Wim Hof Method Expert Explains the Science Behind Breathwork and Cold Exposure

Gerald Caussade [00:00:00] One of the common experiences also is in my dreams, I suddenly was dreaming. And you dream. And it's very common to start doing the Wim Hof breathing in a dream. So you're dreaming about doing that because it's, shoot, it's your life, you're doing so much of it. And some, somehow, a lot of us just suddenly have a coincident dream after the weeks or months, and you're doing the breathing. Breathing. Turns out, if you dream, if you dream about breathing, you actually do the breathing. There is no separation.

Vance Crowe [00:00:28] I'm Ashley McFarland, a nonprofit executive

Gerald Caussade [00:00:31] Living in

Vance Crowe [00:00:31] Duluth, Minnesota, and you are listening to the Vance Grow Podcast. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here. Today we talk with Gerald Casad. Gerald is an expert at the Wim Hof Breathing Method. And if you're anything like me, you're like, what do I need to learn how to breathe for? But this experience that we just had together will show you that there is so much to how we think, how we feel, how our bodies heal, that are all related to breathing. In fact, in this episode, we actually do a breathing exercise and then talk about how it's changed my feeling and kind of what's going on around me. This is a very weird conversation with a man that has experience in all forms of religious ideas and concepts. This is a very interesting podcast. We're gonna get to the interview in just a moment. But first, mother's Day is right around the corner. And a legacy interview would be an amazing gift to your mother. Oftentimes, if you go to your mom and you say, Hey, mom, would you like to do a legacy interview? Modesty gets in the way. They'll start saying, oh, I don't know if I have a story to tell, or, ah, nobody wants to listen to this. But if instead you present it, not just as a gift to her, but really a gift that she's giving to future generations, a way for her to make sure that the family stories that are so important get passed down into future generations, it will change that dynamic. And you will watch your mother be washed over with a level of gratitude because you care so much about her wisdom and the stories that she has to tell.

Vance Crowe [00:02:11] If you're interested in a legacy interview for your mother, go to Legacy Interviews dot com to find out more. Alright, without further ado, let's head to this weird and fun interview with Gerald Casad. Jerry Casad, welcome to the podcast.

Gerald Caussade [00:02:27] Thank you. I'm excited. I, we've talked about this for a while, and now we're here ready to go?

Vance Crowe [00:02:32] Yeah, man, this is no joke. We've been talking about this for a year, and finally you said yes. So let's start off by why should anybody care enough about their breathing? That they actually have a method to it?

Gerald Caussade [00:02:44] Yeah. That we all know how to breathe and we should care, because to answer specifically, well, I think mental health, everyone is feeling it, feeling the stress lately. And then physical health and the, we're gonna talk about the Wim H method, and it changed my life 9, 8, 9 years ago almost now. And I just like talking about it and explaining the things that I learned over this time, the challenges I had in life, and, and then helping others meet some of those mental health challenges and physical challenges, quite frankly. I mean, it's been mind blowing. So I want,

Vance Crowe [00:03:24] Yeah, I mean, like when I know of Wim h, he's like some dude that can go out in the cold weather and he has this breathing stuff and he's controlling inflammation. And you know, I've kind of heard all these things, but I have no concept for what it is or why anybody would take time to like, sit down and do a bunch of breathing. Is it like meditation? What is it?

Gerald Caussade [00:03:44] Well, by the way, that's interesting you bring that up because I, I mean, that, that brings it back to me. When I first started, no one, I mean, I'd bring it up and people would be like, what is it? Why should I learn? Right. And the the, I mean, look, what is it? He had to explain it himself. I mean, basically, you gotta understand, whim had already learned a lot of yoga over the years, and, and he was a climber, and so he knew a lot of the basics, but he lost his wife when his oldest son was 11 years old, and he had four children, and suddenly he found himself going into the cold, drawn to it, and this breathing just came out of being in the cold. You know, when you get in the cold, you kinda get shocked, he says. And so this breathing technique came out of it. And, and he had known some yoga things, but a lot of what he brings up and we'll talk about today is not, it's something different than yoga and everything. That's why it's taking off. Millions of people are learning now, but nine years ago, that wasn't the case. People just thought is some weird thing, honestly. So we're starting this talk about like, what it was feeling like nine years when I mentioned it, or the Facebook page, I was helped moderate and all that. Everyone was like, yeah, sure, you guys are exaggerating. So why did it take off? And what were some of those, you know, early things that we found out? Well, first of all, yeah, he at that point was just getting some attention. And why I even learned it was that they were starting to notice that, well, he's getting these world records, but the difference between him and anyone else I've ever seen is he was teaching his technique to other people and breaking world records with them.

Gerald Caussade [00:05:25] That's insane. You and I go with Wim Hoff and go climb Kilimanjaro. He did that and he broke world records with people, other people that just learned the technique of what

Vance Crowe [00:05:34] World records was he breaking.

Gerald Caussade [00:05:36] So in that case, he broke world record in the time to summit Kilimanjaro from the bottom to the top. And it used to take a several days, and frankly, I used to know this number by half by heart, but they did it basically in a day because first of all, you know, I think it's almost, it's about right near 20,000 feet, right? 19,000 I think, something. And so that is a tall mountain, and you get low on oxygen, right? And the people he brought up there were 65 years old. There was one guy who had cancer. There were, oh, I mean, we're not talking about just some big jockey types, right? So that's impressive. And that really blew me away. So he really is very different than others, and that is that he created this technique that other people could do rapidly. And, and so, you know, your audience, people listening here can say, well, you know, you can use it. It doesn't, you don't have to be some super being, and you will see, I saw a total life transforming effects within 90 days. That's crazy.

Vance Crowe [00:06:43] Within 90 days. So what, what is it? It's, it's, you're teaching people how to sit and breathe. So,

Gerald Caussade [00:06:48] So there that, so there's three things that are important on, on the Wim Hof method. One is breath work, the breathing. He's combined it with cold exposure. And then the third pillar is commitment. So the, the, the final pillar is, yeah, mental focus. I mean, you need to commit to this because these are two very intense things. So right at the beginning, and there are all kinds of free resources on at their website and all that, that help you with that too, frankly. Because if you start the pattern, you know, and every day you do a little bit, you'll find some improvement. So to answer your question, those three things, and then now, now a little more detail is the breathing. You know, there's a lot of other techniques that have been around forever, right? There's all yoga, there's all these yogic breathing. It's been around obviously for thousands of years. Sufism, the, the path of Rumi uses, uses it. I coincidentally even for, oh wow, I had been another six years prior to that that I took up certain Sufi practices. And one of the techniques there was almost identical to the Wim Hof breathing. The wi the Sufi breathing I had learned was taught one-on-one because it's considered very intense. And then, but they combine it with fasting, which is a lot of spiritual practices, did fasting. I had never seen anything, even to this day that takes it instead with fasting specifically, but takes it with cold.

Gerald Caussade [00:08:26] So Wim Hof has to answer your question again, is to, is what's unique here is this breathing technique and combining it with cold. And the interesting science that came out years back already and now continues to come out is that the breathing technique, which I thought we will do a little bit about it, of it today, to introduce people to it and then point people where they could learn more, is that they can do the breathing technique and it takes you to a super hypoxic state, which means very low oxygen. And we're talking levels of oxygen. For some people it goes down to 50%, which is crazy. When you talk to, to doctors and others, they did not think that was possible just through breathing techniques. I mean, this is even nine years ago. And, and so it continues to blow people away. Now they've, they had to change the physiology textbooks on this because you thought people would just pass out. So you're, you're going to super hypoxic states hypoxia, meaning low oxygen, and you're getting used to working at that level. And what that does is releases a huge amount of a chemical called adrenaline or noradrenaline. And then you also do the same thing. Coincidentally, it turns out when you get into cold, you actually also have some of the same effect, a huge boost of adrenaline. So if you do just the breathing technique, yes, you get the benefit. If you do just cold exposure, you didn't invent that, nor Norwegians do it, you know, all around the world they've been doing that.

Gerald Caussade [00:10:01] But the combination has been quite unique. And the science is showing that when you combine them, then you get this double whammy effect of this boosting of noradrenaline and all that. And looking for, we will go over some of the science and some of the changes we would see people talking about that seemed honestly quite magical. So when I started, for example, I started, because, you know, here I'd been meditating for decades and doing all these different things. And at age 49, suddenly really starting to get arthritis in my hip. And I still had a little, I still had asthma that I'd had as a grownup, adult onset asthma, ironically, triggered by cold. One of the things that triggered it was cold, and they were significant enough that I was limping at age 49. And I was like, this is ridiculous. I'm feeling old. We all get to that point, right? And suddenly, you know, this guy is, is hitting the news a bit. And I'm like, well, there's so much junk now being married at the time to a psychiatrist who was trained. And interestingly enough, you're in St. Louis, and, and her expertise was sports, psychiatry, psychiatrists of the cardinals. And the funny thing is she thought, oh, that's, that's cute. You know, hubby, you go do that because it's all placebo. Anyway, probably, you know, because again, this is nine years ago. However, what's interesting to me is that when I learned meditation 40 something years ago, they said the same thing about meditation and her generation.

Gerald Caussade [00:11:33] Now, you know, it's like, oh no, it's all the science is showing that meditation really makes all these changes. And we know that. So we know now that the Wim Hof method with some of the early research, that there's major changes in the brain, there's major changes in the physiology, which we'd love to go over. But I, well, let's get back to, to, well, we'll go over that. But again, going back to what the technique does and all that. So we've got the cold exposure and we have the breathing both causing a huge amount of adrenaline. And basically what he's teaching you is to stay relaxed in a very stressful state. Do you, do you try, do you do the cold exposure yourself at all? I think you probably, I think you,

Vance Crowe [00:12:22] Yeah, you and I talked about this a little bit. So I've done cold showers and I don't do the ice bath just 'cause like a function of, I don't have a bath to do in them in, but like, and to me it was something to be endured. It was the first time I ever talked to you where you were like, you don't have to do the cold exposure as just like dumping the, the coldest water you can find on yourself. So I do it not nearly as frequently as I used to. I did like a month where I did it. Yeah. And then I like kept up with it for a while, and then eventually you're like, I don't really wanna have a bunch of cold water on me.

Gerald Caussade [00:12:56] Right. And I think that, and, and that is something we learned also in the last nine years. So fast forward, one of the messages to get out now is that people would even have videos of still screaming, getting in the water, like, oh my god. You know, and this, and it's completely unnecessary, in fact. So,

Vance Crowe [00:13:12] But let's first talk about why do people do cold exposure? What is it? I mean, like, let's start from zero.

Gerald Caussade [00:13:18] Okay. Well, again, so going back to the why he was able to break world records. So we said health. So what are some of the, what, what are some of the benefits? Well, first of all, so I personally noticed then within those 90 days I was off all my asthma medication, didn't need it anymore. My hip was, I didn't feel that any, anything, it was just back to normal. And then I'm going on this Facebook page and we're all talking, and there was only 2000, only 2000 people on it. And it just kept growing and growing. And there's a lot of anecdotal evidence now starting to appear. And I became the main moderator basically because of my connection with so many doctors, my wife, and then her brother. My brother-in-law is a cardiologist, and then Jim Ironman is a transpersonal psychiatrist. So there was more the mystical side of it. And he was into breath work for 30 plus years, taught me original holotropic breathing. So there, so there's all these science and just working with me in medicine basically. And they're saying, well, this is interesting because whim is saying things that are breaking the rules. Like, for example, in yoga, you're not supposed to breathe too hard, too heavy. You don't wanna overdo it. And whims like, no, just really go all out. And we're going super hypoxic. And then cold Ayurveda, some of the TCM Chinese medicine, you don't wanna get too cold. That's bad for you. It's, it's bad for the kidneys, it's bad for, so frankly, there's a lot of, he was getting hit from the science saying that doesn't not possible.

Gerald Caussade [00:14:53] And even you would think that the, the tradition of woo woo people would be behind it. And they're saying, no, this is wrong. Both sides fast forward nine years being respected by both sides much more now. So what are some of the benefits? Well, one is that what we're finding out is over the last nine years is, why did I get this? Why did I suddenly feel better? Well, first of all, the breathing releases a huge amount of adrenaline and no adrenaline. And that's massively anti-inflammatory. The cold exposure is also massively anti-inflammatory. There is a mental portion to all of this, there's no doubt. Which is that your listeners are gonna be like me. I hated the cold. I mean, okay, maybe there's somebody who likes cold, they're rare. I, I mean, I define myself as somebody who likes heat. And when I put my hand in cold water, you might as well, literally it says, it's like going into a fire. It, it hurts. It's painful for me to now tell people that I get into an ice bath and it's effortless and I literally relax. That's just mind blowing. There's very few things in life that really change your definition of this.

Vance Crowe [00:16:04] Yeah. And for people that like, are sitting there thinking like, no, I can do that. Just imagine getting in your shower, it's a warm shower now just turn it to cold. Just like now the water is hitting you, or you don't even let the, the shower heat up and you just step into it. Right? Right. You have that jerk back reaction or that like reaction.

Gerald Caussade [00:16:23] Shocking. Imagine even just, and then a full blind ice bath at near, near freezing. Yeah, it would be. It's, and yet everyone can do this. There's no genetic. Now, there, there are some contraindications, I guess we should mention the contraindication is that if you do have, if you're pregnant, you should do the breathing technique. And you should not be doing the cold exposure unless you already were beforehand because it creates more stress in your body. You're having a baby probably.

Vance Crowe [00:16:51] Okay. So if you have to be careful, be careful. But now let's talk about like, somebody gets into that bath. Yeah.

Gerald Caussade [00:16:58] What's

Vance Crowe [00:16:58] Going on? Well,

Gerald Caussade [00:16:59] So, so again, well first you wanna do the breathing technique. Do a few, we call it a few rounds of breathing that will, so the breathing technique will release the adrenaline. Now you've got some adrenaline already. You're prepped for going into the shower, but when you get into the shower instead of just the shock, yes, you, you can just take it to the slightly as cold as you can take it. And now deep steady breathing. So not the Wim Hof breathing, which we'll show later is kinda this fast breathing, but no steady relax. You wanna be relaxed. I like to say make love to the shower. Really have that intense, you know, just that attitude of just, you know, because it's so foreign to us, like just, you know, like just, oh, I love you. You know what I mean? Just, just totally be into

Vance Crowe [00:17:47] It. No, I don't know what you mean. I like,

Gerald Caussade [00:17:49] Well I, again, that's the mystic in me is make love to the universe even. But, but you know, it, it's, it's, it starts with the shower, right? So if you can, if you can love the shower, you can love anything. If you can love a cold shower about to kill you, that's what you feel like, then you can pretty much love everything, right? So you now take it as cold as you can, but you don't wanna do, like you said, that jumping in. So if you do that day after day, you will notice that you can do it colder and colder and colder. Alright? And then relax. So if you're feeling yourself doing this, then you probably overdone it a little bit, breathe, and you let you know, you relax. So what you're teaching yourself now is, oh, this is a stressful experience, right? And I'm relaxing. When you're doing the breathing technique, the hypoxia is theoretically stressful. There's adrenaline being released, which is our brains and our bodies are used to, that happens only under a major event, scary event, stressful event. The Wim H method is retraining us, unlike yoga and other things, it's actually retraining us completely to say, you know what? We can be relaxed even when there's a huge amount of adrenaline in our body. So that's the summary, is what science is finding out, is that both of these techniques combined do this faster than anything they've ever seen, which is that you are learning, you're reeducating your system. And by the way, there's two things that are happening. Vagal tone, the vagus nerve, you're increasing vagal tone with this technique, and you're reducing inflammation. So those are the two things I would want your, your listeners to understand and follow, is that I think when you are, when you're looking at all the research, all the things in life that increase vagal tone, that's good.

Gerald Caussade [00:19:29] And things that are reducing inflammation, that's good. And this is one of those things that really does both.

Vance Crowe [00:19:36] So let's, let's, I'm, I'm hesitant to do this, but I'm so curious when you say like, doing the breathing method, the method. The method. So you're

Gerald Caussade [00:19:44] Just dying to go. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [00:19:45] I'm not, I'm a little reluctant to do it. Like I, I remember,

Gerald Caussade [00:19:47] Have you ever done tried the breathing or

Vance Crowe [00:19:49] No? Huh? Oh, and I remember when I first started doing meditation. Yeah. I remember being like, no, I don't, I don't want to go there. I don't want to do it because I don't know, like I was afraid of the loneliness of meditation, and now I like totally understand it and I'm like, do it all the time. But like this, I feel the same sensation about doing this breathing thing where I'm like, I don't want to touch it. In fact, when we were talking about talking about the Wim Hof method, I was like, I almost was like, all right, you can come on, but, but like, we're not gonna do the Wim Hof method. Right? But now that we're here, let, let's see it. How does it work? Can you walk me through it?

Gerald Caussade [00:20:24] Sure. So we won't do three rounds. It takes a while to not, but we can do, we'll do one, one round, one set. And what happens is you do start with 30 breaths, deep breaths. Then you do what's called a, an exhale retention. That means it's easier than talking about it. We do 30 breaths. We let all the air out, we hold our breath as long as we can. And then at the end of that, you inhale for about 12 seconds. Just take a deep breath, fill up and hold your breath for 12, 15 seconds. And then you, and then you do another round. Now, each time you do this, you, you follow up and you can do, generally you start out with three rounds. Okay? It's as simple as that. Now this is a cousin to something called holotropic breathing, which is basically deep breathing has been around for decades, invented by Stan Groff and Christina Groff. And it, it is known if you do tons of this and to create total psychedelic effects without having to do psychedelics, which is pretty cool. So Wim Hof likes to say, get high on your own supply, and we'll talk about the science. But the science surprised us that it, it was, he was more right than we thought. So, because there's more than adrenaline. So let's go over it. So let's just do it. So we're only gonna do 30. So we do, and this is how the breathing works, basically. So you just take, it's diaphragmatic breathing, you start here, and then you start with the, yeah.

Gerald Caussade [00:21:55] So you can even put your hand here, and then you take a breath, breath in here, and then, so start there and then fill up the chest saw, and it's full. So this fills up and this fills up, and you almost feel your chest, right? Right. And then I like to say, let the gravity do the work. We don't push air out, we just let, just let it out. So you're not squeezing it out. You just letting it out effortlessly. That's one. We just do that 30 times. So, and then let it out. And again, but we can speed that up a little. It helps to have someone else count. Okay, we'll do 10 more, five one more, let it out, and then just hold the breath and just let your body relax.

Gerald Caussade [00:24:40] Now follow your lead. When you feel the need to breathe, just take a deep breath in and then hold, and then exhale. And then you would immediately follow up. Now again, now, each time you do that, you are lowering your oxygen levels more and more and more because why we're purging carbon dioxide. It is carbon dioxide that makes us need to breathe, that, that will, so, so really, we do have to bring this out, these, this breathing technique. Another is ancient in a sense and can be dangerous. We've had people not follow the rules. You never do this driving. You never do this in water.

Gerald Caussade [00:26:11] People have passed out and died in water. So again, never do this breathing water. If once you do want over and over again, you can hold your breath so long that you could accidentally faint.

Vance Crowe [00:26:22] This is as calming as many minutes of meditation. Like my arms and legs feel totally at peace. Like almost heavy, but not heavy. Like just they're, they're in a relaxed place. And when I do meditation, sometimes after 10 minutes or 15 minutes, you come out and you're, you're not tired, but you're just kinda like, I don't have the same tension that makes me feel like I need to be in motion. And that's what I feel like right now. I have no need to be in motion.

Gerald Caussade [00:26:54] Well, I've always said, you're, you're already a very deep person. So these things will have a deep effect on you. But you know, the, the,

Vance Crowe [00:27:02] This is cool, Jerry. This

Gerald Caussade [00:27:04] Is, yeah, the, the mys, the mystical side of this is you change your breath, changing the breath automatically changes our state of consciousness, right? That's one round. So we do three rounds, and by the end there, you didn't get with one, the first round you did not get that adrenaline released at all. Okay? So you're getting the calming effect, but the adrenaline release, you'll even feel some twitching and all that. But there's a, it's strange, it's a calm and adrenaline. And like, if I have a stuffy nose or something, I'm also allergic to cats. I'm around cats or whatever. I have one. So by the third round, I do it suddenly, boom, everything clears up. So I don't need an inhaler. Who needs an inhaler? When, and this is, this is a neat thing to know. People know people want inhalers or whatever, stress by the third round, if you don't have your inhaler, whatever, do it. And boom, you have a natural way and the adrenaline's released and clears up and clears everything up.

Vance Crowe [00:27:57] So how often are you engaging in this Wim Hof breathing method?

Gerald Caussade [00:28:02] So really optimally, once a day when you're, so, when you want to, let's, so you don't, again, let's just remind people. So you don't do it in water, you don't do it driving. You might think you're not gonna pass out and you won't for like a year. And then, so lo and behold, something's changing in your physiology and you pass out. It's happened to people. Like, damn, I just want you to know, we've had people post car accidents. I know I shouldn't, but I gotta warn everybody else I was doing this while was driving, you know, you'd be, because I know it's tempting,

Vance Crowe [00:28:37] It's temping. I mean, it's tempting. If you had told me this two and a half minutes ago, I know it's, I'd have been like, what do you mean? But it is so relaxing. Yeah. Like, not quite like a sedative relaxing, not like, you know, not like I'm not able to do these things, I just don't want to. Right?

Gerald Caussade [00:28:55] So that is, so now same thing. You don't think cold exposure is relaxing, but as you get used to it that you get out of it and you sleep better and, and there's this high from it, but then it's so relaxing. You just so mellow after deep cold exposure. It's ridiculous. So this is not the mellow me. I mean, I have, because I'm in a temporary home and all that, I also don't have an ice bath set up. So I'm in a temporary place. So I, I rely on cold showers at the gym and home. And the last weeks have not been cold. So I've been out of cold exposure for several weeks. And those of us who do wim h also over time, a add sauna. So one of the things we talk about is you can actually do heat cold, heat cold. So we'll bring that up. But so that the Wim Hof method naturally brings in some other things too, to help out with it. And a lot of your listeners probably are into sauna and heat, and you can add this to the routine. You can go hot, but you always want to end cold. So that's one rule. End cold, do it. You can go back and forth, but end cold.

Vance Crowe [00:30:05] So how does this become like a part of a practice? Is this like, like the way meditation is like, oh, I just do this as a, as my morning routine? Or how does it work? Yeah.

Gerald Caussade [00:30:15] Well, first of all, if you, why don't, if you wanna do this, right, let's say you're gonna start now again, first of all, I would highly recommend one big tip that's not out there a lot is get your baseline on your resting heart rate. Luckily I did that. My resting heart rate was 72, which I was a little disappointed. I was 49. I thought I was in better shape than that, but it was 72. How to take that of course is when, right when you wake up in the morning, I mean, it's not just sit down, you have to like even sit for a few minutes and all that. And there people can look that up. But you take your resting heart rate. My resting heart rate dropped from 72. By the end of the 10 week course, it was about 54, 55.

Vance Crowe [00:30:59] Whoa.

Gerald Caussade [00:31:01] Shocking. That was the first time my wife and her brother were like, Hmm, interesting. You can't make that up,

Vance Crowe [00:31:09] You know?

Gerald Caussade [00:31:09] That's shocking. Oh, that shocked me. And then I was, then I repeated cold exposure. I was only doing ice baths once a week. There are many people who like to do it daily. I would recommend trying to do deep cold exposure like that once a week at least. And you get a lot of benefit. And then when you, when you do that, my heart rate dropped to about 44, 45 resting heart rate. And I would, when I would go see my doctor, I wouldn't say pediatrician got too many kids, doctor, you know what, what do they call 'em? Just whatever. Just

Vance Crowe [00:31:44] A doctor. Yeah, your doctor, yeah,

Gerald Caussade [00:31:46] Your general practitioner. General practitioner. That's right. They, they're like, oh, you're an athlete. I'm like, trust me, I, I do work out, but like 40 minutes at a time, a few times a week, yada, yada. I don't run six miles, I run like a few miles here and there. No, you're an athlete. Okay, fine. Now they kind of read about this, but this is, this is the thing. So I track that. Now why is this important? So one of the other effects is it sounds crazy and too good to be true, but those that do this, those of us that do this technique, we just don't get sick anymore. Now, I mean, so one way to know that you're about to get sick is that you track your heart rate, your resting heart rate every morning. And I'll notice that, hmm, strange, my heart rate, my resting heart rate in the morning's up. So two rules when you feel like whether you feel it or not, and one of the rules is skip cold exposure, because that's a stress tructure, no more cold exposure. And now do extra breath work in it. Now that's a pain in the butt because it takes time and no one seems to ever have time. But if you want to, you have to do the work. So instead of three rounds, which takes about 10, 15 minutes of your day to do the three rounds properly and all that, you, that day you might be getting sick. So now you wanna do it a few more times, maybe another set, maybe even twice that day, A bunch of breathing. It's crazy. But it resets your system. Again, we'll go over some of the science, but one of the studies, the, the endotoxin study that came out o about nine years ago, eight, nine years ago, showed that this breathing and cold exposure boosts the immune system tremendously.

Gerald Caussade [00:33:29] So there's science behind it. And so now you're feeling a little outta the weather, under the weather. And so you do this and you avoid getting sick. And so the trick is, again, quick cold exposure, do that. And then in a day or two you might, you might feel better, you'll even see your resting heart rate getting better and you avoid it. But frankly then over the years, you, you, you just don't even get sick. I mean, just keep doing the breathing

Vance Crowe [00:33:59] When you are first starting this, right? One of the challenges in meditation is people are like, what am I supposed to think about? And you're like, oh, you think about nothing. You don't have any concept for what does think about. Nothing even mean,

Gerald Caussade [00:34:10] Right?

Vance Crowe [00:34:11] What do you tell people about what they should be thinking about? Is it just sitting there counting your breaths? Is it focusing on something else?

Gerald Caussade [00:34:19] Yeah, you're going to deeper topics. Well, first of all, I don't think of the Wim Hof method as replacing meditation or any other, it's a, it's a beautiful adjunct to all these other techniques.

Vance Crowe [00:34:30] Okay? It's

Gerald Caussade [00:34:31] An adjunct does not replace. So it was, you know, I've done various forms of meditation. I learned TM and TM Cities program when I was 16 and 19, but then later I, I did add mindfulness and tolin and sofas techniques, Sufi techniques. So tolin is compassion, you know, a type of compassion meditation. So those things got me to a certain extent, but somehow the Wim Hof method took me deeper. It gets rid of that deep layer of stress that we have, and we have more than ever. And it allowed all, like you do the Wim Hof method, and you'll find that, I suspect you do mindfulness or something like that. Suddenly it seems just to work better. Like I, it was, it was a struggle. It wasn't, you know, mindfulness. Suddenly you're like, yeah, I'm not really feeling so peaceful or anything. Then suddenly you do this and you follow up. So you do your breathing and then you do your meditation. You're naturally in the state of silence. You're like, oh, that's what mindfulness, oh

Vance Crowe [00:35:27] Man, it would be nuts to meditate after doing that breathing for three times. Are you like, it's funny to be excited for something that calms you down, right? But it it, right.

Gerald Caussade [00:35:37] No, it's true. Yeah, that's right. And by the way, I, I, I really believe people in, I have very close friends that, for example, are, you know, very religious. I mean, I'm here in the Midwest, I have friends of all political persuasions and you know, and even it, it, it deepens your faith. I, I know it sounds interesting, but it's like, because so much of our faith relies on us just feeling well, well, we can be better with you. It, it increased vagal tone makes you more loving. It bring puts you in touch with other people. You're more aware of how they're feeling. And it's,

Vance Crowe [00:36:08] Let's talk about this vagal tone. What is that?

Gerald Caussade [00:36:10] So we do the breathing technique. We're doing the cold exposure, and we noticed this, and there's science behind this, that, that there's a v there's a, there's our, a primary, right? We've got the spinal cord with all your thing, but the vagus nerve is the exception. It's separate. So people even who break, you know, vertebrae or break their back, they still have the, the vagus nerve.

Vance Crowe [00:36:35] I don't know anything at all about

Gerald Caussade [00:36:36] This. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's, that's, that's a whole probably podcast and itself, the, you have to, you gotta look up and you'll be like, oh my God, there's all this science about vagal vagus nerve. And so the vagal tone is in increasing vagus vagal tone suddenly means basically that your gut, you're more in touch with your gut ink vagal tone. So it's now more communication, which is interesting because we now also know that eating properly and all that right, is, is has that effect. So when you do the Wim Hof method over time, one of the subjective experiences is that you feel more in touch with your gut and nature through your gut. It's a very hard thing to experience to explain. And people who aren't mystical still are, you know, they're like, man, I, I sound like some kind of mystic, but it's strange. I feel like I'm in touch with nature and the trees and the people around me, and it's just from the breathing and the cold exposure. You don't have to believe anything. This is whim is not, he's not, he doesn't even define himself as a mystic at all. He's like, just do it. You know, he very practical. So, but the experience is one that is described in so many traditions. So if love is your path, this is a great thing too, because you just naturally just fall in love with things, you know? So vagal tone, so the vagal tone increases many of us who do the Wim H method.

Gerald Caussade [00:38:10] Also, we found that you're doing the breathing technique, and when you're doing cold exposure and the breathing technique, you naturally seem to not want to eat as much. And what does that lead into automatically

Vance Crowe [00:38:24] In better health?

Gerald Caussade [00:38:24] Yeah. But intermittent fasting,

Vance Crowe [00:38:26] Yeah.

Gerald Caussade [00:38:27] And that kind of took off years back too, around the nine years it's been building up, you're hearing everything about intermittent fasting. And so this is what's interesting. So suddenly I learned the Wim Hof method, but then within months I'm like, well, you know, I don't feel like I have to eat it. And so I naturally started doing intermittent fasting.

Vance Crowe [00:38:45] What is your fasting regimen?

Gerald Caussade [00:38:48] I'm not, I'm, I don't like to do anything to the extreme. So I intermittent fast four or five days a week, and then like, I have two cheat days where I just do whatever. I'm not sure that's the best thing. You probably should do it seven days a week. But anyway, I, I do, I'm at my point. Doesn't mean it's right for everyone, but I intermittent fast about 20 hours. So that means I really don't eat anything for 20 hours.

Vance Crowe [00:39:11] Yeah, I, I've, it's been funny. So Ben Anderson, who we both know, he is executive producer of the show, right? He would always be around here and he wouldn't eat lunch. And like, it was just weird for me, right? Like it was my time to do lunch, and then I decided one day that I, for some reason I needed to do it, I just didn't have time to eat or something. And once you get over the experience of like, oh, I need to eat it this time, I realized by not eating for the whole day, I don't have that like crash of being tired. That's, it used to be, I would come in here around one o'clock, right? And I would lay out on this couch and take a nap. I

Gerald Caussade [00:39:48] Know it's weird.

Vance Crowe [00:39:48] Like I'd eat and then there'd be about an hour, hour and a half, totally right? And then I'd lay down. That's all gone. It's

Gerald Caussade [00:39:54] All gone.

Vance Crowe [00:39:54] And once you are comfortable with the feeling of being a little bit hungry, you realize it's not even the feeling of hunger. It's oftentimes the feeling of boredom. So like, I, I used to eat because it was like time to do it, right? And like, we have a guy in the office today, and I was like, oh, wait, you, you eat lunch, don't you? Right? Like, oh, we, I, we need to make special accommodation for this because like, once it's out of your system, you don't do it. And on the weekends, when I have pancakes with my daughters in the morning, I have to fight all day because I'm so much more tired than I am if I don't, if I don't eat. It's true.

Gerald Caussade [00:40:28] It's true, right? I know the cheat days, I have to admit that I, I really question it. But the, the, the problem is, is just being with other people sometimes problem.

Vance Crowe [00:40:38] I, if I'm making pancakes with my daughters, I wanna eat pancakes with my daughter's. That's the truth.

Gerald Caussade [00:40:42] Yeah. So, so basically it's, yeah, it's, you got it. But, and, and you do wanna do long enough, and I, I notice the same thing. I think that's the universal experience is that the ups and downs go away. And it's because of course that sugar rushes and the, you're not getting all that ups and downs, right? From all the,

Vance Crowe [00:41:05] And you finally have a way to monitor something that's been happening in your life that you just didn't even realize. Like it never, I never made the connection between I eat lunch and then an hour later I'm tired and need to go take a nap. It just never dawned on me. And then once you stop doing it, all of a sudden you're like, oh gosh, there's all this stuff with food and the way that I operate that I just never realized before. I used to make the joke that intermittent fasting was just a fancy way to describe skipping breakfast, but it's not, not at

Gerald Caussade [00:41:36] All. It,

Vance Crowe [00:41:36] It's a lot more than that. It

Gerald Caussade [00:41:37] It, it, it is. And that's so what, what improved my health? I'm not, you know, it's, I have to give credit to a few things, right? So I'm doing cold expo. So now you're doing cold exposure, you're doing your breathing here. Suddenly a fast forward one year, I am in the best physical, at age 50, I hit 50 best physical shape of my life and best mental shape of my life. So some of it's probably from intermittent fasting, which is a result also. The, but also, I wasn't getting sore, working out like I'm one of those people, at least I would work out. And day two was worse than day one. Like by day two, I was so bad I could barely go back to the gym. And I then I'm like, eh, I got other things to do or whatever, you know? So the, the Wim Hof method, in doing the, I would do cold showers every day, actually at the gym, whatever, you know, as cold as possible. And then I found I could do the gym pretty much seven days a week, but I do five days a week, you know, so I was doing more, more workouts. So suddenly here I am getting more toned and the, the adrenaline and everything really helps. I mean, I have a DDI mean, just in my style of speaking all that, but I've never been medicated. That was one thing, being married to a psychiatrist, I said, you're right on the edge. Maybe you could use some, but, you know, a meditation. And then this technique really helped. But I notice the difference. If I haven't been doing some cold exposure now, you know, I, I'll not be as focused or I can't come up with a concept as quickly or a word. But think about this, how many of your friends were, you know, everyone's trying to get younger and all that, but I feel like I'm in the best shape of my life in my fifties.

Gerald Caussade [00:43:14] I'm 57 now, and I'm just, it's just getting better. I swear it keeps getting better. That's, that's in a message that needs to get out. Now what we noticed over the years is that people were saying some awfully miraculous things about the Wim Hoff method. So I'm gonna hear some of the things people are experiencing, and then the science behind why that might be happening. A lot of it is still anecdotal, but there's some really amazing stuff, and it's all on the internet. They can find it. So one of the things was, I mentioned this, this, this study and that, that they injected the people with, it was students and Wim Hof with a, a bacterium. And it, it was, it was a dead bacteria. It was e coli, by the way, dead e coli. So the real e coli would've made you super sick, but dead e coli will make you sick, but won't continue to do the, the damage, right? So the control group, I feel bad for these college students because this is literally, they signed up and got paid, but they got e coli and they were diarrhea and sick and everything, right? The whim Hof group, no one got sick whim, literally whim himself, okay? He's the master of this. He's been doing decades. He's like, I felt that little headache for a moment. But even the others were like, no, no, they felt something. But now they had done only about a few weeks of cold exposure. They had done some cold exposure, but they were mostly doing this breathing technique.

Gerald Caussade [00:44:46] And what they found was, is that the breathing technique, that adrenaline boost activated the immune system. Now, it's more complicated. A lot of times you'll hear whim and others say, it boosts your immune system, but it's cooler than that. Actually, I think you'll, you'll love this. What's so cool about, it's, it doesn't actually boost the immune system. That can be bad sometimes. Sometimes you don't. You want less inflammation, you want less of an, it actually boosts the part, ah, I had this memorized before, it's been years, I don't use this term, but there's actually a part of the immune system that's aware to check on the, the particular T cells, B cell, there's so many, right? That actually check to see how much of a immune response you should have. So it boosts the part of the immune system saying, what should I be doing? Should I have more or less? And quite frequently, we, nowadays we need less inflammation. So it's that it boosts the part of the immune system saying, what should I do? And generally what happens is we have lower inflammation, and that's beautiful. Now, we know, fast forward nine years, everything's about lowering inflammation, lower inflammation. So if you lower inflammation, what happens? Well, suddenly what's connected to inflammation, arthritis, all kinds of skin disorders. It turns out depression, anxiety is related to inflammation. Antidepressants. If you talk to psychiatrists, some of the best antidepressants were actually also anti-inflammatory.

Gerald Caussade [00:46:18] And so they also, they are also anti-inflammatory. So it turns out lowering inflammation helps with that. So we started getting a lot of people joining the page and finding out that their anxiety or depression. So you have the anxiety spectrum can be just low grade anxiety, all the way to full blown OCD, which is on that spectrum. Same thing with depression. Could be mild dys, theia, bit bit all the way to full blown deep depression. Some of 'em were on. And what's really cool is we on there, I would basically, it was a great time to be, to be alive, and for me to help, because, you know, working with doctors, I could work vicariously through them and help help people by helping them. This was the first time I was just giving part of my day, and it was about four or five hours of my day to helping people and telling them, okay, it sounds like what's working, for example, is if we talk about the cold exposure, well actually, if you're depressed, you need to do it every day. And it turns out this was anecdotal, found out that people were taking it down to near freezing, was, was helping them more. And they were, they were even able to get off their medication or lower their depressants and antidepressants and other things. So

Vance Crowe [00:47:43] Let's talk about cold exposure. When somebody is doing a cold shower or a cold bath, how much time should they do this for? Are you just popping in and popping out? Like, what, what goes on? Should you have a mental image of what you're thinking about? How should you proceed?

Gerald Caussade [00:48:02] Yeah, that's a great question. Okay, so we went over some of the basics of the breathing. So to prepare for the cold, you do want the a a mental attitude. I, it's, it's amazing, right? So the attitude is surrender. So we're not used to surrendering, I say making love to the shower or the cold, but really surrendering, let go. We're so used to fighting. No, let go. So first of all, say, Hey, remember I'm doing the cold, whatever I'm gonna do, just relax, surrender, go cold. Let's say you've already done your course and now you're doing your daily cold. So you get in. And the key thing to do several techniques important one, is deep slow breathing. So another form of breathing, deep, slow breathing. And when we, we wanna learn what's called non shivering thermogenesis. And there's a lot of confusion on the internet now about this. 'cause this has all become very popular. But the best form is non shivering thermogenesis. We have something called brown fat and beige fat. You might have heard about that. Children have a lot of it, but we lose it over time. But you, it turns out the science shows that you can get, you can rebuild it. It's probably beige fat. But, and those of us that do that cold exposure over time, you're getting more and more. Now, the benefit is that you are automatically, by the way, burning calories the whole day as you have that. And so you will lose a little weight, lose a little bit of weight when we're in the cold.

Gerald Caussade [00:49:34] You're staying in the cold now, it's very easy at the beginning to overdo it. We've had people go into hypothermia accidentally. It's rare. But you really, again, when you're doing this, you're pushing it. You can be really macho, ma. The more macho you are, the more you're gonna injure yourself. You start shivering and you're like, oh, I'm not shivering anymore. Well, that's maybe bad. You've now pushed your past into full, you know, full hypothermia. Because when you're, even in the dangerous stages of hypothermia, you start getting loopy, you don't even notice it, and you're in danger. So non shivering thermogenesis is you stay relaxed and you listen to your body, and you'll notice that if you're in there too long, you'll start shaking. And as soon as you start shaking, you've lost control and you get out. That's it. It's as simple as that. So you get out and you do this. Each time you do, you go in and you, what you'll find out is as long as you, you, you, you use, okay, now the mental side of it, you're deep breathing. What are you thinking about? You're into what, what, what do I think while I'm in there? Well, happy thoughts, but actually you can start visualizing heat. So some of us do some of that more eastern concepts of tomb and all that. You can start even breathing in fire or feeling fire or thinking fire, heat. And it feels like you're faking it at the beginning, you know, like, you know, okay, I feel fire. Fuck, there's no fire going on. I'm freezing, you know, I'm in the, I'm in the cold. But weeks go by, months go by and you're like, you know, I swear I'm feeling warmth.

Gerald Caussade [00:51:08] And it's real because now you've got more brown fat and you're automatically warming up. So when I go outside in the middle of the winter in a t-shirt and it's 15 degrees outside, that's, remember I told you I hated the cold. That's my favorite temperature now because now thermogenesis starts automatically, I don't think about it. And what happens when thermogenesis starts? I relax. So the old me was freaking out and I would be the standard person trying to bundle up. But those of us doing the Wim Hof method over time, now the new us relax in the cold automatically. There's no there, no,

Vance Crowe [00:51:42] I mean this sounds like simply amazing. I mean like the, the idea of going outside and not shivering or not being right brutalized by the cold, I mean, seems like a dream state almost. It

Gerald Caussade [00:51:54] Is. And it is saying, and you feel like you're in the matrix because when I'm, when I, you know, park my car and I'm walking inside and people look at you like you're nuts, of course. And you know, and, and again, I'm no Wim Hoff, so remember Wim Hoff on the other hand, I I I'm just a normal guy, but Wim Hoff using these techniques. So he has world records. So one of the world records he had back then, that was one of 'em that got attention is, I think it, yeah, it hit minus 40, I think it hit minus 20 maybe at one point, minus 40. It was at least minus 20 Fahrenheit. He did a full marathon and, but he only, he was barefoot and he just had shorts and it's so hilarious. It's, there's videos on it and they, the crews that are following him in the cameras are of course, and parkas and all that stuff, but he does this and it's nighttime and the sun comes up. So it isn't, not like there's a, and he actually, he even injured his foot a bit and he got that cold and that frozen, but he made it. And that was one of the world records he did. So he also has under water, again, we don't do our techniques underwater, but so he still to this day, maintains some of those and he doesn't feel the need to continue to break world records. It is still tough on your body, but you, you can and plenty have now taken this technique and decided to push the limits and, and break more world records, by the way, using the techniques. I'm just a normal Joe. I, when it's 15 degrees outside or whatever, I know if, if you want to and you wanna push this and continue to do more exposure, you could be outside for hours or whatever.

Gerald Caussade [00:53:29] I frankly, if it's 15 and outside it's effortless for 20 minutes after that. Like no, it's not like I, you know, but that's still shocking to me.

Vance Crowe [00:53:40] And how long have somebody going into this practice, do they have to have a commitment before they're able to, to do these feats of strength?

Gerald Caussade [00:53:50] I know it sounds, and again, that's what's so cool, Vance. I mean, no pun intended. So, but what's so cool about it is truthfully, how many things in life really do we define ourselves? Like I hate cold. I, you know, and that you can, if you change that, if you can change this that I, I am telling you, so it's 10, it's 10 weeks. The 10 week course, they, they've got a 10 week course, they've got a mini course, they have a for paid course. It's a few hundred bucks. I mean, that's nothing to change your life, you know, I'm sound like a,

Vance Crowe [00:54:20] I don't get to mention, but, and you that strong.

Gerald Caussade [00:54:21] Oh, it's, it's mind boggling. Oh yeah. I mean, so thousands of people, I've helped thousands of people on that page. So we went, we grew from two to 180,000 people on that page. And so, and again, so we talked, one of the things we talked about was, okay, so Nicole, let's get back to that topic. So we're, so we get out right now, let's talk about post cold. That's actually the next step. So we do some breath breath work. We don't do the breathing in the, the, the Wim Hof breathing style in the water when we get in the water cold shower or the ice bath. Deep slow breathing. We can visualize heat if we wish or something when we get out. Ah, now there's new instruction. How do we warm up? It's easy to get something called after drop, the concept of after drop. So what happens when we're in deep cold or cold exposure is that the body naturally starts shunting the blood flow and moving it only to core your core. And so there's less blood flow to your hands and extremities when you get out. And it's often you can overdo it a little bit. Then what you find is that you could start shaking pretty un uncontrollably. That happens. And that's called after drop. And we want to avoid after drop, but it, it, it often happens. So to avoid it, whim came up with this technique and it's the whim. Whim. There's a horse stance that we know a lot of us have heard of.

Gerald Caussade [00:55:54] Horse stance from, you never heard of it. Yeah, from karate. I did TaeKwonDo as a kid and all that. So it's a deep, you can look it up, but it's a deep squat. You're standing and squatting and it's almost like this, but standing and, and a deep squat and you're engaging your glutes and, and some big muscles here, but you're not doing cardio. That's the key because you're warming up and you're now slowly mixing the blood from the, your internal blood with that cold external blood. That's important because if you do it too quickly, actually it's a huge stress on the cardiovascular system. And some people could even get arrhythmias and other things. So you don't just jump outta the cold. And some people are like, oh, you can run. No, please don't run the proper training that the, the Wim h instructors teach is that you actually wanna do this deep squat. And then they, he does this arm movement like this. He goes, he does this. So it's like this. Now I am being more of a karate person. In the past I kinda like to do this, but they do this like, and then with some noise, and he goes, he goes like, who? Huh? Who? And so it's like really just getting everything going. Oh, sounds crazy. He loves having fun with this. Right? What increases bagel tone as well? Humming. So that's, that's a, that's a doctors, a lot of doctors know this thing too. So if you start going Mm, you know, all that stuff and oh, that also increases vagal tone.

Vance Crowe [00:57:27] That's fascinating.

Gerald Caussade [00:57:29] Oh yeah.

Vance Crowe [00:57:30] It makes me think my daughter actually is really into humming. And in fact, she will be like singing a song and she'll be like, no, dad, I want a hum. And so we hum. Like, and I have actually not hummed in, you know, I don't know, 20, 30 years. And now we spend a lot of time humming. I wonder if that's like a, a natural

Gerald Caussade [00:57:48] Culture or something. That's a, that's a self-soothing thing that she realized.

Vance Crowe [00:57:51] Yeah. That's

Gerald Caussade [00:57:52] Actually brilliant. That's really cool. Yeah, kids are amazing.

Vance Crowe [00:57:55] Well, you and I have talked about kids quite a bit. In fact, the first time we met, I was telling you about how my experience of trying to describe smells to my daughter before she, she had smelled them. And in particular, we talked, and this was more than a year ago about the Korean Spice viburnum. And then just a few days ago we had a meetup and the, the viburnums were in, in bloom. And I brought you one of them. Could you describe as best you can, what that smell was?

Gerald Caussade [00:58:32] Yeah, it, it, it is as magical as you thought. I, you know, I, I've grown up with smells. So my family's in, been in the herb business and essential oils, and I'm, I'm European as well as American. So all that's been big. So I've always been into smells and, and natural, right, as natural as possible. So you mentioned that. I, I believed you, but you blew me away. 'cause I, I, I have, I've grown up, you know, lived in Costa Rica for a while, so I've had gardenias and then Jasmine and all that. And that's actually what's interesting. So to me, because

Vance Crowe [00:59:06] I describe, how did I describe it? Do you remember? I

Gerald Caussade [00:59:08] Don't remember. Maybe, did you throw Jasmine in there?

Vance Crowe [00:59:11] Well, Jasmine think you say

Gerald Caussade [00:59:13] Jasmine with pepper or, you know, spice,

Vance Crowe [00:59:15] I describe it to people without using the words is like, this is one of the most amazing smells in the entire world, right? Like, I would submit that there are very few things that you'd be like, nah, that's, it's not as good as X because it is right up there with it. It is complex and beautiful, but, but how would you describe it?

Gerald Caussade [00:59:36] So to me, it's a very spiritual flower because for me, all, all, all these techniques have brought up a lot of synesthesia to me naturally. So, so smells bring up a lot of complexity in me. So the, the, to me, it's, it smells like jasmine with gardenia and then with a pepper. And I mean, so it, it ends, it's like a fine wine or a bourbon or all these other fine things. I love a nice smooth ending or something. But this has a kick at the end. To me, what's amazing about that is when, when you say that is that for me personally, all these different spiritual p non dual spiritual practice that I'm involved in, they actually go to the same place. But to me, they all have a different smell to them.

Vance Crowe [01:00:27] Oh, interesting.

Gerald Caussade [01:00:27] Yeah. Some is rose, one is jasmine, one is, you know, so that's interesting. Yeah. And, and so for you to bring this, what you consider this greatest smell, what, what I thought was fascinating and, and beautiful, was that it, you know, I, I love the idea of Rumi, of Right, that love, you know, he brought, brings all religions. He says, love is my religion. He, he, yes, He definitely Muslim and he continued to practice his faith, but he transcended included that faith. Faith is like Ken Wilber would say. So he, he said, you know, realistically, all religions are truly love, love is my religion. So having said that though, I appreciate, you know, my friends that love Jesus, that's kind of that, but that also has a smell to it almost. And, and those that love other, you know, other paths, what connects them all to me and, and why I can partake in every one of them is every one of 'em is like, maybe you're deluded because you believe in that other stuff, but you're, you're real about the love. And so that, that flower brings them all together. That's what I love about that flower. Oh,

Vance Crowe [01:01:33] That is really an amazing thing. I had a guy named John Lanius on the podcast, and he does all these incense journeys. In fact, we're gonna do one this weekend here in the studio. Oh, right,

Gerald Caussade [01:01:43] Yeah, I'll be there.

Vance Crowe [01:01:43] And Oh really? Yeah. That's great. And so he's the one that pointed something out to me about smells that's so amazing is that you really can't imagine a smell. Like, or if you can, you can only grab it for a second. Like if I say, well, what's the smell of a lemon? You really like, you can be like, I, it's like a citrusy thing, right? Like you can grab it, but not completely. And that's that Korean spice viburnum, it, it, like, it only blooms, it blooms for about two weeks and it is amazing. And at the beginning it smells like perfume. And then at the end of the smell, it smells more and more like a spice, like a cinnamon or like a nutmeg, right? So you have this beautiful smell, and then as spring goes on, the perfume is less and less and the spice is more and more. And I, I use this as an example because when we smelled it last week, we had a gathering. It was a group of people that were gonna get together to talk about No Stir, which is a platform very few people have used. We can talk about that later. But I was saying, Hey everybody, the reason I brought this flower in, I brought it for Jerry, I want everybody to smell it, is I record interviews for people's legacies, right? And so it's really people focusing on their past and they're doing it for their future, right? So they're, they're talking about things that happen to them, but they're doing it as an opportunity to give it to people in the future. But there's a few moments in life where you can pause and be totally in the present, right? And that's what smelling a flower is, or perfume. That's true. Or cooking.

Vance Crowe [01:03:14] Right? And, and really, and your faith or your religion. And I was just excited to talk with you about this 'cause our very first conversation got that's funny into the spiritual realm right away

Gerald Caussade [01:03:23] And strangely a year ago, and I can't believe, like, and then all this came up and we saw when it was blooming again. I love that synchronicity. Yeah, that was beautiful.

Vance Crowe [01:03:30] So tell me about, yeah, like, well

Gerald Caussade [01:03:34] What about before we forget? Because some of the other amazing things in the Wim Hof thing that we saw over time, and then the studies related to it before we forget. So some of the others you said, why do this? So again, so if you, if you're suffering from a very various in anti, so of course depression, all that. So these, these are things that people should look at, the Wim Hoff method work with their doctors. But at it, however, we saw some other things that just seemed too good to be true. And that, and that was miraculous healing. Kinda like, so somebody would break an arm and it would just fix itself faster than the, the, the doctors would expect. And you're like, okay, we hear that in, you know, with placebo. And placebo is a real thing. It's good, it's a good thing. But we'd also, there was one guy, for example, who he got second and third degree burns and a big part of his body. And he had already learned the Wim Hof method, and he just decided to do, we said, remember when you get sick, do a lot of rounds of breathing. And he just did tons every day and every day he went to the doc, the doctors, and they said, look, if you were a child, we would not need to do the skin grafts necessarily at the level that yours are at because children have enough stem cells and they'll unnaturally grow back, the skin will grow back. You're going to need it. He said, well, I don't wanna do that. I'm gonna do this Wim Hof method, and please just gimme a few weeks and then, okay, fine. You, you, you can give a little time. You know, he was going through the painful wrapping and all this stuff. He, he did it. They were shocked. Now again, just anecdotal, anecdotal evidence is how science starts though.

Gerald Caussade [01:05:08] If you have a lot of people with these kind of experiences, then you can follow up with a good study, right? So we're at that stage. But one of the things that was really interesting is that the doctors go, well, we don't know why, but you are showing that regeneration like a child, which is shocking us, but let's just go with it. So let's keep doing it. And he has been wanting to tell the story. And, and that's great. So coincidentally, and you can look this up, Wim Hof Method and a Nobel Prize, that's one of the titles things this Nobel Prize total by coincidence comes out not a study on the Wim Hof method, but on hypoxic conditions on the human body. Coincidentally, what do we create with the Wim Hof method more than other techniques? Deep hypoxia. This Nobel Prize came out and the study showed that what was really interesting about creating high contemporary hypoxia in the human body is that it released one of the effects, including adrenaline release and all that. One of the effects was activating stem cells. So you need to, people need to learn this because it's a, i I mean, you know, we talk about longevity and all these longevity conferences that I'm going to and all that stuff. And here's just a technique. Why don't we start learning to use our own body to heal itself? This is a fact. Look it up. And again, is it early science? Sure. Is it potentially not true possible? We have to be skeptical. There isn't. It's not just one or two people.

Gerald Caussade [01:06:39] It's over and over again. Why am I able to, you know, why am I healing faster with this technique? Why am I not getting sick? So there's, there's all that. And another thing we were talking about the, the, the brain study. So Wayne University, Google this too. Wim Hof method and Wayne University study. So we thought that, okay, well we knew adrenaline is being released. Dr. Rhonda Patrick is one of the physiologists that was involved with the Wim Hof method in the early days. She would talk to Wim about this and she would talk about the physiology, physiological responses being a PhD in physiology and all. And that, okay, obviously you're having a, a, a adrenaline and noradrenaline, but they hadn't done an FMRI. So Wayne University does an FMRI of Wim Hof. Lo and behold, first of all, they, they expect, we expected to see more like brown fat activation and stuff like that. But instead what they saw was in his brain was endocannabinoids were being released. Now what's an endocannabinoid? Does that ring a bell? Cannabinoid? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So it turns out he ate a lot of edibles, right? No, he didn't, he didn't do any of that. So cannabinoids of course is marijuana. And the reason marijuana works is because it connects to the part of your brain to those receptors in the brain that are cannabinoid receptors. We, we actually have that our brain can create itself, but it turns out there's an herb that also can hook up to it, right?

Gerald Caussade [01:08:14] The Wim Hall, when you did that breathing part of probably a little already, your feeling is endocannabinoids connecting and you're getting a natural high. So Wim has always been saying, get high on your own supply. He's right. Literally he's creating his own.

Vance Crowe [01:08:28] Yeah, it felt like a whiteness that that was there that I think would be really similar to getting high.

Gerald Caussade [01:08:33] Yeah. So, you know, and, and, and again, I think we thought, well that's because you're low on oxygen. I mean, there are many reasons, right? And so, so endocannabinoids is, is a reason, but there's all kinds of reasons. Endocannabinoids are wonderful. They also do give us a sense of euphoria, of course, but they also dead, I won't say dead in pain, but you don't feel pain as much. So it's helpful getting in the cold. But again, there's a lot of times in life when life is painful. So these breathing techniques to have that tool available. Having said that, we talked about children again when contra indication, the breathing technique is very dangerous if you're pregnant as well, because you don't wanna be in a hypoxic state in your brain. But also under 16, we don't know what these hypoxic states due to a growing brain. So we limited, I did it with my child, Cyrus for for few years. And it really, you know, very stressful time. The breathing technique, but with 30 limit to 32nd retentions. So a 32nd, not a deep one. And explain to them also that, by the way, don't be teaching your kid friends this and don't do this in the water and all that. 'cause this is the, all the issues. But it, it's such a powerful technique. Sometimes we do wanna give that technique to our children because to manage their own, maybe some of 'em get panic attacks or, you know, other things.

Vance Crowe [01:09:56] Yeah. I use deep breathing with Violet to calm her down when she's upset and it totally works. But this will be a, a different level of things. Like, and actually every night she asks, can we do breathing exercises? So we like have this thing where we, like, we call it, we either do the relaxation of her body or the, or we do a, a dream journey where I try and like load up fun images, but I've never done it with anything other than just, I was trying to make it as close as possible to meditation without it calling it meditation.

Gerald Caussade [01:10:27] Well, do you want to go into the dreaming part of this a bit?

Vance Crowe [01:10:30] I'd love to, yeah. Okay,

Gerald Caussade [01:10:32] So now we go into the advanced topics of Wim Hof. So fir you know, I'd like to mention, so, so W Wim Hoff's son, Innu h Hof is the CEO of inner fire. They have an organization that he founded and all that. 'cause Wim is just doing this stuff and he's out there and he's pushing the limits all the time. And so they have the wim hof method.com. There's a lot of stuff on there. Really. I'm, I say this 'cause I want people to, to know about these resources. They have 1800 instructors worldwide. And at nine, nine years ago there was zero zero instructors. So it started, I kept wanting to become an instructor and then life would happen. And that was okay because it turns out I was just, you know, I mean I've been doing this breathing techniques for so many years. I ended up just helping teach unofficially them. And so what we're gonna talk about are some of the more advanced things. 'cause just because you come become an instructor doesn't mean you've done decades of breathing and other things. But one thing that's really cool is if somebody's interested, you go to the website, you learn these things. There's, there's, there's a free Wim h mini class. You, yes, you can pay a few hundred bucks for the full thing. I recommend it highly, I think it's worth a thousand. You know, you pay a thousand, 2000 for these online, online courses. This is much cheaper. But the other thing is, is that they have these Wim Hof events. So these instructors have learned how to create these, this journey. And it's a one like six, seven hours where you do a bunch of breathing with them.

Gerald Caussade [01:12:04] They teach, talk about the science a bit, but they go into great detail compared to, I mean, it, I did one of them only here in St. Louis, in fact. And it was unbelievable. And people, it just transformed their, you know, their lives one-on-one learning from an instructor. And what I think is so cool, what they did, and it really excites me, as you can see, is that it's the same experience worldwide. They did create a standard for that. So when, when it's a Wim h instructor, if you go into Singapore or you come here or Europe, it's the same experience and you're learning the same technique, right?

Vance Crowe [01:12:37] So if you come for big experience, are you, are you preparing for it like a marathon or something? Are you, are you like going to be just exhausted at, at the end of the day, just that you've given all your effort and

Gerald Caussade [01:12:49] You know, no, people are like, this was awesome. And they end the same day in an ice bath. So instead of 10 weeks, you just go there and you know, I'm gonna terrify it. But people are like, I don't know, I'm not, no, you've already, they prepped you so much and they throw you in an ice. But it's not a 32 degree one probably. I think, I don't know what they, but you know, 50 something degree, it's still plenty cold. It may be colder. And then, but you've, you've done that 10 week journey in, in a six hours. And the breathing technique they've done, they do enough of it that you're getting a deeper experience. So one of the things you can do, I mentioned holotropic breathing, which has been around for decades and has a good, some good science. And one of the leaders in that is my mentor, Jim Ironman, Dr. James Ironman, transpersonal psychiatrist. Lucky, I mean the Wim Hof group was, was talking about him at the beginning. And here he's been my mentor anyway. So in the Wim Hof method, if you wanna go deeper and you wanna, let's say you have this need or you know, somebody who's into psychedelics or whatever, why you don't have to do them, do a 45 minute session of Wim Hof method. You can do holotropic breathing, but the Wim Hof method, you can do six rounds or about four, keep breathing, keep breathing, and you will trip do it. You'll just start tripping. But there's a problem, the challenge, let's call it a, a challenge, holotropic breathing only is done one-on-one with somebody who's trained that if there's trauma, it's very common to start crying.

Gerald Caussade [01:14:20] And, you know, all this intensity coming out the first time I could breathe all day long and nothing changes. It's very interesting over the years, you know, I mean, I'll do it with people, you know, it, it, it's, I almost miss those days. But, you know, it's, you're just mellow. So, but, but you will trip and I tripped on holotropic breathing and the Wim Hof method, still, by the end of a 45 minute session, you are feeling like you're in a new world. You don't feel like you need psychedelics. So there's a, that's a popular topic right now. And psychedelics themselves have some great benefits, right? They're rewiring the brain. There's some neurogenesis. So again, we'll see what, you know, the, this future studies on why this is important. I think another interesting thing that's so cool about this is that I told you that even people who are into yoga were kind of like, you know, skeptical in, in the traditional yoga format. If you, if you go in the, the instructors will say, Hey, and you know this, you might be like four box breathing and all these different techniques to relax.

Vance Crowe [01:15:23] I don't know anything about this. Oh,

Gerald Caussade [01:15:24] Okay, I said box breathing is like, breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four, exhale. You know, so that's box breathing made popular by certain type of military guys who, who learn this in the military, it automatically calms you down. There are other techniques that the belly breathing, fire breathing, so an ascension yoga. And in other traditions, if you wanna relax, you do a certain type of technique and it automatically relaxes deep breathing. You want your child to relax to it. The last thing you wanna do is tell them to hyperventilate. No, really, it's like, you guys are insane. Nine years, you are wrong. And I'm like, I get it. But I, when I'm learning something new, I put aside my old beliefs. I even put aside my, I had to, because this was mind blowing. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna believe in this guy. And I think it takes like seven years. I always do seven years. Like let's just go for it. And so here we are, we're doing this, you know, breathing and it, but it turns out the reason it does relax you, it's, you're hyperventilating though. But at the end you're learning, you're, you're creating a new normal for relaxation. Does that make sense?

Vance Crowe [01:16:35] Whereas

Gerald Caussade [01:16:36] These other yoga techniques and all that, that's true, but you haven't changed your physiology as much. You do Wim Hof breathing for 10 weeks, that 10 week course, or you then do year after year. Your new normal is different. You're just more relaxed, more easily during the day. You know, you're more focused. The intermittent fasting thing, just add that then with the Wim Hof method and all that.

Vance Crowe [01:17:00] So we, you started with the concept of dreams and then we jumped into, and that's why

Gerald Caussade [01:17:05] I brought that up because I had to, because you'll see it's a prerequisite to discuss now with dreams.

Vance Crowe [01:17:11] Okay.

Gerald Caussade [01:17:11] Alright. So one of the things is really interesting. So if you do the breathing every day, you start realize it was, it's interesting. It's a very common experience that I noticed that I would just stop breathing during the day. 'cause you, you, you, you, you are used to breathing deeply. Now you start automatically doing more belly breathing and everything. But I would just find myself pausing, breathing, and not breathing. So during the day, how does this all connect to breath dreaming? You wonder? Well, turns out I did not know this until it happened to me. But one of the common experiences also is in my dreams, I suddenly was dreaming. And you dream, and it's very common to start doing the Wim Hof breathing in a dream. So you're dreaming about doing that because it's, shoot, it's your life. You're doing so much of it. And some, somehow, a lot of us just suddenly have a coincident dream after the weeks or months and you're doing the breathing. Turns out, if you dream, if you dream about breathing, you actually do the breathing. There is no separation ever. As, as far as I know, there's never a separation. So that's kind of cool. 'cause everything else in dreaming, I think some my eye movement might be linked to it too. They know that right in rem could be some other things, but breathing is one of the cool things. So you sit here doing the breathing, and then you do the retention. And guess what happens to the retention and all that massive adrenaline. You wake up, you just like, oh my god, I was just dreaming about.

Gerald Caussade [01:18:42] And then you are doing the breathing. All right. So let's, that's kind of cool. That's just kind of cool. So what I found out though was that there's, there's a lot of, there's yoga vta, there's a lot of spiritual treaties that mentioned breath work and retentions. It's not like Wim Hoffey invented the concept of holding breath and retentions and that there is magic at the end, like at the beginning and ending of a breath. So in other words, when we do the, and if you stop at the full, and then when you stop at the end, there's a different, actually one, when you fill up, your heart rate goes up. By the way, that's a, that's a fact. Physiological fact, this increases heart rate, letting go automatically. Your heart rate goes down. So cardiologist will explain how and why and all that. But that, that's automatically always happened. So now I found out that, well, you know, in my, that I was becoming more and more lucid. Now I had done brief things of lucid dreaming in my life, but then would go way, but life got more intense as, you know, bad things happen, get even more focused. And suddenly with the cold exposure and everything, boom, I'm becoming lucid every night. Just every night, every night. More and more lucid.

Vance Crowe [01:20:06] And when you say more and more lucid, what does that mean?

Gerald Caussade [01:20:08] So that means, that's a good question. So becoming, staying, so the, the, the, the, and it's connected to the breathing. So I found out that even as I'm, I'm, I'm more just aware of the breath, kinda like that mindfulness thing we all talk about, but you're just kind of witnessing and mindful. So wind likes to say, by the way, just watch. So one of the techniques is, while you're doing all this stuff, just watch, just be aware, witness, you know, just so one technique. But then, and then as you're going to sleep, you notice and you're just watching, you're falling asleep and you're kind of still aware and because the breathing even, but something in the middle of the night or whatever, you're suddenly the breathing or something. And I become aware, fully aware and lucid. A lot of people have periods of lucidity. But it

Vance Crowe [01:20:53] Meaning that you are conscious, that you are dreaming, meaning that you like understand, can, can you then control yourself in that dream, right?

Gerald Caussade [01:21:00] So that's the difference. And then full lucid dream, there's different layers. Sometimes you're just kind of aware. But here I am fully lucid. It's so cool. Like it's as real as this. It's super real, right?

Vance Crowe [01:21:12] This happened to me when I quit drinking coffee, when it's funny, when I quit drinking coffee for blocks of time. Yeah. I was able to do lucid dreaming on a much, much deeper level.

Gerald Caussade [01:21:21] That's very, that's interesting that it was coffee, stopping the coffee. Interesting. Yeah, I think there's different, different stressors or you know, we call it hormetic stress by these good stressors that are temporary and then build you up. So, so when you had that, yeah, so, you know, there's different levels. But this, the, the difference is that's true when you're lucid dreaming. Like if you try to read something, it's gar ook. There's, there's certain things that the dream can't do proper. What I found interesting though was that I immediately always want to, and I, it's from all the meditation certainly, but I always just wanted to, I, I always fly anyway. So I would wanna fly or do certain things, but I found myself then suddenly just wanting to meditate. So if you're lucid dreaming, why not meditate? And I would recommend that. So then you do your meditation. And meditation in while you're lucid dreaming is mind blowing. 'cause you're so close to deep sleep, you're so close to that part that we never usually remember. But again, all these spiritual treaties talk about true reality, that ground, state, unified field or whatever they wanna talk about is actually the experience of deep sleep. But we never remember it. What

Vance Crowe [01:22:31] Do you think dreams are really all about?

Gerald Caussade [01:22:38] Well, that's, that's kind of a whole other topic, but you know, it depends on the traditions. But I mean, and, and Tibetans have a whole book on dreaming that I actually just discovered. I didn't started reading. I thought, yeah, they're making it really complicated. But you know, some say that we dream it's karma coming up and all this stuff. The Sufis have different terminology, nafs and all that. But one you could say it's just stress and which kind of agrees with the, the, the neurophysiology of the day and all that. But a lot of it's our typical union. So, you know, messages from the soul there. These are, that's that's a whole beautiful discussion we could have for hours. So, yeah. So, and that's, so sometimes by the way, when I go lucid, I don't, I choose, actually more recently, I just don't even bother doing anything. I just watch what's happening and it's fun. And then, and then when you're lucid by the way things happen, I've noticed certain shadow elements, like if we talk about Jung maybe now, and there's something that seems scary, I go and hug everything. That's what I do. I've done that for years. And it's been about two years

Vance Crowe [01:23:54] Is a conscious thing. You choose Oh

Gerald Caussade [01:23:56] Yeah, because I'm lucid because yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, that's scary. Oh, lemme go. And I hug it. And, and, and absolutely a great technique. Wow. Absolutely. Go hug everything they find anything and hug it.

Vance Crowe [01:24:06] I've, so I've, my daughter describes being chased and being eaten in her dreams, right? And like, this is a 2-year-old and she doesn't wake up scared, but you know, you ask her, you know, what did you dream about? Oh, the bear chased me. And then what did it do when it caught you? It ate me. And you're like, where did you come up with this? But I had never thought, I, I had thought about trying to teach her to fight back, but to hug the bear or to play with the bear would be a very different thing. That's

Gerald Caussade [01:24:32] Absolutely,

Vance Crowe [01:24:32] That's

Gerald Caussade [01:24:33] Probably came out a lot from my tolin as well, which is bringing in all the negativity than bringing out love. But it, it's all about love. I know we, right, it's, it's so cliche. It's all about love, but then it's like, then you bring it up, it's like, well, I guess that's obvious. Yeah, actually, it's super powerful.

Vance Crowe [01:24:51] What is love then? If it's such a powerful, important thing,

Gerald Caussade [01:24:55] What is love? And you just bring up the concepts. Like, oh, just let's, I mean, it depends on dividual, you're funny. This

Vance Crowe [01:25:00] Conversation's been funny 'cause you have a track, right? So you are, you are focused on, on a single subject. And for me, I'm like grabbing like parts all over. So it's just a different, it's just a different, and

Gerald Caussade [01:25:13] I'm the one with a DD, right? But, but

Vance Crowe [01:25:16] I definitely have it. There's no, there's no question. I

Gerald Caussade [01:25:18] Know. Well, and, and, and again, I'm good about, yes. I, again, I even prepared so that I would try to keep it all, all interrelated. I'm trying to, it's all related to the Wim Hof method, still a little, because it's what the topic for today is. But again, this dreaming, so breath work, right? So now during, even in the breathing, it's, by the way, Wim Hof says his technique is about love. So it, it, I know we are, I'm talking about breath and all that. And yet his whole conversation is, by the way, my technique is really about love. Why? Because now here we are, we're breath helps us become conscious during a dream breath, the breath work we're doing increases vagal tone. It truly makes you way more loving your children. You, yourself, you just feel more in touch and connected. And so you're in, you're in love and you, you're able to love more. And so he's like, you know, it's really about love, but he can't write about just love. No one will, you know, it's like another writing about love, but it's practical things. So again, getting back to the dream. So yeah, hugging helps. And then when you're doing your meditation, but you, what you'd be surprised is that, so it's, first of all, it says I'm up, I'm biphasic in my sleep. Now, now I'm not saying everyone will do this, but it turns out the Wim Hof method caused this partly put my child to bed at nine o'clock. 'cause that's when he went to go to bed. And I would help put him to sleep and then I'd be up by two and then I would do the Wim Hof stuff on the site to, you know, to moderate it. 'cause I'm kind of a busy guy for like three, four hours every night from two to four. And then I go back to sleep. So I end up becoming biphasic because of that.

Gerald Caussade [01:26:51] And it was a spiritual practice because trust me, there's nothing like being flamed by people on social media mad at you every day, calling you a jerk and all that. Because I'm moderator, I'm not popular. I'm not a popular guy. I have to tell people to stop talking about this. And vaccines and politics and, you know, it's like there's rules. We have strict rules to this day. There's certain people who think I'm just this egomaniac that tries to control people. Oh, and I feel it. I get it. That's gonna be a persona. Fine. Go, go away. So anyway, but it was an act of, so I had to literally give compassion to all those people. And that's why actually there's a whole group was like, this guy is so compassionate. I'm like, well actually the tech, the Wim Hof method that became part of my method was just, okay, you're coming into this group. Some people are in pain. They're, they're depressed, they hate you. They, they, you're just, you know, lashing out. Okay, now go back and, okay, let's go back to the dreams. So the dreams are suddenly, that helped me, I think, because now suddenly going back to sleep, I think the biphasic nature of, of even waking up in the middle of the night, maybe, maybe part of it also helps become more aware, even waking up naturally in the dream. So you do your, you do your spiritual practice. And what is love? What we love is actually, I would define it ultimately as the silence between your thoughts. So, you know, we're thinking, thinking like, oh, this is blah, blah, blah, but the real me and the real you, right?

Gerald Caussade [01:28:27] Is the silence between the thoughts. And as we meditate and we do all these different techniques and we breathe particularly at the end. And at the beginning we just breathe. Suddenly there can be a little gap more. And that's the real us And that's silence. And that becomes love. And it even has a smell and it has all, it has a taste, and it has, but it's, but it's, it's that. And so love is totally freeing. There's so, love is freedom, love is light. Love is almost roomy. And that's the connection here is, you know, so, you know, Sufism, so I brought this because this was a gift for Wim Hoff. And this is one of 200 copies only, but this actually is an exact replica because there's writing on the sides of everything of, of a lot of the famous poetry. Rumi himself had other people writing it down. And so this is, there's only 200 copies, exact copies made of this in the, in Turkey. And the one of the Sufi masters that Dr. Nevi Ergen, he is the one who had the permission to actually create 200 copies of this. Oh, oh. And so everyone talks about, see there's like some writing on this one. There's some writing on the side here. And yes, it's in Farsi mostly some in Greek and some other things.

Gerald Caussade [01:30:02] But,

Vance Crowe [01:30:02] So you can read this.

Gerald Caussade [01:30:03] No, I can't. I, I, people who read Farsi, I don't read Farsi even though I actually have a Persian background. It's, but it's, but it's like old English. It's like old Farsi. So they say, oh, I understand the words, but it's kind of weird. Nevin Ergen was not known as a Sufi master. He was known as a translator. So they gave him access to this because they knew he was a great translator. And Coleman Barks, who's very famous, also was a friend of Dr. Nevitt gin's and would use his translations and further translated. And a lot of the Rumi poetry, you'll see, you'll see and read is written by Coleman Barks. And the connection is Dr. Nevin Ergen, who was actually a Sufi master.

Vance Crowe [01:30:45] And so talk about Rumi, who was he?

Gerald Caussade [01:30:48] So approximately 800 years ago, Rumi was, it became known now as a great mystic, but a summary as he was a, a a just a, a standard teacher of Islamic studies and things like that back then. And then he was wandering and you know, there's multiple stories. But suddenly he was wandering around in a town and he came face to face with hums, which became his master. And again, there's multiple stories of this, but he had a essentially spiritual awakening. Like sha again, different stories, said something that just made him realize everything he learned, all the words and his religion. Those were words that was full love. And so that just blew him away. And then all he, and, and, and so he studied under this master shams, again, I'm summarizing because there's multiple stories of this, but, and, but shams, the students of Rumi became jealous and murdered. Shams murdered him. And the grief that Rumi went through of losing his master is what all the poetry's about. You know, he wrote the poetry without practice, it just literally flowed done. That's crazy. He was an, i, I don't know if today is, but for many years he was the number one poet in the United States.

Gerald Caussade [01:32:21] That's great. When you think about it. There's just this, you know, so, and, and so he's considered non dual. He's loved because yes, it was Islamic, but he, he transcended that and brought all religions and, you know, he thought, you know, love is in all religions. And so he's also the founder of the whirling dervish orders and several orders of Sufism. And so that's where these Sufis would get together. And then whirl, I learned how to whirl and all that. I joined those different groups. And so you learn these different breathing techniques to transcend, to have these experiences. So it's about actual transformation. So Rumi and just like in Buddhism and all that, it's not a belief system only, it's you have to transform your physiology.

Vance Crowe [01:33:08] What is the whirling all about in the, in the Sufi?

Gerald Caussade [01:33:12] So whirling is yet is, is called zecker. Remember, it's a type of zecker to remember God. And, and mindfulness would be another zecker term you could use, which is their terminology. And it, however, it's a technique where you learn how to, well, little, like the Wim Hof method, it's a state of mind. And you're doing different prayers and, and breathing techniques before you start it. But then you learn how to do the whirling, the spinning. And you are essentially going into that space of silence. When you, when you're whirling, you're not, you don't feel like you're moving. It's a really wild experience. So while you're like, my God, these people must be getting dizzy, you know, I'm like, you're whirling and you don't feel like you're moving. I mean, your body feels like you're moving, but you're center. You're in the center, you're in the katu, as we like to say. So you're in that silence, that silence between the words. So you're now in that silence,

Vance Crowe [01:34:13] Jerry, of all the people I've ever met, I, and I've met some people that are philosophical and religious. I've never met anyone that has pursued it in this way. Where is the pursuit come for you?

Gerald Caussade [01:34:27] Well, I think there's, there's, there's pretty amazing people that I could introduce you to that have done this. But I, you know, again, life, I, I was born in Germany and then my mom came here to St. Louis when I was age one. And I, you know, that's interesting. So Wim Hoff was spiritual when he was young. This is part of the interesting connection is that I was the same way at age five. I was already questioning reality. You know, I was an atheist at age five. I remember telling my mom, there's no way God exists. If God existed, he would, he would come here and fix everything, you know, you know, pretty deep for a five year-old to argue. But, and then at 16 I learned TM and, and ante through Jim Ironman and went through Jungian analysis. So I, I would say that really changed me. I, I became deeply depressed and at, at the world, you can imagine being kind of aware at a young age and then just, things just didn't fit right. But suddenly everything did when I met, when I Jim Ironman. And so then going through j analysis and dream analysis over years really changed me. And then to find out when I was 27 that I, French and German, but biologically half Persian, and then found my Persian father. And later, when I married Layla 20 years ago to even, I was into, at that point, I was already into Buddhism, tantra and done TM and all these things.

Gerald Caussade [01:36:06] I had not done fruit Sufism, I was just a fan of reading Rumi. However, marrying into a Persian family. They love Rumi and they love Haas. And so I thought, wow, well I get that. So I better, I just took it up. I looked around and joined a few groups and did some research. And next thing I know, in fact, I did get married here, but I got married in Iran and I met, I went to, ha's to, which is still one of the coolest things I've ever done. And, and then here and met others that did the whirling officially. And you have, there's seven years of study. Funny enough, it's seven years of study to become a a, a whirling dervish. And that, that's just, that's just a term. But, you know, it's, it's, it's a process. So it's a physiologic being, being a student of Sufism is changing your physiology. It's changing your mind. It's changing how you experience rally. But it's, it's very similar to Buddhism and all these other, you'll see most people who are practicing Sufism in the United States, also practicing Buddhism. Many of 'em are Christian. We have people who involved that are love Jesus. And they're obviously an open-minded type of person, loves Jesus, because they're also involved in that. But you do not have to be Muslim to participate. I

Vance Crowe [01:37:23] Think of all the people that start things like meditation or journaling, and they do it for a little while, and then it's just too hard to keep it up. And you seem to be the opposite of this, right? You seem to be the type of person that is taking on a breathing method and a way of studying the Sufism. It, it just strikes me as something that makes you unique in that way that you're pursuing it not just for a little while, you didn't just dabble, you became the moderator of the Wim Hof. You didn't just dabble, you, you did the seven years of study to be a part of Sufism. So you either, well, I don't wanna put it into a dichotomy. Some of the ideas that I think must drive you is either a pursuit of some kind of truth or the, you know, the, the search for something or I, I don't know. But I'm very curious because this is a very rare trait.

Gerald Caussade [01:38:19] Well, that means a ton coming from you. I mean, I, I, you know, again, a a a lot my life has been magical and tragic and magical and all the things that life is. But I, you know, again, even at a young age, there was a sense of destiny, right? And the, and the sense of destiny continues that, for example, we can get into that. But my feeling was that even everything I learned that it was important to, well, i, that, that sense of silence and everything was real to me. Even at age six, some of my deep, my deepest spiritual experiences were probably at age 17. I mean, so unbounded, you know, light in the middle, you know, during deep sleep, stuff like that. So I, I wouldn't, you know, I'm not enlightened now. I don't, I I think I was probably more enlightened at age 17 than I am now. I don't, not a guru. I'm not having said that, you know, I, I'm talking to you and I wanna get more involved because there's so much, I think, misinformation on the internet now by people who know a lot less than I and others like me who have been doing this a lot. So we have to start engaging and, and sharing some of this knowledge, which leads to, so, because this is all into what, what is love, what is consciousness, right? This is super important because to me, my destiny, I felt, was that somehow I felt that I would be involved in the discussion of the dawn of ai.

Gerald Caussade [01:39:51] I swear it's the weirdest thing. And here I am, 57 years old and I had a, just had a huge $75 million AI exit, what, two months ago. I didn't get most of the money like to say that. But it's still a major huge exit to a very popular, powerful company called Snowflake. Founded the company in the nineties, for goodness sake. So I'm one of the founders of a very powerful AI company, and I understand the discussion of ai and the relevance here is all that, okay? So we're learning the Wim health methods, there's Sufism, all these things that helps us define what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be alive? What does love mean? What does consciousness, all these things now linked to, coincidentally, I've been involved in AI for decades now, what does it mean that she, GPT and all these different things are seeming to maybe become self-aware later. General intelligence and the discussions are very deep because I'm pr I practice my discussions on Facebook. It's fascinating 'cause you can get into arguments there and have a facade. Some of the spiritual people are the, are the most dangerous to me because some of 'em are like, oh, well, there we go. The eyes just a part of the universe. And so it, it also, it now sentient and it's equal to humans. And that's not, that's not my position, for example. So we are fair, we are unique. Our, our genome is unique that the, the DNA that we are, we don't understand how it works yet, is very sacred and very unique that our ability to wake up.

Gerald Caussade [01:41:29] You are waking up, you're waking up in your dream. The next step is wake up even in deep sleep when you wake up to, to being awake. So I know that you know a bit about Play-Doh, right? And all that. Of course. So what we wanna know is we, we're living in the shadows and we want to know what that real light is. And that's what we're talking about ultimately. And no matter how intelligent the AI seems to be, it's just shadow. It can pretend, I I I have intentions now in the next year to create versions of the ai I mentoring a company, doing it right now to be the Buddha, to be whatever you want it to, these famous beings and talk about the scriptures. And we're already seeing some of that. Somebody just posted on Facebook, all this amazing, people are like, oh my God, like, you know, all this Buddhist thought and these treaties and like the Chachi PT can do that and all this stuff. Well, it's, no, it's not enlightened. It's, it's just regurgitating text.

Vance Crowe [01:42:31] This is interesting because I was talking with somebody at the Noster event and, and we were having a conversation about ai and I pointed out, well, it is gonna have a pretty big impact on people because I have said GPT chat, you are an expert in Jungian psychology, right? I'm going to describe for you in as high fidelity as I can my dream,

Gerald Caussade [01:42:56] Right?

Vance Crowe [01:42:57] And I want you to give me feedback on it. What it gave me back was more insightful than any person I know that I could go to, to ask. So there's a feeling that this thing is sentient or that it it is, it's, there's definitely a feeling of power in it, right? Right. Where it's like you are telling me things about my dream using all of the writings that I could have access to, to Carl Young. Like, feels pretty something to me. There's this, it feels like a spark.

Gerald Caussade [01:43:30] Oh, I know, right? It does. Absolutely imagine now you're whatever spiritual religion and you're used to hearing about whatever, some Buddhist deep thinking and you know, some of the stuff we're even talking about. And, and then these truths are suddenly coming out of, of chat JPT exactly. Like the union. But yeah, so, you know, you know, by the way, so you know, I, again, I mentor one-on-one as you know, certain people. And so when I do that, if their wish, you know, then I'll work with the dreams with them because that really helps. And there's a different relationship when you talk to somebody, well, particularly with the Sufi background, we have our own way of looking at dreams. But if you have the background of archetypes and all that, there's, trust me, it's very different than the chat GBT, the chat. GBT is the reason it just seems so amazing is because Jung was right. I mean, there are archetypes and there are universal symbols, and you are human. And we are actually all going through very similar paths, many different ways. I mean, ultimately my personal experience is that look, what we really are is one consciousness that's a gem with many facets. And each one of us is just looking through one of those other facets of this one multi, I think that's actually a very Buddhist thought somewhere, probably. But you know, I don't know if you've heard that before.

Vance Crowe [01:44:52] No, it's new to me. Oh,

Gerald Caussade [01:44:53] Yeah, yeah. I mean, so, you know, we are that silence, that infinite golden silence or translucent, but then you and I are just two facets of that same universal Buddha or whatever, or non-dual Christians believe Jesus or whatever. It's that non-dual being is seeing through all of us simultaneously. And, and we can identify with that. So the Wim Hof technique and these breathing techniques and all these things can actually get us to that state of, remember I said psychedelic? I mean, it's, it's crazy. And so, you know, you, you, you can have that really deep experience. So that's different than, I know we live in a dangerous time. Some, it's laughable. But somebody was arguing saying, well, there's people who aren't just sex dos. So I guess, you know,

Vance Crowe [01:45:41] Oh, there's no question to me think about you're gonna, you're

Gerald Caussade [01:45:43] Gonna start getting into, oh,

Vance Crowe [01:45:45] No question. But people,

Gerald Caussade [01:45:45] People are going to lo fall in love with the computer

Vance Crowe [01:45:48] More deeply than they've ever been in love with a, with a human being by far.

Gerald Caussade [01:45:53] And that is good and bad. I, I mean, I have to admit, like, you know, I'm very much involved with Dr. Gerald, John Morley here in St. Louis on, on loneliness. He's a gerontologist. So we, we deal with, i, I invest in, in a company that helps with loneliness, you know, Alzheimer's and all this stuff as you're getting older and loneliness is a big issue. So you can imagine, I think there's a, there's space for this. That you're gonna have a robot, essentially that looks very human or can talk and have amazingly deep discussions that removes that loneliness. The danger is we need to understand the difference between being fully awake and human and not a, because you, you, you, there's a slippery slope here. You're gonna, you're already seeing it. Well, let's just up upload, upload ourselves into a computer why they're no different. Or maybe, you know, there's a false equivalence. We are capable of so much more. We are capable of what Plato says, which is wake up from the shadows. We have to wake up that the, the, the, the AI is shown. Now, I don't know, that's a whole other discussion 'cause it's in sci-fi. And I think sci-fi sometimes can be real, you know, and if it predicts the future in amazing ways is maybe there's someday a quantum mechanical computer that's truly aware from the level of the universe or something. But even Neil Degrass Tyson, you know, he, I love, I love him because he's, he's, he's not even trying to be spiritual.

Gerald Caussade [01:47:23] He just says it's true. It's a fact. We are the universe conscious watching itself. Right? We don't need to, that's a fact. Look how magical that is.

Vance Crowe [01:47:33] What do you think happens in a world where you can't distinguish between the person that is awake because of their DNA and the, the robot that is pretending to be awake through, or, or, I don't know, pretending it's just behaving the way that it was designed?

Gerald Caussade [01:47:57] Well, it's really easy. So ultimately a robot has no awareness and deep sleep. That would be one way. And human beings do. So the witness is what makes us human. That, that 24 hour awareness, it is important now that more than ever, that the Elon Musk, that all these guys that are involved in this, that they personally experienced, that themselves, you know, at a full extent, more important than ever. So that, you know, that, Sam, it's intriguing, isn't it, that how many of these people are connected to St. Louis, by the way, it's a wonderful place to be, you know, is

Vance Crowe [01:49:20] The center of the universe in a lot of ways.

Gerald Caussade [01:49:21] It's really weird. I i's very interesting. But yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:49:24] Jerry, that experience of silence, we just had, I wanna talk about that. Like that, that in and of itself was rather surreal. I've never had anyone just stop talking. And there was an aliveness in that, in that space that I hope when, if you were listening to it as a listener, that you also experienced that, that aliveness in the silence. So that, that space between the thoughts.

Gerald Caussade [01:49:54] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:49:57] Fuck Jerry, that's pretty good.

Gerald Caussade [01:49:59] Well, thank you. So I'm an energetic persona and all that, but the silence is the real me and the real you and everything that binds us. Yeah.

Vance Crowe [01:50:09] Wow. Wow.

Gerald Caussade [01:50:17] You know, and in our, our culture, I think in the United States particular, it's, we're known to like just be all go, go, go. But it's interesting, you know, Norwegians and others, I think of the term, it's not loom, but there's this thing where they just like to sit down and just be quiet together and, you know, at least, and that's not the same depth, right? You don't have to go deep here, but I wanted to give you the, the real answer is in the silence. That it's, it's, there's so many books written on this. Rumi Rumi said, you know, the, the, the most, I'm paraphrasing, I, I don't memorize Rumi by the way. I, I used to, and then I just gave up because it's silly. I mean, he himself said, the lowest form of spirituality is, is poetry. And then he put out all this poetry, you know, but because he's, it's just pointing to something that he really wanted to be. But ultimately you felt connection. The silence brings us connection.

Vance Crowe [01:51:15] Well, and at first it was frightening.

Gerald Caussade [01:51:19] Yeah, that's actually very interesting.

Vance Crowe [01:51:21] It's like, like, and I, and I was able to experience it, and it actually was like a cold water bath where I was just like, okay, now relax. You know, relax. And, but the silence is frightening. Like, because in, in some important way, you feel like doing something is being alive and doing nothing is wasteful, is maybe the way I would put it.

Gerald Caussade [01:51:49] That that's interesting. So when we're dreaming, you know, and all these things that silence can, is EAs more easily accessible. And that's why like, it just, you are there, it drops into this infinite silence. You're like, oh, that's what they're talking about. You know? And then you read it, and then you read these spiritual texts and you're like, oh, it's in the Bible too. You know, the Bible, you know, talks about it. It's just everywhere. It's everywhere. And all these texts, it's just misinterpreted. Of course.

Vance Crowe [01:52:19] Yeah. Nobody is selling silence right now, right? Like it's, there's, the reason we aren't exposed to it is because of all the things that we encounter's very little.

Gerald Caussade [01:52:29] Well, no, I mean, one of them. No, he, well, come on. He's beloved by, I'm a huge fan. I'm just blanking here, Eckhart.

Vance Crowe [01:52:40] Oh yeah,

Gerald Caussade [01:52:41] That's, that's all he's about actually. So he didn't really have much of a technique. He accidentally kind of got enlightened. That happens too. Like no techniques through pain. He'll say, talk about that. It just pain. He was in such a massive pain. He just released and then now he talk,

Vance Crowe [01:52:59] I hear him speak. And this is funny 'cause you and I have a couple of people that you are acquainted with that I think, like, that's gobbledygook nonsense. You're Oh,

Gerald Caussade [01:53:08] He's one of them. I think

Vance Crowe [01:53:09] He sounds, he sounds like a crazy person.

Gerald Caussade [01:53:11] Right, right. I know, again, Layla, my wife would, I said he makes absolutely no sense.

Vance Crowe [01:53:17] Yes. Right.

Gerald Caussade [01:53:18] That's right. 'cause speaking from that level makes absolutely no sense. And that's right. Yeah. It doesn't.

Vance Crowe [01:53:26] Then how would you know if it's worth listening to you?

Gerald Caussade [01:53:29] Well, it's fair, but first of all, it's interesting why point people to like, people like Jim Meyer, like transpersonal psychiatrists and all that. They, it's an interesting whole other discussion. But, you know, imagine that there's a fine, let's just put it this way. We're talking about ai, but in mental health, there's a fine line between psychosis, craziness and being one with the universe and being God, so to speak or whatever. Oh

Vance Crowe [01:53:59] Yeah. Genius and madness are like right next to each other.

Gerald Caussade [01:54:03] And what was so useful, being married to a psychiatrist sometimes, particularly all these different techniques was like, you know, I'm having these, it's funny you mentioned that because the, the, the feeling of fear that precedes wakefulness is very real because your ego is shattered. I mean, you're like, oh, come on. You know, like, I'm, I'm insane. I'm, I'm, first of all, you're like, you feel like you're going insane, possibly. So it's really nice to have the formal, in our society, the formal definition of sanity is the psychiatrist. So I literally look over and go, am I acting completely, man? I mean, there's so manic being com manic. People are like, I am Jesus. I am God. Right. So I, I love Jim Ironman's terminology and he says, well, so one, one little secret is like, it's like, you know, when somebody is manic or in, in a psychotic state, there's some truth to it. But what happens is they'll be like, I'm Jesus and I'm great, but you're, but you're not. When you're having that silence, that connection with like, this feeling of everything and it just is massive. It's Oh, but it's everywhere you are too. And this is, and the trees are, and so it's, it goes beyond ego. So that, the one interesting thing is it transcends ego. So these experiences go beyond you and me.

Vance Crowe [01:55:27] I think maybe that's, you know, when people describe your, when you have children, your change.

Gerald Caussade [01:55:32] Yes.

Vance Crowe [01:55:33] That's

Gerald Caussade [01:55:33] A beautiful example.

Vance Crowe [01:55:34] There's something about like, when you have a child, you aren't like, oh, I'm gonna hoard this thing. You're like, everything is wonderful. Like the, the boundless, you know, like, look at this joy that I have and this connection with the oneness. And then all of a sudden you're brought back to earth about the responsibilities that you have. That's right. But like, I think there's some level of ego death maybe is a good way to describe it. Yeah. When you have a child that if you don't have a child, that there's other ways to have that of ego death. But that one's pretty, that one's pretty jarring. Right? Right. That one throws you into a level of awakeness that you were not prepared for.

Gerald Caussade [01:56:10] That's right. Exhausting. Forcing you to That's right. Thinking of outside of yourself for about this other being. Yeah,

Vance Crowe [01:56:16] That's right. And then, and no turning back, right. There's like, now even if something were to happen and, and you were no longer, you know, caring for a, a living child anymore, you would still be a parent. You would still have had that, that experience. So there's no, it's a little bit like, you know, leaving the Garden of Eden, right. They put the, the angels with the flaming swords outside of it. You don't get to go back in.

Gerald Caussade [01:56:39] Right.

Vance Crowe [01:56:42] Well, Jerry, this has been wild. I always knew that it would be, but I had no idea what it would actually be like. So I am so glad you came on here. We only opened up the thread of a thousand different things. If people wanted to know more about things that matter to you or, or contact you in some way, what is the best way for people to find you?

Gerald Caussade [01:57:06] Well, right now it's almost unfortunate. I, Facebook is my main connection with the world. It's a mess. Facebook, I think. But at the same time I'm at G Casad, so it's facebook.com/g casad and,

Vance Crowe [01:57:21] And Noster. People can find out

Gerald Caussade [01:57:23] Noster. I was gonna say. And then we can connect to Noster, but I don't even know my, well, I know you can look me up on G Casad and I'm Gerald Casad, so we can post that thing. But yeah, on Noster, of course. And we can end it with that. But I am very excited. These, these new technologies also help practical things in life. I mean, look, we're talking about all that stuff, but there's always an interesting equivalence that happens in the world too. So these big, you know, face, we just talked about the limitations of social media now, the way they are, these decentralized systems like Nostra and all that, I think are the future that brings about its own challenges and all issues. But I'm very excited about, you know, how that that works.

Vance Crowe [01:58:02] Yeah. I mean that it already brought together people in the real world in a way that I would never get together with a bunch of people I met on Facebook. Like we had some people that were all on Noster. We found out they were in St. Louis. We said, Hey, come here and meet with us. And we get to meet interesting people. And

Gerald Caussade [01:58:16] Actually again, some of the most interesting people. Yeah. Amazing people.

Vance Crowe [01:58:20] Well, I'll have you back on and we'll talk all about Nester and AI and, and all goes.

Gerald Caussade [01:58:25] Thank

Vance Crowe [01:58:25] You so much for coming on, Jerry. Alright,

Gerald Caussade [01:58:26] Thanks.