Two things came to mind. One, my brain just went, yeah, duh of course, why? Because what happened when you were six years old and you're on elimination diet in the second grade or whatever, right? And then you look at it now and you go, well, the other part of the duh is looking at it very simply saying someone showed you what you can't see. I think that that is such a part of the importance of other human connection in the healing journey, and I challenge anyone to ever be like, I healed myself. I'm gonna look at you and be like, you want to bet? Let's sit down and have a conversation for 25 minutes and I'll show you why you're wrong. I played guilty of that too because and you've pointed to something that I used to say frequently in that I used to oh, and that this is the ultimate fixed mindset. I believe this is the most dangerous sentence a human being can utter and that's just the way I am. And we sit in this and we go, that's just how I am. This is how we argue, this is how we fight, this is how we do this, how we do that. And I go, well, it's not working. So why do you think it makes sense to continue down that path? And I think one of the things people fear, and especially I'll speak to this from the constitution of being a man is you look at this so often and it's like to express your emotions when your whole life you've been felt or thought that you are invisible, it's almost seemingly impossible. But it's the only way you become who you're actually capable of being. So how did you actually find, what was it through having the support of your wife that you were able to actually step into this? Like what was the element of support that you had to walk into this healing journey?

Kevin: So I think that we were both in the same mindset at the same time, where we're like, hey, we recognize that it takes two to tango. And so, we're co-creating this, what I call dis-ease, this dissonance, this disharmony, this newly forming trauma. And so having both of us on that same page, and you nailed it like we did, we worked individually and we worked together in couples’ sessions in this subconscious healing modality. For me, I think that was a massive factor but the other part of it for me was I was just ready and I've worked with different trainers in different capacities, both with energy work and with, you know, physical. I did a little bit of boxing training with a coach for a while and one of the things that stuck with me was sometimes you just need to chuck it in the f it bucket and do it anyway.

I was at such a place at the time whereI was like, I was done. I was done with the bss. I getting that taste of that capital T truth of that bedrock answer. I was like, I want more of that, because that felt true and that felt good. And as soon as I got there, I felt lighter and I felt more like me again, so to speak. So I think the dual factors of, you know, the buildup over a lifetime of like this doesn't feel good, I don't have the answer, but I feel there's an answer out there. And as soon as I got a glimpse into what one potential answer is, I hit the ground running and there were times where, I mean, I just speaking to that readiness, I'd go to this doctor's office and I'd be reaching for the door handle and the waterworks would just start. I would just start bawling my eyes out and I didn't care anymore. I was like, I don't care if I'm slobbery. I'm a hot mess. I'm like, it feels so good on the backside of this release, I do not care what people are thinking or whatever while I'm in this expression and then, we'd unpack stuff, we'd get into the, the subconscious, the emotions, truth that my system was holding. And I'd leave the session like walking on sunshine. I feel like I'm on cloud nine for two or three hours, and then I would crash hard. And it's like an, I would call it like an energy hangover, this detox, you know, capacity of shifting, moving, you know, inviting in new positive beliefs, letting go of the old nonsense that we carry with us is, you know, to your point is, oh, this is just the way I am. Those types of things.

You know, not to reiterate, but like that rinse and repeat cycle where I was just in the process, I had no idea really of where I was going and I didn't care 'cause with each little step I was taking, I was just feeling better and better and coming back to what I would consider myself. Like exclusive of the beliefs and the trigger programs and the ways my parents acted and my grandparents acted and adopting those as my own and really unpacking all of those constructs to come back to that open space internally so that I could actually be at a place of making the choice of what I wanted to continue to experience and do versus just kind of being in the trunk of life and having our subconscious, our fight flight freeze responses, our limbic system careening all over the place in the driver's seat.

Michael: Yeah, I mean, that's spot on. I had the same experience and the energetic hangover of it. I can fully agree with not the same experience, but similarly. Right. I look at these moments of walking into, whether it be a therapist's office or a coaching session and just the emotional energy of that moment feeling like, a – gigantic release, but then b – on the backside of it just being absolutely exhausted. And then when you start to understand not only energy, but when you start to understand the way that, and again to coin a phrase that's not mine and the way that the body keeps the score. You know, you, sit and you look at these energetic experiences and this transference of energy, it's a release. And so it's like you can only push through so long, so hard until it's going to come up. But one of the things that happens, and this is what happened to me, you stuff it down, you stuff it down, you stuff it down. I was having f*cking five panic attacks a day. And you're looking at that and, on the outside, looking in, I was diagnosed with anxiety, depression, ADHD, and periodically I did try various medications 'cause it's like maybe it's just biological, right. Mother's manic, depressive, bipolar, suicidal grandmother of the same. Both of them are addicts. Stepfather's an addict. I come from addictive background. Everybody's a little bit fucking crazy. Of course, I would be, and now removed from that, doing a lot of work over the course of the last 13 years. I don't take any medications. I don't take any pharmaceuticals, but so much of it has been in this practice of energy. And this is a word, I'll be honest with you, we're gonna step into something that I think is fun here. I was always like, this is some bullsh*t. Anytime anyone said this word, I'd be like, shut the f*ck up. You're full of shit. You're a moron. Don't talk to me about this. Get the f*ck away from me. Right? And then you actually kind of understand it from a quantum perspective, where just from 'cause again, this is my gestalt approach to life. It's like from an energetic capacity, understanding the quantum realms and the fact that everything is always happening in reciprocity and perpetuity, and you're willing to accept the plausibility of foreverness, then you can go, okay, maybe energy exists. One of the things, and I do a poor job of explaining it 'cause I am over analytical in it. Tell me what energy healing is, but precursor that please with what the fuck is energy?

Kevin: Yeah. So, you know, and this is again, that rub of our perception of our material world. And well, if I can see it and I can feel it, then that then it's real. And I'm not sure if you've heard there's a guy from the 20th or from last century, 19 hundreds. His name's Buckminster Fuller. He is one of my favorites, I'd say Renaissance man of the 20th century. And one of his quotes is “seeing as believing as a blind spot in human perception.”

And there's a bunch of other quotes from kind of, you know, the God like Werner Herzog and other godfathers of the quantum movement. But for me it boils down to, so everything is energy. Emotions are energy, thought is energy. You know, working out we are expending energy. And so to quantify it at rest a human just from our biological energy, we are electromagnetic generate enough energy to power a desk fan with intense exercise like a trained athlete, like an Olympian athlete at a sprint, they're outputting enough energy for a stove to be on at 350 degrees, there's enough energy being expressed. So, I hear this, I'm like, okay, that's interesting. We express energy and then, you know, the matrix, I know you mentioned that previously in different settings come in, it's like, oh, well yeah, we take out the solar energy, so the robots start using us because we're bioelectric.

So then, my whole journey has been a journey of yes, and adding, you know, creating that gestalt, creating the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. And so from that quantum perspective, I really boil it down to the first two laws of thermodynamics. Energy can’t be created or destroyed; it can only change form. So when we get these. Inputs early in life, we are absorbing and intaking a massive amount of energy that creates our constructs for reality. Our trauma patterns, the condition programming that we loop into while that's just the way I am type of stuff and it's going to change form. So, we get these inputs and then they express as anxiety or depression or ADHD or going back genetically and epigenetically, we get into generational trauma of overweight or bipolar or medic depressive, which we have labels for, but we don't have solutions for. We've got mitigation plans or medication that can suppress the expression, but nothing that solves for the equation.

And then the second law of thermodynamics in simple terms is an isolated system. And the second law of thermodynamics is really written about the universe but if we look at a human body, we are a universe within the universe. There's something like 60 trillion cells only about only about 40% of which are actually human DNA. The other 60% are biome, are by naturally occurring bacteria, viruses, microbes that inhabit our system. So, if we look at us as the universe within the universe, energy within a closed system is going to trend towards entropy or chaos and disillusion unless acted upon by an outside force.

So that's where we get in, you know, there's no stagnation in energy and a closed system is gonna trend towards chaos unless it's, we hit the pressure release valve, is what I like to say. So that's really it boiled down energy, we're gonna absorb energy from other people, from our other experiences, from places from things. And if we are not practicing energetic hygiene, we're going to only be dealing with the symptomatic expression of that energy, and we're not gonna have the conscious awareness of what's really triggering these reactions within the system unless we take the steps to kind of dig a little deeper.

Michael: Yeah, and I think that's a big reason why you've heard people for millennia say, go look at your people and they will tell you your future. Right.

Kevin: Yeah. Your current group?

Michael: Absolutely, and a hundred percent. I go look at my friendships, my relationships, when my life was chaotic those were all chaos. When I was obese and smoking two packs a day and drinking myself to sleep, what do you think my friends were doing? When I was in an emotionally and mentally abusive relationship? What do you think the relationships my friends were in were like, right? And then you look at it today and the energy, it's the same thing I think about this when you're on the highway you look four lanes down and the guy looks back over at you, like, there's something to that. We fill each other, we connect with each other. One of the hardest parts about that though, is the disillusionment that we have around connection, because people like us, right? Right. Which you look and you trace kids who grew up like us, feeling lost, abandoned, insecure, unloved, that they don't matter, that they don't have significance or worth, will do anything for human connection. Even if the energy is toxic enough to burn a building down. And yet you said something that I think is really powerful and I want to dive into because I think that like taking that deep dive look at your own personal energy, where you're expending it, what you're putting it into, positive or negative is such an incredibly important measure for success, but use the word, I never heard anybody say this before in terms of hygiene break that down for us and what people should be taking into consideration with their energy?

Kevin: So, you know, just like, I mean, we brush our teeth, we go work out, we take a shower, we have material hygiene. So, for me, energetic hygiene is really getting behind the symptoms. So the symptom could be physical, it could be physical pain, it could be emotional, it could be whatever and it's gonna be hyper personal for all of us. But there's energy that's co-creating those expressions. And so, if we aren't in a regular practice of energetic and emotional release, coming back to a balanced whole brain state, we're gonna constantly be on our heels in some low-grade state of fight, flight freeze. And I do have an awareness that this is somewhat manufactured because you know the two baseline motivators for most life is fear and greed if we're operating at that level. And there's a certain level of awareness and control that feeds into that with the 24-hour news cycle with comparison and judgment, and, oh, they're doing this, or I need to do that. And so, with those, I go back to Dr. Seuss, like, The Butter Battle Book, and then, The Star Bellied Sneetches and I mean, there's such wisdom in simple stories. And so, both of these stories deal with keeping up with the Jones' comparison and what does it mean to be happy? And so from an energetic hygiene standpoint, the more that we can release or transform excess energy, and this can be in the form of exercise, there is a number of positive brain sync practices and techniques that I recommend all my clients start integrating into their life.

So it's like running is one of the, I call it a triple threat positive energy disruption because we're rebounding, we're physically jarring the system with when we're foot striking, we're breathing So, we're doing breath work when we're running and we're spending time ideally in nature if we're running outside. So, I always recommend if you run, get off the treadmill, get outside. So, it's really simple and integrative ways that we can release energy throughout the day and throughout the week. But so often we get locked down, it's like and then we get into the should we start shoulding and needing all over ourselves. Oh, I should get to the gym. Oh, I really need to work out. But life happens and business happens and family happens, or whatever happens. So, we tend to not place as much importance on some of the most important factors in life, which is coming back to that energetic stasis, back to a whole brain state. So, we're making more conscious decisions with less duress 'cause if we're making decisions in our default hemispheric, limbic response, they're either gonna be probably overly analytical or overly emotional, and we're not gonna get necessarily maybe the right answer for us at that time because we're dealing with a reactive response.

So, the more we can get quiet in the mind and body some vehicles for that, our breath work, you know, I love to hit hard with exercise that really helps me to get back to this balanced, you know, people might call it a runner's high or after workout high, and that's more of the natural state that I've found that's available to us if we're ready to start really taking responsibility for what we're birthing into the world with our thoughts, with our emotions, with our reactions, and getting underneath those symptoms so we can get to the root of what's really causing it, as opposed to just, you know, either stuffing it down our whole lives or just mitigating the symptoms as opposed to alleviating the stress on the symptom that's creating it in the stress on the system that's creating the symptom in the first place.

Michael: That's exactly right. And you know, and I look at the Mind-body connection and you know, I think unfortunately we live in a society right now that is overly PC and it doesn't do anything but harm people because, dude, I'll promise you this, one of the best things that could have happened in my twenties is someone around me to be like, dude, your fat. Like you need to change your life. No, and I mean that I'm not saying that in jest, like I really mean it because you look at the health of your physical body, I promise you, it will show you the health of your mental capacity. And my hope is that people won't take that as me being judgmental I used to be fat as fuck. I'm gonna call it what it is. And I look at my health today in conjunction my mental, emotional, physical, spiritual health is in this really fine-tuned alignment because all must be in order for them to function, it's the systems of, you know, so it's really kind of the same thing. And my hope is that people will hear this and recognize that energy plays a role in all of these functional systems. This has been an awesome conversation, Kevin, and I know we're gonna end up going deeper. I'll have you back but, in the meantime, before I ask you my last question, can you please tell everyone where they can find you and learn more?

Kevin: Absolutely. Thank you. So, if you're interested in more self-starting tools, if you're that person who's just like, hey, point me in the right direction, I'm gonna hit the round ground running. Go to radicalenlightenment.com where you can download a lot of these practices. There's guidance for how to do all of these somatic releases on our own. And if you're looking to dive deeper into kind of the philosophy and concept concepts about it my book, My Guy On The Ninth Floor is there as well. You can even dive deeper we have some quizzes where you can dive more into the, you know, underneath the surface, what's a subconscious belief that's really limiting us? If you're interested in doing a little bit more, one-on-one work, diving deeper with guidance, please go to rapidtransformation sessions.com and that's the practice that my wife and I have together. And we get into subconscious, start unpacking things, rewriting programs at the subconscious level, looking at moving through great swaths of emotional energy as well to come back to that balance and center place.

Michael: Love it, dude. Amazing. And of course, guys, go to thinkunbrokenpodcast.com. We'll put this and more in the show notes. Just look up Kevin's episode there. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Kevin: For me, being Unbroken is being fully connected to the capital M-Me and also the openness and willingness to move beyond even the idea of me and I in exploration of deeper truths on the journey in life.

Michael: Brilliantly said, man, poignant to the I love it. Thank you so much for being here.

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I'll See Ya.