Why 150,000 Veterans Died by Suicide Since 9/11: SSRIs, Burn Pits, and Alternative Healing

Vance Crowe [00:00:00] So when you talk about the weird stuff that's going on with veterans right now, what, what comes to mind?

Guest [00:00:05] Well, primarily we're in a suicide epidemic. And as the global war on Terror era veteran, you know, next 10 years, you know that that top end of that generation starts getting closer to retirement age. You're gonna see these suicide spike.

Vance Crowe [00:00:16] When you brought up SSRIs as we were getting ready for this, I was, I jumped at this because you have an expertise in it, or at least seeing the effect of it. But I have tried to get doctors and psychologists to come on and talk about SSRIs and they're like, I'll come on, but we can't talk about that. I don't want to talk about that. And it's been like astounding to me. Like I've had people willing to come on this podcast and talk about all kinds of things, but when it comes to SSRIs, they're not interested in in chatting about it.

Listener intro (station ID) [00:00:46] And I firmly believe that religion is for those that are scared of hell. And I feel that spirituality practices are for people that have already spent some time there. Hi everyone. I'm Oliver Crow, a second grade student and an aspiring YouTuber, and you're listening to the Vance Crowe podcast.

Vance Crowe [00:01:03] Welcome back to the podcast. I'm glad you're here today. John Lanius returns with a man named Will Wisner. Long time listeners, the podcast will remember John Lanius came on the podcast two years ago and rocked my world with an incense experience. Today, Lanius returns to conduct an informal incense ceremony while introducing me to Will Wisner from the Grunt Style Foundation, a group that supports veterans to get the help they need to overcome the moral and physical traumas that come from war. During this conversation, we discussed the Grunt Style Foundation's integration event that's going to be held in the middle of September. For alternative healing workshops and more, they're going to explore plant medicines, yoga, Japanese incense in a very serene setting called Sherwood Forest. Just a little ways outside of St. Louis, they're doing this to help people suffering in pain that the traditional med medicine system has not been able to help. While the Grunt Style Foundation focuses on veterans, the event is open to anyone that is suffering from pain and wants additional options. When I heard about this, I know close friends and people that I care a great deal about that have struggled to find a way to manage pain. And even though they have access to great medical care, something just hasn't worked for them. So I wanted to share what Will had with you. This conversation is pretty intense. We discuss the path that a veteran can stumble down, that can ultimately lead towards suicide, and why the government has been slow to attempt these alternative styles when trying to treat people with these moral and physical challenges.

Vance Crowe [00:02:47] And all of this is going on. Our conversation is happening while John Lanius is burning incense. And one of the things that happens throughout the experience is he says, Hey, take a moment. What are you experiencing? How is this changing the quality of your thoughts? And while you may not be able to smell the incense, it should bring something a little bit extra to the conversation. We're gonna get to that interview in just a moment. But this week we did several Legacy Interviews and one sticks out in particular because a longtime friend of mine, a man named Jay Curtis, drove with his wife 10 hours down from Ontario, Canada to do a day long interview with me. And it was an amazing experience to interview a friend and a mentor. But there was something that Jay said after the interview that I wanted to share. And normally I don't talk about individuals that have done interviews or as certainly anything they've said, but Jay actually encouraged me to talk about this at the end of Jay's interview. Before we turned off the cameras, I asked a final question. Jay, what changed about your life? Because you married Kain? Jay looked at his wife and out came a long almost poetic explanation of how he felt and what she meant to him over all these years. His lovely wife looked up at him like a young girl, taking in a deep breath. And after he was done, she said, you've never told me that before. After they embraced, Jay turned to me and said that he didn't know during his interview, he'd be able to put so much of his emotions into words and that he thought, I ought to tell more men that I can help you say the things that you feel, but don't find words for with the women you owe so much to.

Vance Crowe [00:04:35] I never thought to talk about that aspect of Legacy Interviews, but Jay's story is one I have seen many times, a couple, capturing that spark and that complex nature of their relationship. Future generations are gonna be able to look at these moments and say, that's what I want in my marriage. And hopefully it will help them marry as well as Jay did. If you would like to book a legacy interview for you and your spouse so you can have the opportunity to share things that are difficult for you to put into words, go to Legacy Interviews dot com to find out more. All without further ado, let's head to my incense filled conversation with John Lanius and Will whiner, John Lanius Will whiner. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you, man. Thank you very much. Having, so, John, you are the rare guest that has has say in how my podcast goes because we had such a wild experience when you did the first incense journey, which I was totally resistant to. I was like, don't bring your incense stuff. You brought it and we did it and it was great. So when you said, Hey man, I have something important to talk about, I was like, alright, come on, come on down, let's do it. And this time you're set up for an incense journey is pretty amazing. So what do you have going on here? So what I decided to do this time was take you back 700 years to the Murchie period in Japan. So the Achi period follows the Heon period in Japan and during the Heon period. Why this is important is that during the Han period, 7 94 to 1185 essentially is when the Japanese and the Chinese were sharing a great deal of information around art and around philosophy and around how you set up governments, things like that.

Vance Crowe [00:06:17] And so during the Mariachi period, what developed was something called cold D, cold D meaning the way of incense dough, meaning the way coal meaning incense. So what you're looking at today, different from the first time. So I, I think in the first podcast we didn't even see an image of this electric warmer. What we're seeing here is that you're, you're looking at something called the, and the is called the incense listening vessel. And so if we were doing a true full Japanese incense ceremony, what we would do is we would pass this around, and I'm speeding this up a little bit, but basically we would take three inhales And then turn your head to the side and blow out and then come in again. And so what this begins to do is this, this begins to speak about using incense, using fragrance as a way of appreciation. And this relates to the conversation that we're gonna have with Will and the event that's coming up September 13th through 15th. But I thought it might be fun as we weave the conversation today, to take you through a whole number of fragrances and senses. And, and again, if we were doing a traditional Japanese incense ceremony, first of all, we wouldn't be sitting the way we we're sitting, we would be sitting, you know, on the floor, usually in the za position or other forms of sitting that are more, you know, you know, traditional. But you're getting just a very subtle fragrance of bia equon. B aqueon is the Japanese word for sandalwood, sandalwood true sandalwood Lum album comes from India.

Vance Crowe [00:07:50] But what I'll do is that, as we're moving through the conversation is that I, I may also jump between the two of these. And so we'll have a fragrant conversation in many ways as we begin to warm up in, in what we're talking about. Yeah. So you brought in Will, who is somebody I just met just sitting out there in the, in the room, the office, and we had a fantastic conversation, but you have an incredibly unique background. I've never met anybody like you. Why don't you tell people who, who you're with and what you're kind of doing? I don't even know how to start on that. It's a big thing. Take the time. You need to explain what it is that you do.

Guest [00:08:25] Sure. My name's Will Wisner. I'm the executive director for the Grunt Style Foundation, and we are the nonprofit arm of the largest patriotic apparel brand in the United States called Grunt Style. And we are engaged in four areas of primary work, the biggest of which is mental health and wellness, specifically in the arena of suicide prevention. And we're focused on active duty military, veterans, law enforcement, firefighters, EMS. So all the first responder community. We also focus on issues of food insecurities amongst active duty members, if you can believe that, that that's actually a big issue. But one in three active duty, lower enlisted is food insecure, then homelessness and transition from active duty military into the civilian world. So that's kind of the area and scope of our work.

Vance Crowe [00:09:17] You know, it's wild to think about when I was growing up, there were, in my small hometown, you'd have the one guy that stood up at the corner and he had the P-O-W-M-I-A flag. And you know, he was a little bit different. Everybody kind of gave him his space and then that kind of went away. But really, after talking to you, I'm realizing it didn't go away. It just went way underground where there's all of these people that have been serving in the military and the government is, I don't know, not not engaging with them in the way that they had promised. Would you agree with that?

Guest [00:09:49] I would absolutely agree with that. You know, the, and, and it's really kinda the reason, or a large part of the reason for our work, the motto of the Veterans Administration is to care for he who is born the battle and for his widow and his orphan. And they're just not doing a real good job of that. And so that's where we come in. You know, we try to step into the gap of those areas that the VA either does not have the ability or the inclination to engage in some of these things. And we really want to focus on these issues that everybody understands is a problem, but for whatever reason, whether it's political or societal, and it's just taboo. Well, those things that everybody knows are problems or they're, and there's clear solutions, whether it's to engage in this or just to stop engaging. And that that's the area we want to focus on. And we wanna draw attention to that. And we want to elevate those items and get this trained back on the right tracks. 'cause it's, it's times are weird. And as you mentioned, you know, when I was a kid, we still had the World War II guys, you know, that were around. And I think if some of the crazy stuff that goes on today, were, and those guys were still around, I think we would be in a much different environment. I don't know how much of this they'd tolerate and, and let pass.

Vance Crowe [00:11:07] So when you talk about the weird stuff that's going on with veterans right now, what, what comes to mind?

Guest [00:11:12] Well, primarily we're in a suicide epidemic. And as the global war on terror era veteran, you know, next 10 years, you know that that top end of that generation starts getting closer to retirement age. You're gonna see these suicide spike. And to put this into context, we lost 57,000 service members during Vietnam. We lost a combined total of 8,000 between Iraq and Afghanistan combined. But yet since nine 11, we've lost 150,000 veterans to suicide. This is outrageous. If this were any other topic in any other community, I think people's hair would be on fire and, and there would be calls all over the place to do something. But given the nature of what is at the root of this problem, which we believe is over prescription of SSRIs, antidepressants, benzos, all of these things that, you know, primarily have a, the biggest side effect is suicidal ideation. So we're taking people with suicidal ideation and we're giving them pills that make them more suicidal. I mean, like, only the government could even come up with such a thing. And this is not something unique to the veteran community. You know, this is society wide. In fact it's global. You know, the Europeans are actually quite a, quite a bit ahead of us on this issue.

Vance Crowe [00:12:25] So let's start at the beginning of this, which is people coming, they're in a lot of pain and they are suicidal. Why? What's going on that people have so much pain that they even get into the world of SSRIs and benzodiazepines?

Guest [00:12:39] Well, I think those are probably, you know, now we're kind of dealing in towards pain management with opioids. And there's absolutely an over-prescription issue on the arena of opioids. That's, that's a different topic, although it is involved in it when we're talking on these issues of these antidepressants, the VA is under tremendous pressure to get people into the system and treated. If you remember back to the Phoenix waiting list scandal is what, around 20 12, 20 13, somewhere in there, there was a wait list that these guys were waiting to be seen by a primary care provider through the VA down in Phoenix, Arizona. And they were falsifying records saying they had been seen when they hadn't, you know, meanwhile they're being bumped and, you know, people are dying waiting on this wait list. Well, that brought tremendous pressure on the VA to correct that. That led into the Clay Hunt Act around 20 14, 20 15 timeframe, somewhere in there where we supercharged the VA again with throwing a lot of money at it into the realm of psychiatry. You know, I believe that that has resulted even more, you know, into these pills. 'cause these are complex health issues that people are dealing with. You know, our signature illness from Iraq and Afghanistan was this issue of burn pits where they are, they, you know, it's crazy the military industrial complex people think of in terms of bombs and bullets. But in my era, when I'm on Ford operating base hammer, you know, we had Pizza Hut, we had subway, we had green beans coffee there on the fob, right? So imagine a city of 10,000 people that have access to a little shopette where you can go buy cans of soda bags of Doritos.

Guest [00:14:14] Hey, you can go over and eat at Pizza Hut. You can go to the Kellogg Brown and root dining facility that they have there, and you get your little cardboard tray and all the soda you'll want, you know, for the low, low price of around $35 per meal, you know, three times a day times 10,000 just on that. You know, that's the real face of the military industrial complex. Think of the trash that that generates. What do you do if you have a community of 10,000 people? They have access to all these things, but no sanitation services. What do you do with that garbage? Well, the government had sent incinerator over there that sat shuttered in a box and would never utilized. They just simply couldn't handle the volume. So what do you do with, with that? You dig a pit and you throw all these things into it. Everything from medical waste to dead bodies, to blown up vehicles, to all the trash from Pizza Hut and green beans. You douse it in jet fuel and you light it on fire and then we're gonna billet you about a hundred meters away and you're just breathing that smoke night and day, 24 hours a day for 12, 15 months at a time during your deployment.

Vance Crowe [00:15:14] The most dangerous form of incense in the world if you really think about it. Right? You're talking about toxic smoke and fragrance going out and people ingesting this and coming up with horrible diseases as a, as a byproduct. And so I think that your experience, this, this juxtaposition between the, the event that we're gonna be talking about coming up, you know, is, is really powerful. So thanks for sharing that. 'cause I, I, I had not heard you explain at that level the way you just did.

Guest [00:15:43] Well, and, and it, it's more insidious than that even. Because now you and all these things come together, and I know this is a long meandering story here, but it does tie together, you know, you're exposed to this, you're sleeping next to this, you're breathing this stuff night and day, and then you go home and you're going into the VA saying, I'm sick. Well, the signature is issue in the g wide era from burn pits was this issue called constrictive bronchiolitis. It's a scar tissue in the lineman of the lungs, essentially a fever blister forms. And it grows around all the linemen with scar tissue until you can no longer diffuse oxygen into the bloodstream. Right? So when you go to the va, they're not equipped for this extremely complex type of engagement, right? So they're coming in saying, Hey, I was a world class athlete, you know, the, the day I left to go to Iraq and I came home. Now I go up and down the steps and I may not be able to to, to do that without having to take a stop in a, in a breather. What's going on? Well, okay, lung issue, we're gonna send you over for a pulmonary function test. They go to do the pulmonary function test, they're going to pass that test because that test ma measures oxygen or lung capacity, not oxygen diffusion. So you're, you don't have a problem with the amount of volume of, of, of air that your lungs can hold. It's how does it get into the bloodstream with this oxygenation? Right? So, well, you came back normal, therefore we have to diagnose you with something. There's, there's, there's a big drive to get you down there. You, you have a, a moral compass injury. You have seen or done something that is so contrary to your sense of right and wrong, that it has shattered your psyche.

Guest [00:17:14] Mm. And you, you are now manifesting phantom illnesses. Here you go have some SSRIs and some antidepressants to help you deal with that and get you on down the road. Well, they're not addressing the physiological symptoms. And so it ends up as this death spiral into, now you think you're crazy, your family thinks you're crazy, you're on the head meds. Meanwhile, you still have these physiological issues. You can't work, you know, the, the, the bills start to mount. Financial pressures ensue. Next thing you know, you're living in mom and dad's basement with the wife and the kid and pressures continue to mount. You know, you have a hard time looking yourself in the mirror. You know, you're a failure. All these things are, you know, that chatter in your mind. Life takes the kid and leaves. Of course, people are eating bullets at the rate of 22 veterans a day. Of course they're doing that. And on top of it, the solution modality that they're being given makes them more suicidal. So it's, we're, we're slowly torturing veterans to the point of suicide. And that's where our program work, cry for Change comes in where we have a, if you go to our website@grossstylefoundation.org, one of the first things you're gonna see on that screen is a video series we did called Prescription of Suicide. That's part of that and explains this, this issue in the, the impact that that type of practice brings.

Vance Crowe [00:18:29] You mentioned something there, I'm not familiar with a moral compass disorder. Injury. Injury, yeah. And this is something that the, they use as a way to say, we understand that you're in pain, but it's the psychological, it's it's PTSD. Yeah. Correct. And so this has gone, so they're, they're presumably at the beginning saying, Hey, we've got a diagnosis for you. It's just one that is kind of a catchall.

Guest [00:18:54] Yeah. I mean, it, it gives them the ability to diagnose and it gives them a remedy. So, you know, they're off the book. Well, good luck. 'cause now, you know, it's difficult to navigate the VA system as it is. And there's great people in the va and many times the VA's an excellent facility, but this is a big problem that is an elephant in the room that has not been addressed. So, you know, it's deadly. We're playing with, we're playing with fire.

Vance Crowe [00:19:22] So something that the listeners can't tell, but we are now taking in this fragrance. It was sandalwood. It smells like something else. Now what's going on here, John? Yeah, so what I've done is that I started with, with the sandalwood. So instead of us passing this around, what I, what I'm doing is I'm using two different types of warmers. So you'll notice that there's very little smoke even if, if, if any at all when, when you're seeing this. So when you're using very, very good incense, it's, it's like when you invite someone over for a meal, I wouldn't take the steak, the vegetables and the potato, for example, and throw it directly on the flame and then serve it to you. Right? That's, that's, that's kind of gets into what I would call bad incense. What we're doing here is that we're, we're warming these natural fragrances at the most optimal temperature. So we're getting all the benefits of all the chemicals made in nature. We're also getting access to terpenes. You know, now with the advent of, of the legalization of marijuana in many places in the country and in the world, we're able to talk about terpenes more freely, even though we could always talk about them. But terpenes control the color, taste and fragrance of everything in the natural world. And these terpenes allow our bodies to heal. They, they, they, they trigger things that are antimicrobal, excuse me, antimicrobial, antibacterial, when Will was talking about the scarring on the lungs. Believe it or not, frankincense, you know, is, is helpful in opening up the lungs because it is a bronchial dilator. So what you're getting access to right now are, yes, are wonderful fragrances that have been used for thousands of years.

Vance Crowe [00:20:54] But you're also really, so what, let me ask you this. What do you both notice about the quality of your mind or the quality of your consciousness with these fragrances that you're getting access to? What do you notice that you notice?

Guest [00:21:08] I think it's conducive to the stillness of the

Vance Crowe [00:21:10] Mind. Exactly. Yeah. Conducive to the stillness in that we live in a very loud and noisy world. Now, I don't know if anyone has noticed that, right? But the idea here is that there's been tons of studies done on the power of silence and how silence can actually be very healing. You may not, you know, be a professional meditator, for example, where you're learning all the postures and all that. But the idea of returning back to stillness allows us to get an interaction with ourselves. It allows us to have reintegration, which is perfect for what we're gonna talk about in reintegrating, where we are in our, in our centered self, sometimes called the eye of the hurricane, for example. It's like, there's a lot of people in life who live in this hurricane, but getting you to the center calm, this is the path of code O at one level. There's lots and lots of levels with this, but I thought it would be interesting to juxtapose will's, you know, story, you know, with, you know, the other side of this, which is, you know, using fragrance, using smoke, using fragrance to, to be able to expand your mind, calm your mind, and also heal your body. Well, the thing that this draws to mind is when people go to, you know, somebody for mental health and they say, I'm in chaos. I feel anxiety through the roof. I'm, my, my wife left me, or I'm not able to exercise 'cause I was injured, whatever that is. When I have experienced people that are close to me, they get onto an SSRI, the surface temperature looks like they're much calmer, but they're definitely away from their normal self.

Vance Crowe [00:22:44] They're not the, they don't have that spark of life. When you start thinking about SSRIs and their role that they're playing with the veterans, what's going on there?

Guest [00:22:54] Well, in our community and the veteran community, you know, we refer to these pills as zombie dope because it's really what you're doing. You're, you're treating a symptom, you're not treating the root cause. You're not getting down into the deep psychological work. Now, there are other wonderful modalities the VA does offer with talk therapy and all these things are, you know, great in their own right. But when we're, you know, piling masks that we're, we're having people wear to numb, you know, numb their mental chatter rather than deal with the mental chatter, you know, that's a problem. You know, how are you going to numb yourself to the point where nothing's really affecting you? I mean, it'll work if you're wanting to not have the feels, but you know, you're, you're gonna get rid of all the feels. You're gonna get rid of the good ones right. Along with the bad ones. And you're not really getting rid of them. You're just kind of suppressing them and, you know, is that a still mind? I don't think so. I think there's a difference between a still mind and clarity and purpose than what there is a still mind in a drug haze.

Vance Crowe [00:23:58] Well, I was gonna say, what I got present to when you said that is that there's absolute truth in talking things out. Absolutely. And so if we're not, you know, we, we are emotional beings on, on one level. And so, you know, one, one of my favorite quotes is that the, the person who controls the questions, controls the emotions. The person who controls the emotions controls the outcome. And so if we are able, or when we are able to use natural healing modalities to control our emotions, then we can start to release and let things out. Right? You know, there sometimes there's this analogy or metaphor, depending on how you want to use it. But have you ever taken a piece of paper and tried to fold it more than seven times? You can't do it. Right? And so for a lot of people, it's like their life is a lot like, okay, I have stress. I'm gonna fold it again. I have stress, I have stress, I have stress. Well, when you get to that seventh fold and you can't fold it anymore, then that can represent a breakdown. And so this, these modalities and some of the things that will's gonna talk about a little bit later on is this idea of unfolding, of of, of opening these things up so that we can then release the things that we need to release. So we get back to that moment of clarity. When you brought up SSRIs as we were getting ready for this, I was, I jumped at this because you have an expertise in it, or at least seeing the effect of it. But I have tried to get doctors and psychologists to come on and talk about SSRIs and they're like, I'll come on, but we can't talk about that. Sure. I don't want to talk about that. And it's been like astounding to me. Like I've had people willing to come on this podcast and talk about all kinds of things. Sure. But when it comes to SSRIs, they're not interested in, in chatting about it.

Guest [00:25:32] Well, of course. I mean, and I think, you know, that it's self-evident. You know, you ever watch cable news? What, what is the, what's the majority of commercials when you're watching cable

Vance Crowe [00:25:43] News? Yeah, they're, they're pharma and the way that works is maybe they don't say what to say about your pharmaceutical, but they know if our money goes away, salaries won't get paid in your land people off.

Guest [00:25:53] Well, yeah. And for one, and for, to think about what the protection that provides the pharmaceutical industry, you know, why, why do I need to see commercials for Zoloft on Fox News? You know, I'm not gonna be inspired to go run down to the drugstore and buy Zoloft. I can't access it. I gotta have a prescription. So I'm gonna go to my doctor and say, Hey, I saw this thing on the news. I want this Zoloft. And they're gonna say, well, okay, here. No, they're, they're gonna have whatever they're pedaling that day, whatever, they're incentivized to pay that day. So why does big Pharma spend so much money bombarding us with commercials for these pharmaceuticals? Well, I don't think it has anything to do with us or the, or the, or the audience. I think it has to do with they're now the biggest customer for the news media who control the narrative of what you're hearing. You think, I mean, that's insurance. You think the news media is gonna go against their cash cow and carry these stories. I mean, this isn't some esoteric obscure information that we're talking about in the dangers of over prescriptions of these SSRIs and the potential side effects that go along with them. You know, no, this is insurance, this is, they're, it's to ensure that they're not going to engage it and they can avoid those problems.

Vance Crowe [00:26:57] So keep us going down the path of the SSRI. So somebody gets on that, you're calling them a zombie drug. What then goes, how, how does that proceed for them?

Guest [00:27:08] I mean, it can go a lot of different ways. You know, I had a, one of our friends here very recently went on Wellbutrin for smoking cessation week and a half later. The guy was not suicidal before this. And all, you know, took his life with a shotgun upstairs with his family in the house. I mean, these things can go that violently that fast, or they can be a prolonged slow torturous death if it leads to that. You know, I mean, these are, there's a lot of these pills that aren't used, you know, are not meant to be used for prolonged periods of time that we keep running into people through our work that have been on it for a staggering amount of time. It's, it's very, very hard to come down off of these pills. It's as every bit as much of an addiction as, as some of these opioids. But it's not an addiction in the sense that you're chasing a high, it's that you have to take them or else the consequences are severe. You know, they call it the brain zaps. Right. You know what I mean? These things are staggering. You'll do anything to make that pain stop up to and including suicide. It's that, it's that intense.

Vance Crowe [00:28:08] So you've been around a lot of veterans and you're trying to combat the, the epidemic of suicides. Talk a little bit about the chatter that goes on in a man's life that leads him down the path of suicide.

Guest [00:28:22] Well, I think the example I gave earlier is about as good of an explanation as what I can get. I mean, you know, you, you view yourself as this person. You know, you're on one day when you're still in the military, if you're deployed, you're over talking to Muktar in a village. And you know, literally you're 28 years old staff sergeant and you are now a representative of the United States government and you're conducting foreign policy. You know, I mean, that's, that's, that's the level of what you are. And then you come home and maybe you're doing whatever, you know, that's, that you're, your identity stripped away from you, the camaraderie stripped away from you. There's all these empty voids. How do you replace those? How do you fill those? How do you deal with what it is that you're bringing back? Whether it's a health issue, you know, like something from the burn pits or whether it's just how do you reconcile, you know, the wartime experience, you know, that will make you wonder. So like in my instance, like I knew I had lived in a very bad place and was exposed to very bad things, and I knew that it had negatively impacted my health. But when you go and you talk to your healthcare provider about that, and that topic of, you know, post-traumatic stress comes up like, okay, well yeah, that's fair. I have some of that as well. You know, and then you go down that road and, you know, suddenly the lines are blurred. And now you're treating these physiological symptoms with psychological modalities and all these problems begin. You're not really ever getting down to addressing the root cause. You start, you know, I mean, ultimately you're crazy and you're crazy because you did bad things. And then, oh, you know, you, you go in, Hey, this pill isn't working. And they say, oh, okay, no problem. Let's just dial in. Let's dial it in. Let's get you on the right med.

Guest [00:29:52] You do that two or three times and you go back. Now you're a pill seeker, so now you're crazy and you're crazy 'cause you did bad things. Oh. And you're a pill seeker. Meanwhile, your, your family's seeing all this, you know, they're seeing you through the eyes that, you know, you're seeing yourself through. And none of these are good. It's, it's a hell on its own. And I, I like to tell people, you know, for why we're reaching out to these modalities of, and practitioners like John, you know, they're offering a spiritual connection. And I firmly believe that religion is for those that are scared of hell. And I feel that spirituality practices are for people that have already spent some time there. And it's for everybody. But I think that's, in our case, that's, that's, that's the hope.

Vance Crowe [00:30:31] Well, and, and to even take that one step more like, so I work with the Special Operations Charity Network, special Operations Charity Network is partnered with GR style Foundation. And so what I'm doing is that I'm working with veterans and people with anyone who is dealing with any form of of of PTSD. This is not a joke, but it sometimes comes out as a joke, which is that we think that sometimes PTSD is only reserved for people who've been in the military and have done bad things to will's point, when in actuality running a business can be just as traumatic. Right. And so, and so the idea here is that if you don't know about these modalities, if you don't know natural ways to return back to your center self, this, the, the, the, the natural part of you, before you had all these experiences that were overwhelming, that, that caused either what we call imprints in the hypnosis world or other kinds of blockages that keep us from becoming the radiant true person that we really are. This has been done for thousands of years. If, if we're just looking at the Japanese tradition, you know, 700 years with the kodo ceremony. But we know that incense appreciation starts in Japan 1400 years ago with the advent of Buddhism in five 50 ad we can then go back to Korea, we can go back to China, we can go back to India. We can go all the way back to the written history of incense, which is 6,000 years old, where we talk about how do we use fragrance sense of the divine by whichever name that you want to call it, to, to return back to that center. Like I'm finding myself, like right now, I'm having problems concentrating a little bit because I am relaxing, you know, with, with these fragrances.

Vance Crowe [00:32:07] So in the 30 years of talking about this, and the 42 years of study that I've done, I started this at nine years old, is that I've trained myself to talk through these feelings. But when I'm working with somebody, and I, and I find out for example, that they were a breacher. You know, they were, they were on a high speed team. They were a breacher. Well, I I'm, I I have a background in high explosives, and so I understand what pentol tetra nitrate is. I understand what these explosives are that have their own experience, their own fragrance, all of that. And so the, the, the, the last point I'll make, at least in the, at, at this point is, is that we don't realize that though we are seeing and feeling everything in our natural world or in the, in the world itself, we forget that our sense of smell is recording everything. And our conscious and our subconscious mind in that, here's the example. When you walk into somebody's house and you've never been to their house before, how long do you smell their house before it disappears for you? 30 seconds maybe? Yeah. 30 seconds to a minute and a half, depending right Now if they start cooking and things like that, it, it changes up. Right. But we, we've been doing this our entire life. So as you walk into a new environment, you smell the environment and then it disappears. 'cause of olfactory orientation. All of the receptors in our, in our nasal system, you know, in our, in our olfactory system fill up. Well, and I'm gonna be a little dramatic here, okay? If, for example, you, you're in my house, you've been in my house for an hour, you no longer smell anything, and all of a sudden a murder takes place. Well, that's gonna be overwhelming. It's going to be, I mean, it's going to shock you.

Vance Crowe [00:33:38] It's going to shock you to the core of your being. Well, what's gonna happen is that that part of your brain is gonna remember the smell of that. So when you go someplace else in your world and you remember that smell, you're right back in it. And so when you are using therapies like this, I'm gonna use the word therapy, you know, you aromatherapy in this case is that you are inviting to a certain extent the ability for people to re-experience things from a distance standpoint and begin to remove the emotional connection to it. So the other piece of this at Special Operations Charity Network, as well as GR style foundation, we work with licensed therapists. This is not just us ad hoc, you know, irresponsibly moving around is that I will work with a lot of licensed therapists who are like, look, I'm John. I have a client who, you know, is not, they're not really responding to some of the things that, that we're talking about. And I know what this does because I mean, you guys are experiencing it. O obviously the viewer isn't right now, but these fragrances that begin to relax you and open you, and then you are then more comfortable to begin to share. And from the earlier point, there is absolute truth to talking things out. What's incredible about incense, so you and I have been doing this for like two years now. Yeah. So ever since we did the incense, I had always been like, not just the, the burning stick that you would burn in your basement to cover over the weed smell, but like, I just never really thought very much of incense. But now that you've introduced it to me, you realize, hey, that smell the one that we're taking in right now, there is no other way to get it than to have the actual incense and to burn it at the right temperature so that then it gives you an experience.

Vance Crowe [00:35:18] And I completely agree with you, the amount of relaxation, it's like the, the relaxation that can come from smoking pot, but like without all the mental, you know, separation or Right. Whatever you want to call that. Right. So I am actually having to fight and, and be in control of like, where are we going? Because I'd like to just sit and relax. Yeah, Yeah. Well, So Go ahead. Well, I was gonna say, this is the interesting part about this is that one of the things that I fight is the preconceived notion of the 1960s. You just kind of alluded at it a little bit, right? One of the first things I'll say to people is like, Hey, I'm, I'm giving a talk coming up. They're like, oh, I, I I don't like incense. And I'm like, really? I said, well, what kind of incense have you burned before? Well, I've burned incense like money and love and prosperity. That is not what we do. What we are doing here is fragrances that have been quite literally burned by royalty and by the most affluent cultures in the world for thousands of years. And there's a reason why that every wisdom book in the whole world talks about a pleasing fragrance unto the Lord, or by whichever name you want to call it, is that these are things that were created in the divine for us as human beings. If you, if you are, if you're a devout Christian and you're looking at the Old Testament or, or even aspects of the New Testament, and you look at the earliest descriptions of the Garden of Eden, you know, and you, and you talk about the, the clothes that that, that Adam and Eve were, were, were, were supposedly wearing that had the fragrance of the Garden of Eden.

Vance Crowe [00:36:49] This is what we're talking about. And this, this does get into some of the esoteric world about this, but what I'm doing today is I'm working with, you know, fortune 100, fortune 500 companies, executives that need their head game in the right place. And so this goes beyond executive coaching. This goes into that you can begin to train your mind and your body to be relaxed in all situations. And that relaxation is really the power. We can talk about this better than I can, but when you're on high speed teams in the military, they're now beginning to teach box breathing, or they're be, or combat breathing is what is what is referred to. Well, the breath is everything. And so if you begin to regulate your breath and you begin to regulate your mind, anything is possible. So with your organization and your pushback on SSRIs, because you're saying, Hey, there's other modalities and this is not looking good, what are you guys doing to push back?

Guest [00:37:43] Well, first off, I also wanna take the opportunity to say that we are not suggesting that anyone using SSRIs are bad, or that there's, we don't wanna shame anyone. You know, that there is a time and a place for all things. So, you know, definitely wanna put that out there as a disclaimer. But the amount of, you know, damage in the wake of these things is where we're focusing and that's what we want to address. And primarily inform consent. Making people aware that there are these dangers with these things, and they need to understand them before they're oftentimes they're not.

Vance Crowe [00:38:14] They're just, yeah, they're going on 'em and then they don't realize, oh, to come off of this. Exactly. I mean, that's even the story of somebody like Jordan Peterson, who's a clinical psychologist, gets on benzodiazepines and can't get off, has to go to Russia to try and get off of them. And if he doesn't know, how could any of us know?

Guest [00:38:29] Exactly. And so we, we certainly do not wanna make any, like, we feel like we're attacking anybody for, you know, if you're somebody, somebody out there that's watching this and you're like, you know, feeling any shame or anything, that's not my intention. But how are we pushing a back against this? We're sounding the drama. We're just speaking common sense truth. You know, there are things out there that do work. We know that these SSRIs, while they may have some benefit for some, they're, they're, they're essentially marginally better than a placebo in terms of the doing what they hope that they are to be done. We know there are other modalities that are out there. And these, it's a big spectrum. It's everything from Japanese incense ceremonies to equine therapy, to singing bowls, to meditation, to Tai chi and Qigong and a keto and all of those things. All the way down to, you know, more controversial things that are hot topics right now with, you know, Amazonian plant medicines and amphibian medicines. You know, these medicines that are coming outta the Amazon and Ayahuasca and yhe even here locally with psilocybin. You know, there are these other options that are out there. It's just a matter of accessibility. And in the veteran community, what I find to be particularly outrageous is that, you know, these vets, they go overseas. They, they do what they are asked to do. They come home broken and in need of help in organizations that do have mottos like to care for. He who is born the battle in, in his widow and his orphan, this is what you can access and that's it. So they are forced to go overseas to where these, like ayahuasca, for example, this modality, you know, it's illegal here as the methyl tripp.

Guest [00:40:09] And this is a schedule one drug. If you wanna access that, you have to go to some place like Columbia or Peru where these plant medicines are a national treasure and they in fact have laws in place to protect them to where they cannot be diluted or, you know, limited or restricted. That's outrageous that the American veteran has to go overseas to seek healing for dealing with the consequences of what they have done on behalf of the, the, the country. And the country feels like it's turn, it feels like the country's turning. Its back on these guys.

Vance Crowe [00:40:42] A lot of people when they think of the, you know, the releasing of these, like letting go the rules on this is something that hippies and drug users want to do, so they can be more free. Do you think the world would be better off if you're, if you're releasing the laws to, to make it so people can just get 'em? Well,

Guest [00:41:00] I mean, it's gonna have to have some form of regulation. I'm not in a full blown decriminalization mindset. There's an awful lot of people that are opportunists, the, the wannabe gurus and the cult leaders. You know, all that's gonna be part of, of human nature. It's gonna be part of this, this, this type of, these modalities as well. So it's a threat. And you know, there has to be a common sense approach to it. That said, nobody in their right mind is engaging in powerful psychedelics like ayahuasca for recreational purposes. I mean these, this is a harrowing experience ride oftentimes. It is very difficult. They call it warrior medicine. I mean, it is not for everybody.

Vance Crowe [00:41:34] Talk about that. What do you mean warrior medicine?

Guest [00:41:36] Well, I mean, it's an intense experience. You are completely, you know, you're encountering your subconscious, your higher self, however you wanna think of it. You are going to battle with these things that you're carrying with you and, and, and you are being presented with it. And you do not have the option to compartmentalize it. You do not have the opportunity to forget about it, to shove it down in those dark places, to engage in destructive behaviors as coping mechanisms. It's there, it's in your face and you're gonna have to deal with it. And that experience is oftentimes about eight hours in length. You have to come to terms, and that is where you will find the healing is, you know, having that internal conversation with yourself that oftentimes you're too scared to have.

Vance Crowe [00:42:18] Well, that goes with what John was saying about the conversation is an important part of the, of the healing process. Yeah, a

Guest [00:42:24] Thousand percent.

Vance Crowe [00:42:24] One of the things that, when you talk about conversation, one of the things that I want to do before we end today is I'm going to introduce the both of you to the master incense. It is the incense that is considered the highest level of, of alls wood. It's called Kiara. And it, what it does is it produces the mental clarity of a 30 minute meditation in a single inhalation. And it doesn't last very long. So when Will was talking about that eight hour experience, I have never done psychedelics, and I probably never will do psychedelics because I have had a lifetime of, of having what I might, what you might say is like a soft or gentle, you know, reforming of the mind, keeping me from going too far in, in one direction. But this is what I love about the integration weekend. And I, and I, I, I can't wait to talk about it because I mean, you've kind of started to ude at it, but what, what the grunt style foundation has put together is an incredible weekend where September 13th through 15th in, in Troy, Missouri, people are all people, not just veterans, but, but active military, you know, veterans, but all people are gonna have People experiencing pain, people experiencing like, I need to find some new way to go because the things that have been presented to me now Yeah. Aren't working. Yeah. So what, so, so what was the impetus for for creating the integration weekend?

Guest [00:43:40] Well, the impetus was to make it accessible. I mean, that is our objective is to make people un know that holistic healing modalities exist on, on number one. And number two, they're effective. Number three, demystify them. You know, I mean, people have watched Joe Rogan, they've heard him talk about DMT and this celebrity's ayahuasca experience, all that. Okay, great. For the average person, what does that mean? You know, who has however many thousands of dollars to go down to South America or Central America to engage that practice? What are, you know, they're trying to engage in the underground here inside the United States. How safe is that? What are you looking for? How do you spot these gurus and charltons and predators that are out there? You know, so we wanna provide a a an educational opportunity to empower them with that knowledge. If you're gonna go south, this is what you're looking for. This is, these are the conditions you're trying to meet. If you're going to take that upon yourself and you are going to engage in underground activities here within the United States, here's what you need to be aware of. And it's all not psychedelics. Again, we're, we're promoting equine therapy. We're promoting Japanese incense, we're promoting all these different modalities. We're trying to bring to the table things that we know have benefit and we want to give the opportunity for people to, number one, learn about them and engage in it. And number two, have the experiential component for those that are appropriate. We're not going to be giving ayahuasca to anyone at this event, but when you leave, you're gonna know more than the average bear on what it is and what it's really about.

Guest [00:45:16] Same with the variety of other methodologies,

Vance Crowe [00:45:20] Is have you put on an event like this before?

Guest [00:45:22] Not this particular one, no. I mean, this is really the first time out. This is a pilot program. I have no idea if it's gonna be just a handful of people sitting around a campsite, you know, just, you know, breaking the ice and, and setting the stage for a follow on attempt or if we're gonna have tremendous support. I hope it's the latter. 'cause this is important stuff. And we want this to be successful. We want people to engage, we want people to understand, and we wanna bring the community into this.

Vance Crowe [00:45:47] I mean, I think it's really incredible that you guys are trying something so new and different and you're putting together a weekend and just saying like, we're, we're gonna jump in and do this. What led you to the point where you were like, all right, we gotta do something really different here, because it is pretty different.

Guest [00:46:01] Oh, it's, it's entirely different. I mean, we're, we're literally bringing in shamans from the Amazon for this event to teach. We are bringing in Lakota medicine, man from, from the Alala Nation out in Pine Ridge, a gentleman named Jalen Garnet. He's gonna be offering what we would probably call the a sweat lodge. But it's actually has a, it's a ceremony. It's one of the big six seven ceremonies called the a nippy, you know, every day break and every dusk the, that ceremony will be offered. And it's four rounds. It's very intense. It's also very healing. You know, we will have practitioners of meditation and yoga and, you know, all the things that we talked about before will be there teaching.

Vance Crowe [00:46:44] Incredible. And, and tell me more about your foundation. We just jumped right into, but we never really got into the grunt style Foundation.

Guest [00:46:52] Yeah. Again, we're the nonprofit arm of the apparel company. Grunt Style. Grunt style stood that nonprofit up in April of 2021. Before that, Gral had been given away half a million dollars or so a year to charity, just in things that were in line with, you know, their way of looking at, at the world and what needs to be done. It didn't hit all the, the, the check blocks that they were trying to achieve. So they decided, let's take this a different area. Let's go after this and stand up our own programs. Now that's kind of where I came in. I, before coming to Grunt Style, I was a consultant working in the nonprofit world, trying to engage the issue of military related toxic exposure illnesses. That's why I happen to know a lot about this issue of burn pits. I was on the board of directors for a organization called Burn Pits 360. We worked very closely with John Stewart and John Field to get that legislation passed into law. It took about 10, 13 years of my life working on that. And we just were getting nowhere. 'cause Congress was telling us the same thing. The Big six VSOs or veteran service organizations were telling us, saying, we need to have political cover to engage this. We have to build systemic momentum within the veteran community where they understand this is an issue. Well, how do you do that and why does that fall to a little tiny nonprofit like Burn Pit 360 to go out and accomplish? So one of our strategies was, was, well, we've gotta educate the veterans. Where, where do you, how do you do that? You know? So we went to the veteran entrepreneurial sector. So we, we targeted grunt style.

Guest [00:48:23] They have a massive audience. It's huge. And there are a number of impressions are in the billions. So we went to them and just so happened that Tim Jensen, one of the co-owners of Grunt Style, knew all too much about this issue of Burn Pitts. He had lost many friends and, and people that was from his unit to that issue. And so he was eager to get involved. And, you know, once we had grunt style and their media machine behind that, we accomplished more in probably the next three months than we had done in the previous 13 years. Combined. We started generating that systemic momentum. Rosie Torres was really leading the way with Burn Pits 360, getting this out there. Then the fall of Afghanistan happened. We pulled out Despicably. So probably the most embarrassing instance in the American history that, in my book. And that hit Veterans Hard. And I got a phone call from Tim, you know, saying, Hey, I am struggling with this, you know, as are a lot of us, and I know that you do this work with these shamans that are with this ayahuasca stuff, and you're, you're in that field, you know, is this something that might be helpful to me? And so, you know, I had that resource and connection. We were able to go south and, and set with that medicine and, and he firsthand saw the healing power of that modality. And so at that point he said, Hey, look, we've stood up this foundation. I'm wanting to get engaged into, you know, actual programs of our own that where we have the chance to, to move the needle in the directions that we need it to go. I'd love for you to come on and, and lead that foundation.

Guest [00:49:55] And so I agreed the only condition being that I'm able to operate it here in St. Louis. So I, I wasn't looking to leave the area. So now here we are on South Brentwood Boulevard, same building that we're in right now is where our office is located, and the rest has just been a whirlwind adventure.

Vance Crowe [00:50:14] You mentioned in the, in the discussion of the psychedelics, this is like a big, like a harrowing experience. Have you watched people be healed by this? You've you've been around it enough?

Guest [00:50:25] Many, many. Talk a little bit about that. Well, again, I mean, you know, this is, you're really shifting people's perspective. And, you know, people tend to have two types of mental chatter. I'm not a psychologist or any kind of a doctor or anything like that, but this is just, I'm a country farm boy from down in those Ark Mountains, and I got some horse sense, and I know what I'm looking at. And what I have come to learn is that these two demons that sit on your shoulders, that are this mental chat are generally common to varieties. And one is judgment, whether that's judgment of yourself, usually in the most negative sense or judgment of others. And then the victimization is on that other shoulder. You know, it's, it's not my fault everyone's out to get me. You know, we have a hard time finding and taking ownership of our own role and our problems. And really what these modalities are doing is they're going to take you into that place where you have the opportunity to explore those things and engage those things, and having honest conversations, perhaps sometimes for the very first time. Other times it's just gentle and healing. And I can't explain that spiritual component of this stuff, but it is a spiritual experience. It's oftentimes extremely profound. I've never met an atheist coming out of any of these ceremonies, and I've seen hundreds and hundreds of veterans go through this process. Now, people from triple amputations, you know, having to deal with, you know, incredibly dark things down to military sexual trauma, I've seen a lot of female veterans that have gone through. They're able to put to bed, you know, some really hard things.

Guest [00:52:00] One thing that I think is amazing in that space is that it's accessible for everyone, but it doesn't mean that it's right for everyone. I do believe that there are two types of people. There are those who want to truly heal, and there are those who want to want to heal. And most everybody starts in that second category, and we're all working towards the first, these types of modalities are incredibly, incredibly powerful to position someone to move from that second category to that first category. This isn't something you can just drop in and it's a magic pill and everything's better. It doesn't work that way. This is deep, deep spiritual work. People often refer to it as like having 20 years of intense psychotherapy in one evening. And that's right. I, I have experienced it myself. I have seen it many times with these people. And the other interesting thing here is that what I've also seen is with these veterans, most people are dealing with traumas that have nothing to do with the military. When they get there, it turns out they're actually dealing with mommy issues or daddy issues or something from the early, early childhood. I've seen that over and over again. There's reasons probably behind that. I believe that, you know, we're, we're a volunteer force, you know, the United States and a lot of people that are going into the military are seeking stability. And I don't know, the military's really all that stable. So we're kind of compounding traumas on top of traumas perhaps. But when they are doing that work, they're often dealing with those things first and then the military experience.

Vance Crowe [00:53:28] Well, you started to hit on the reason why that I felt a resonance with you and what you're doing is because when we're talking about the difference between psychedelics and psychotropics, which is what this is. Yep. You know, the, a lot of people don't realize that the subconscious communicates to us through symbols and imagery. And so where we have language with our conscious mind, our subconscious is communicating, you know, again, through symbols and imagery. And this develops between the ages of eight and 13. So if you go back and you look at what you were doing and what you were thinking about between the ages of eight and 13, it will have a direct correlation to what you're doing now as an adult. When I think about it, between the ages of eight and 13, I had my first business, which was, is kind of a joke business with, with, with my mother, which was selling Cheerios as donut seeds. Right. But, but in that, I, I learned a lot about business. At the same time I was also learning incense and I was learning martial arts. And so now here I am at 51, you know, working at very high levels of, of, of business, but I'm also teaching incense, which seems a little bit juxtaposed. I mean, the first time I was on the show, you're like, John, you don't look the part, you know? And so going back to what Will was talking about is that when we talk about what's developing between the ages of eight and 13 with our subconscious and psychedelics, it's a very powerful experience where your subconscious is communicating with you with these symbols and imagery, which can be very overwhelming. Conversely though, when we're looking at, at psychotropic psychotropics change the quality of our consciousness, alcohol is a psychotropic.

Vance Crowe [00:55:00] And so it changes the quality of your consciousness. So what if you understand, you know, let's just, let's just take the heavy hitters, things like sandalwood, frankincense, burning camper, benzoin, cassia, cinnamon, things like that. When you are warming these and you're in the experience of them, it creates a particular kind of consciousness. And so when I learned about what, what will was doing in the integration weekend, and you haven't even talked about some of the other instructors, the woman behind CBD.

Guest [00:55:28] Yes. Paige

Vance Crowe [00:55:29] Fige. Yeah. And, and, and I mean this, this incredible weekend of instructors are gonna, people are gonna have an opportunity to get exposed to things that they, yes, they could get exposed to it through the internet and things like that, but an entire weekend where they get to interact with the people you know, in real life. And, and, and that, that for me is really interesting because you cannot experience true incense unless you're in the presence of it. You can't, it, like I, you know, if we were away and, and in a space with no fragrance at all, and I said, remember the smell of a pine tree? We've done this exercise before, you cannot remember the smell of a pine tree. All that happens is you get a mental image. Now, there are people like, wait, I think I can almost smell it. Yeah, you can almost smell it, but you can't smell. You've gotta be in the presence of it, which is why ancient traditions have talked about how the more incense you burn, the more enlightened you become, because it allows you to get present to whatever that feeling is, what that motion is. But it, it, it's a softer way to go about this. And both paths I think are fine. It's just that, you know, my particular purview is around the fragrance and using this as a soft way to begin to unfold, as we talked about earlier. So talk a little bit more about that unfolding. So if somebody is dealing with, you know, incredible trauma that you've described, or seeing things that, you know, you only see if you've gone to war, how does having a a a nice scent help them? Yeah. So what, so I'll, I'll ask you both. What is your favorite fragrance in the entire world?

Guest [00:57:00] Okay,

Vance Crowe [00:57:02] What's yours? Palo Santo. Palo Santo. Okay. So po So, so Palo Santo is from South America. It has been integrated in, into South American Catholicism, where in, in, in North American Catholicism, for example, we know about frankincense and mer, we know Franken being, being burned in the, you know, in, in the church with the, with the swinging sensor. Well, Palo Santo is this wonderful fragrance that contains a lot of terpenes, like a pinine and eugenol and, and other, and other chemicals that relax and, and calm the mind. You know, nowadays, if you go out on, you know, Instagram and you meet the spiritual gurus, you know, they'll be on camera with the Palo Santo, and it, it kind of looks a little bit woo woo, right? But when in actuality that, that woowoo is a, is an entrance into understanding these ancient modalities that, that allow you to start to uncollapse and, and communicate for people that have true PTSD or, or, or true emotional trauma, one of the first things that they do is they clam up. They don't wanna talk about it. And because they think if I hold onto it, then I'm, I'm gonna be able to, to, to deal with it. When, when in actuality, that's not the case at all. And so, going back to the, the story, talking about working with therapists is that sometimes no form of therapy may be an opening, but if we take that fragrance, Palo Santo, or for you what I was gonna say, Kafi, maybe Kafi. Okay. So Kafi Kafi is, is the, is the incense of, of Egypt.

Vance Crowe [00:58:33] It's 3,500 years old. That's the recipe for it. It was rediscovered in, in the 19th century at the Temple of Edfu where he bruch went in and, and he's looking at the, at the, at the hieroglyphs. He, he was, he was the, the first person to translate demonic, which is Egyptian cursive. Anyway, he moves away the mud, three inches of mud, and sees this recipe that's 3,500 years old. And so there's lots of iterations of kaifi, but when you're in the presence of that, what happens to you? Oh, I'm just absolutely relaxed. We did it the other day. Yeah. With incense you brought me. Yeah. And like the whole office is just, yeah. Way, way calmer. Just, just ready to just take whatever's coming your way. Yeah. It rely whatever comes your way. Right? So then, so there's, so there's a couple Japanese words that I will use when I'm beginning to talk about this concept. So, mi mind, like water mind, like incense. Let's talk a little bit about that. So if you, if if you're, if you're, again, out on social media, you might see old clips of Bruce Lee talking about water. Water can become many things, right? Well, water at its base form is content with the low places that people disdain, yet it nourishes all things. But water can become that tsunami, it can become that wave. And so as we start to look, it, it fills any form that it takes. And so when we're looking at our ability to mold and be what we need to be in any environment, the more, the more that you are mentally healthy to be able to move and shift, then this gives you the ability to become whatever you need to become.

Vance Crowe [01:00:10] Not that you're being fake, but that you are, that, that you're literally being who you need to be in any moment in life. Because oftentimes we feel like we are impersonating, or that, you know, the, the, the, the Im, the imposter syndrome goes into play. So using different modalities, meditation, incense, I could, I could keep going. Starts to allow yourself to be comfortable in the uncomfortable. And that's my favorite definition of mastery, is being comfortable in the uncomfortable, because life is always uncomfortable because we're, 'cause we're living and, and, and fear is always present. And sometimes in my public talks, people said, oh, I've, I've always had a guy's like, well, I'm, I'm not afraid of anything. I'm like, really? Okay, well, if you're really being honest with yourself, fear is always present. So let me give you an example. If you are, if you've never been to New York City and you're gonna drive into the city and you're gonna find a parking spot, there might be a little bit of fear that comes up, like, oh my gosh, where am I gonna park? How am I gonna, you know, how what's gonna be there? So I'm not saying that you're always afraid, but there's always that fear about what goes on because we are fear-based beings. So this gives us the opportunity to start to uncollapse that. So circling back completely to the original part of your question, is that when you're in the presence of a fragrance that you enjoy, it naturally starts to relax you. So when I'm working with people, either in the personal incense journey, which is, I'm gonna give you guys the experience of the personal incense journey at the end with the Kiara, is that what this will produce, and I don't mean to tell you what you're gonna experience, but what it does is that it produces the mental clarity of a 30 minute meditation in a single inhalation.

Vance Crowe [01:01:46] And what it does is that as a neuro sedative, it starts to slow the thoughts. And so if you, if your head is full of thought all the time, you don't get to experience the rest of the world around you. There's an ancient quote that talks about how no mind gives you an experience of the divine, the Japanese talk about no mind. And what does that mean? Does that mean that I'm unconscious? No. It just means that my, I am in complete control of my thoughts. My thoughts don't run me. And, and again, back to back to the integration weekend, there are many paths up the mountain. And what I'm loving, I'm, I'm so excited about this weekend because people are gonna go, okay, that's a path for me, John, your path. Nah, not so much. Ah, but that path is for me. And then other people are gonna be like, that path's not for me. But John, your path is exactly. And this gives people an opportunity to figure out that where in this holographic world do they find themselves? You know? And I, and then this is the beauty of community. We have lost in a lot of ways, you know, this idea of community and the tribal parts of ourselves that, that we practiced for thousands of years all over the world. You know, there's been studies that show that human beings don't do well after 150 people in a group. And then this is a way to, to return back to that. So will we are experiencing right now, I can already tell you the clarity of my thoughts are better. Why is this not something that the US military, the, the veterans affairs have taken on? Why, why don't they use this?

Vance Crowe [01:03:16] Well,

Guest [01:03:17] I mean, number one, probably it's awareness, right? And that's another reason why we're doing this event. I'm sure we'll have some folks from the VA coming over from their mental health group, you know, like this is a great opportunity for them to be exposed to it. You know, get, get someone on that path of exploring this. You know, John summarized beautifully, you know, a lot of the intention and thoughts and the whys behind what we're doing in, in what he had just stated. And, and it even goes back to your earlier point of why is this warrior medicine? You know, you have to get comfortable with the uncomfortable in order to engage these things to have true healing. Hmm. And we hope that by putting all these different impressive lineup of people and their incredible things that they're teaching and offering that, that the VA will take notice. Or maybe it's a therapist here local to St. Louis that is coming out to explore new things. And maybe they're gonna find something that resonates with them and maybe they're gonna pull that into their practice. Or maybe they make a relationship with the practitioner like John and, you know, who knows what great things can come of that. We just want to be the catalyst for move for movement and change and possibilities.

Vance Crowe [01:04:28] And, and speaking of the va, I have a meeting with the VA along with Mark Quinn, who, who's our executive director at the Special Operations Charity Network. They are interested in this. They, the, the, the VA does some incredible work.

Guest [01:04:40] Yes.

Vance Crowe [01:04:41] And there's also a lot of red tape because you're dealing with government, you know, and so there, there are people that are interested in this. And what's, what's great about everything that I do? None of it is illegal, none of it. And so the barrier to entry is a, is is a little less kind of some of the work that Will is doing with some other folks and getting some of these things legalized. You know, I think, I think once you have testing in place, and once you have all of these regulations that Will was talking about earlier, I think people are gonna begin to find more and more a path that works so that if we have somebody that that's had the experience that, that will, has had in the, the military, that there's a, that there's a direct path instead of will having to, you know, go through all of these different paths that maybe are dead ends. We're, we're able to give somebody a direct path to the kind of healing and resolve that they're looking for. So we've mentioned a couple of times that there's stuff that we haven't talked about. What all is gonna be there. If somebody comes for the weekend, what can they expect?

Guest [01:05:40] Well, if they're, if they would like to know firsthand, they can go to groff foundation.org. On the main landing page, there's a big picture for the event integration. You click on that, that'll take you to the event page itself, which kinda gives a summary. And you can download a catalog of instructors and classes and it'll introduce you to all of the instructors that will be there. It'll give you a crash course description on what it is that they're offering and how it kind of works. A little sneak peek teaser. And that will help you decide which classes you want to attend. This is gonna run in conference style. There are so many instructors and so many different things to do here. They're all happening at the same time. So if you want to come in and you wanna set with John and, and Japanese incense, you can do that at the 9:00 AM slot. And then on the 10:00 AM slot, you can go learn about horses or you can go learn about ayahuasca or whatever it is that you're curious to explore and learn. And then if, you know, it gives people the opportunity to pick and choose their own itinerary and build it to their, to their custom tastes.

Vance Crowe [01:06:42] And you're doing it at Sherwood Forest Camp? So it's at in a wooded area. I've been down there myself. It is, it's a really, really beautiful location in Missouri.

Guest [01:06:50] It is. And it's very accessible. $75 for the entire weekend. We have cabins, the cabins are bunk houses. There's eight bunk, four bunk beds, I guess, per cabin. And so we can sleep eight in a cabin. We also have day passes available, you know, $25 per day. We're gonna have catered food there from sugar fire. And I can't remember the Italian joint market lined up for us. Okay. But I'll give them a shout out online to make up for that. But yeah, back to your earlier question, who all's going to be there? Some notables that I definitely want to, to to put out. 'cause it's exciting stuff. In addition to John, we have Carlos Duran. He is an iowasca that practices with the Colombian version of Ayahuasca called Yhe. So he will be there. He's also a businessman, has a a, an online company called the Four Visions, which is probably the largest shamanic tools, supplies store in the world. So we're very, very lucky to have Carlos there. We're having Jason Fellows who runs a business called Tribal Detox. They're an educational training organization that teach combo, which is these amphibian peptides that, you know, really people think of it in terms of detoxification for the body, but in, in fact, what it's really doing, the magic of combo is it returns the body to a point of homeostasis. So if this organ's producing this or not producing that, you know, it gets everything kind of into gear. John had made mention to Paige Fige Sue, she's my hero.

Guest [01:08:22] I mean, of all the people here, this woman is my hero. And to summarize that quickly for your audience, Paige is the lady that is responsible for CBD as we know it. If you've ever heard of the strain of marijuana called Charlotte's Web, that is named for Paige's daughter Charlotte. She had a very rare form of epilepsy where she would seize for 45 minutes of every hour, and she would have about 15 minutes of rest in between them. They had to keep her in a medically induced coma because these were so severe. They had exhausted all other options of what was there to treat this. I mean, it's so rare. There's less than 5,000 people in the world that have this. It's always terminal. Paige had exhausted all of the different medications and opportunities and possibilities that were here in the United States. And she came aware of the work that the Israeli government was doing with cannabinoids. And so medical dispen, medical marijuana dispensaries had become legal around that time in Colorado. And so she worked with the government, she petitioned the state and the governor and, and all that to allow for her to work with these dispensaries to try to work with the Israelis to produce what we now understand is CBD oil. And this full spectrum CBD that they had made that you may have heard, referred to as Charlotte's Web cured her daughter Charlotte. It not only just arrested it, it cured her. Charlotte went on to live a very productive life as a young lady. She was able to engage in all the activities that teenage girls would want to engage in. It was miraculous.

Guest [01:09:53] Nothing short of that. Unfortunately, Charlotte passed away during COVID, you know, from the COVID-19 virus. But what a tremendous story. I mean, I, I don't know of, I mean, that is the all time mama bear story of a mom that loves her child that much. They created CBD oil or what we come to know is that, but she'll be there talking about her experiences and also the legislative battles that are currently going on. You know, we're experiencing this here in Missouri with this attack on hemp products like Delta eight, Delta nine's. Really kind of the intention is getting those things out of easily accessible areas. I I, I think that's probably the correct course. I don't know that we need to be selling Delta eight or Delta nine products at a gas station to kids, but we're throwing the baby out with the bath water. That's also limiting and restricting CBD to where these things are gonna have to be sold at dispensaries, which will destroy that industry. You know, these, a lot of people rely on CBD is, is a highly effective resource that can treat a lot of things that absent, that people may have to turn back to addictive substances like opioids. So yeah, that's the page figi portion of the conversation. I guess we've also got some other interesting folks that are coming out that are teaching mass hypnosis, exploring the spiritual realms through hypnosis, you know, so, I mean, it's just a lot of things that are outside of the box kind of thinking. We've probably got about 23 different instructors, and you can find them on all, again at our catalog@gruntstylefoundation.org.

Vance Crowe [01:11:26] And John, what is the fragrance experience we're on right now, and where are we headed next? So what we're gonna do, if you're ready to wrap, we'll just, we'll go right into it. So what I'm putting on right now is I'm putting on Kiara. So Kiara in, its in its price, can be anywhere between $700 to $1,500. In many, many cases. In the most rare we've seen it go upwards of $3,500 a gram.

Guest [01:11:58] Wow.

Vance Crowe [01:11:59] And so what you're getting an experience of is an incense wood called Alices wood. There's lots of different varieties of it. It comes from about nine different places in the middle, near and far east. But I just want you to notice what you notice with this particular fragrance. And as you are noticing what you're noticing, I'll talk a little bit about the importance of listening. So what we're doing when, so in it's considered vulgar to smell incense in the Eastern world. So what we're doing is we're listening, and this comes from an ancient Buddhist sutra Where everything in the Buddhas world is fragrant. If you're not Buddhist, there's a similar story for Christ. There are similar stories for a lot of world religions, but normally what we would do is we would put the Kiara onto this. Ro la is known as the incense listening vessel. And so we would normally have this very close. We wouldn't have any, any tendrils of smoke at all. The, the proper depth of the charcoal in Thero allows me to, to generate the most appropriate temperature, because I wanna make sure you both get this. I've brought up the temperature up a little bit, but the importance of listening, this is the, in, its in modern language.

Vance Crowe [01:13:33] This really is an exposure therapy. So we're exposing ourselves to a fragrance that the chemicals, if you break them down and, and you can literally go on to the National Institute of Health and look up Alice Wood and they'll give you lots of different papers. But I'll, I'll ask you both now. What do you notice for yourself about this particular fragrance? The word gentle keeps coming to mind for me. It's, it's a very, like, soothing, gentle. When you, when you try to create thoughts in your mind, what's your experience of that? I mean, it's hard to say that I'm stuck on the word gentle, but that's just kind of where Yeah, yeah. Where I am. What do you notice about your hearing? Did you notice when that truck went by? Oh yeah. How, how clear it was? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what this is doing is that this is refining the senses, refining them, having you be present in the moment. What's your experience?

Guest [01:14:39] I like the, the way you phrase it is being present. It's very similar to hape in, in terms of the grounding and the being here and being able to let your mind explore without having artificial direction.

Vance Crowe [01:14:58] Now, what's interesting about this particular incense wood is that it, it forms from a fungus that's actually looking to repair the tree. And so in the same way that frankincense is, is much like an immune response to a cut in the tree, like a scab. Everything we're doing is healing. If you'll notice, like how you feel right now, and I'm not trying to tell you how you feel. You tell me if I'm wrong, but you're centered, You're relaxed, you're present, nothing extraneous. And many people in life will not have this experience, unfortunately, because they are unwilling to step out of the chaos that they're in. When I, earlier when I was talking to you about, you know, when you walk into somebody's house and you know, you smell it for just a couple of moments and then it disappears. I'll sometimes say in, in my, in my lectures and in my talks, that, you know, you don't smell your life anymore. That's the beauty of a vacation. When you go on a vacation and you come back, you're like, whoa, okay. And it gives you that new perspective. And that's really what integration is about. This, this weekend is about that. And so, whether I'm working one-on-one with somebody, or whether I'm working in a large group, the experience is similar in that you are going to have a very personal experience about the things that you need. You know, now in the canvas industry, if you go into a dispensary and you talk to a, to a bud tender, they will oftentimes say, here, smell this because your nose, nose your nose.

Vance Crowe [01:16:36] Know. But our sense of smell is our repressed sense. It is the closest link to memory. It is the closest link to our emotions. And so, again, if we go back to emotional regulation, and we go back to understanding, you know, we could deal with anything in the world if we're able to have an emotional, an appropriate emotional response to things that are going on. And you can deal with some of the most traumatic things. And this is what this is about. The last story I'll tell you is this, for a thousand years, the samurai ward, you know, know the samurai culture is essentially a thousand years. And one of my favorite stories to tell is this, is that during the Samurai period, a samurai would take off their helmet before going into battle and would put their helmet over a burning incense burner, a cordle, and let their helmet fill up with this fragrance. So imagine yourself right now as a samurai, you're about to go into battle. Think about how you're feeling right now, right? They would then take that helmet and they would put it on and they would tie it off, and then they would go into battle. It produces to, to, to take a word from, from the Indian culture, some Adi, single pointed concentration. Single pointed concentration. So then as we're riding into battle, we have that single pointed concentration. You're already in the world of buddo. You're already in the, the, the way of war. You already understand that you're already dead to a certain extent. Well, what's beyond that? Well, what then would happen is that if that samurai were to lose their head in battle, and then the, the helmet and the head falls off and then hits the battlefield, most people in the world have never smelled what a battlefield smells like.

Vance Crowe [01:18:19] Especially if you're cutting into another human being. Keep in mind whether the samurai culture using blades primarily, right? When you're cutting into a human being, it doesn't smell good. Well, all of a sudden you have this juxtaposition between this wonderful fragrance that you both are experiencing. Not only the smell of it, but also the effect of it. Well, you would then have a, have a fragrant in beautiful death. And so this is a meditation on death. And you've heard of the term memento, moori Be mindful of death. If we are more apt to focus on death, we are then more apt to be more alive in the present moment. This is what this is about. Integration is what this is about in teaching people or giving people exposure to new directions up the mountain we've been talking about. Well, this has been phenomenal. Again, John, an absolutely wonderful experience. We're gonna wrap up and I'll let will talk about where people can find him. But first, you've been doing incense journeys here in my studio. Yeah. Talk a little bit about that and how people, if they wanted to have their own experience that we just had, they could do that. Sure. You, you can reach out to shehan wellness.com, so S-H-I-H-A-N, shahan wellness.com and just send us a, a, a note on the contact us page. But every month I give a two hour lecture here in, in your studio. It's fantastic. They're, they're all, they pretty much all sell out now every month, which is great. And then September 28th, actually a couple weekends or the next weekend after integration, I'm gonna be doing an all day certification in, in olfactory and hypnosis.

Vance Crowe [01:19:53] I'm bringing in my co collaborator, Sandra Grace from, from Integrated LifeWorks Inc. Out of Iowa. And we're gonna, we're gonna spend an entire day teaching people about hypnosis, about fragrance, and we're gonna certify them in the olfactory induction technique. So they don't need to be hypnotist, they don't they, but they, they, anyone who wants to learn how to either self hypnosis yourself or others, it will give you an ability to expand that out. So I'm grateful to the space that, that, that you allow in this conversation and also here. And I love what you do. Thanks. And Will. If people wanted to learn more about your organization and then of course about the integration, we can, how should they do that?

Guest [01:20:31] Again, head over to our website, grunt style foundation.org. We have filmed an awful lot of promos, videos that also go further in depth to explain that. The best place to find those would probably be on our social media channels. We are on Facebook at, at Grunt Style Foundation. We are on X at, at grunt style, FDN, and Instagram is at Grunt Style Foundation as well. But we've got some great video clips that really kind of break this down and go into more depth and, and give some good visuals on some of the other folks. But all again, all of this is in a catalog@gruntstylefoundation.org.

Vance Crowe [01:21:13] Well, I'm so glad you were willing to come and talk and that John brought you that we got to meet. And I will certainly have you back on to talk more about Sure. Your work anytime and the direction of veterans. So thank you.

Guest [01:21:23] Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you

Vance Crowe [01:21:24] Vance.