Mark Divine [00:00:04]:
All righty. All righty. Ready? Ready. Clearing the slate here.

Curtis [00:00:07]:
You can’t see this, can you? No, no, you can’t see it right because you’re not shooting their feet.

Mark Divine [00:00:11]:
It’s pretty tight. Yeah, it’s more chest up. Yeah, I can see it. Yeah.

Curtis [00:00:21]:
Okay, rolling here. How long you guys been in the studio?

Mark Divine [00:00:39]:
Just a few months. John’s been here for a while. This is his studio, but we just started working with him a few months ago. I just brought like my people in here. And then you go by Curtis or Curtis Lee or.

Curtis [00:00:53]:
Curtis.

Mark Divine [00:00:54]:
Curtis.

Curtis [00:00:54]:
Yeah, that’s fine.

Mark Divine [00:00:55]:
Okay.

Curtis [00:00:56]:
I think we’ve been coming here now.

Mark Divine [00:00:57]:
For about six months. It’s been a while.

Curtis [00:01:00]:
Yeah. Nice.

Mark Divine [00:01:03]:
Can do a little bit of everything in here.

Curtis [00:01:05]:
Small but mighty. Okay, let’s get a mic check.

Mark Divine [00:01:10]:
Test, test, test.

Curtis [00:01:12]:
Mic check, mic check, mic check.

Mark Divine [00:01:15]:
Marker.

Curtis [00:01:15]:
Rolling.

Mark Divine [00:01:16]:
How about a mark check? I need a mark check. Need a cup of coffee? Then you can run out and get one for me. I’m just joking. Did you fly in from Utah?

Curtis [00:01:37]:
There’s no flights from Utah, so I had to drive to Vegas. Oh, and then from Vegas, Vegas down to San Diego.

Mark Divine [00:01:44]:
Oh, that’s where you’d have to go up. Is it shorter to Vegas and to Salt Lake?

Curtis [00:01:47]:
Yeah. Salt Lake’s four hours. Vegas is only two.

Mark Divine [00:01:50]:
Oh, my son is out in Eden, Utah, right now.

Curtis [00:01:54]:
Okay.

Mark Divine [00:01:54]:
We have a little ski condo up there. It’s near Snow Basin. Yeah.

Curtis [00:01:57]:
A lot of skiing up there. But a good skiing.

Mark Divine [00:01:59]:
Yeah, it’s nice. But he likes to drive back and forth. He’s a driver. Not. I don’t like to drive.

Curtis [00:02:04]:
I got a three hour max limit.

Mark Divine [00:02:05]:
Yeah, me too. I fall asleep on the road. He’s like one shot, stops for gas twice and he’s there. Utah’s beautiful, though.

Curtis [00:02:14]:
It’s nice. I like it a lot.

Mark Divine [00:02:19]:
Okay. I feel awkward in these chairs for some reason.

Curtis [00:02:27]:
I know. It’s like.

Mark Divine [00:02:28]:
Like those are more comfortable than these.

Curtis [00:02:30]:
No, no, we have to swap both of them.

Mark Divine [00:02:32]:
Too late, too late, too late.

Curtis [00:02:40]:
What about the pillow, Bun? I think the pillow helps because you’ll go back more. Then you have to put your feet up here.

Mark Divine [00:02:47]:
No, I always do, but now I feel like I’m gonna go cross legged.

Curtis [00:02:51]:
But yeah, these are. Yeah, yeah, I can see that. The baby bumpers. What do you call them? I actually have two big pillows. They’re blue. Huh? Blue.

Mark Divine [00:03:18]:
Blue and gray. Okay. You ready? Curtis, thanks for joining me today, buddy.

Curtis [00:03:24]:
Thanks for having me.

Mark Divine [00:03:25]:
So what got you interested in breath work?

Curtis [00:03:28]:
Let’s go Right there, Right there. Straight shot. I’ve been on a journey like many of us have, and on this journey we have more questions than we do answers. And my journey was a mixture of spiritual journey, but also a healing journey. Quite different, but very similar. And I had a stomach condition where doctors couldn’t heal me. They couldn’t even diagnose me, actually. Really? And never mind heal me.

Curtis [00:03:59]:
And it was a torturous feeling. I couldn’t even explain it to you if I tried. I felt like ants were crawling in my stomach. Yeah. And were they? No.

Mark Divine [00:04:11]:
That’s good.

Curtis [00:04:12]:
But I treated myself as if they were because nobody could understand it. So I was doing parasite cleanses. I could have sworn I had parasites because I was traveling to Thailand and India several times. I had a suit company manufacturer out there. So I was going back there. So I was convinced.

Mark Divine [00:04:31]:
How old were you when this was happening?

Curtis [00:04:33]:
This was a 2013. Around 2013.

Mark Divine [00:04:40]:
Okay.

Curtis [00:04:40]:
So that was. How old was I? 2013. 20. Like 31. 30 or 30 years old, something like that. So. But anyway, so I ended up taking every test for the stomach. Cause they said I didn’t have parasites, but they’re pretty stealthy, so.

Curtis [00:05:01]:
So I’d go to colonoscopy endoscopies. I didn’t even know you could swallow pill cameras.

Mark Divine [00:05:07]:
Oh, no kidding.

Curtis [00:05:08]:
You swallow pill cameras and they go down into your stomach and through your intestines. And you can watch it, like. And I did three of them because they said they couldn’t find nothing. And I’m like, look again, like. So it was a bunch of that. It was torture for five years. And it wasn’t until I went to a tummy massagist is my term, but they call it cnt. A Taoist tummy massager.

Curtis [00:05:32]:
And she was.

Mark Divine [00:05:33]:
I’ve had that done before. It’s pretty intense.

Curtis [00:05:35]:
Yeah, it’s very intense. Especially if you’re holding on to energy in your belly. So she’s poking around in my belly and she goes, wow. She’s like, curtis, your wind gate is really blocked. And she goes, I haven’t seen it this bad. And I’m like, what’s the wind?

Mark Divine [00:05:50]:
Please educate us. It’s a wind gate. Although my acupuncturist probably use that term quite a bit, right?

Curtis [00:05:56]:
Yes.

Mark Divine [00:05:56]:
He says wind gate.

Curtis [00:05:58]:
Yeah. So it’s the energy center in your body where all the new energy comes in old energy leaves, you know, and there’s a lot of power and a lot of energy within our belly. And, you know, Chinese medicine, they Say all of our power, you know, comes, you know, right below, I think, the tantian. Yeah. Three inches below the belly button. And that was blocked and it was clogged, and it was causing all these issues. And she said, hey, you should try breath work. This thing called breathwork.

Curtis [00:06:24]:
So tried my first session, and that.

Mark Divine [00:06:27]:
Blockage was caused by emotional trauma.

Curtis [00:06:30]:
Well, that’s what I get into.

Mark Divine [00:06:32]:
That’s what I figured. So hard goes back to emotions.

Curtis [00:06:35]:
It really does. It’s like the fabric of trauma. Right. So I do this. I have my huge breakthrough, my big, ugly cry. You know, everything is a very cathartic moment.

Mark Divine [00:06:46]:
Well, let’s go back and pause, pause, pause, slow down. So she says, try breathwork. So you just go out to the street and say, hey, will you do some breath work for me?

Curtis [00:06:53]:
She referred me to.

Mark Divine [00:06:54]:
Where did. Where did you go? How did you know to trust? What was it? What was the experience like?

Curtis [00:06:58]:
I didn’t know. But when you’re desperate, you’ll do anything.

Mark Divine [00:07:04]:
That’s true.

Curtis [00:07:04]:
And I was very desperate. And I was trying everything. I’ve been to the jungles and drank ayahuasca and was doing all these cleanses and, you know, 21 day fasting, all this stuff. Nothing was working. And even some things that I thought would work would actually make it worse. So I go to this random breathwork she told me to go to. And we’re breathing, and it was in la. So, you know, I had this.

Curtis [00:07:28]:
I just remember this lady was so skinny. She was like 90 pounds right next to me. And then I had this NFL player, like, played for the Rams. And it was just funny because as.

Mark Divine [00:07:37]:
We start breathing, was it like holotropic breath work? Like, intense through the mouth or what was the.

Curtis [00:07:42]:
Yes, it was. Yeah. Okay, not that particular one, but it was deep, diaphragmatic mouth breathing. And the girl starts crying. You know, five minutes in, and I’m looking over, like, okay. Next thing you know, the NFL player starts crying. And I’m like, what’s wrong with these people? Why is everyone. Before I can even finish the duh.

Curtis [00:08:06]:
But, you know, I went home that night and my stomach pain was gone. It was completely eradicated.

Mark Divine [00:08:15]:
Interesting.

Curtis [00:08:15]:
And I was trying to wrap my head. You know, I’m a very analytical, skeptical person, like, trying to wrap my head around how that was even possible. I’ve been to the jungle. I’ve done this, and all these different things. And one silly breathing technique could fix something where the best doctors, from LA to New York.

Mark Divine [00:08:33]:
That’s incredible. So in One session in one session. And it released it.

Curtis [00:08:37]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:08:38]:
And was that permanent or was it just a temporary salve?

Curtis [00:08:41]:
So at that moment I realized, oh, I get it. The reason why the doctors couldn’t heal me or even diagnose me is because my issue wasn’t physical. It was energetic. You know, it was emotional. Yeah. The stomach pain went away, was gone forever. However, where it all stemmed from because, you know, you have time to piece the puzzles together. Yeah.

Curtis [00:09:05]:
I had a horrific.

Mark Divine [00:09:06]:
Have you come like a personal archeologist?

Curtis [00:09:08]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:09:08]:
You had to excavate your past at that point. Right.

Curtis [00:09:10]:
I had a horrific kundalini awakening, you know, and it didn’t. I didn’t get the Buddha enlightenment where, you know, goes, you know, you become enlightened. I was in India, and the lady was Reflexology, and she hit the bottom of my foot. This is where I believe it stems from. Because nothing was the same after that day. Hit the bottom of my foot and unlock something. And my kundalini began to awaken and. But it awakened down my Pingala.

Curtis [00:09:40]:
So I was burning. Not physical burn. Like, I don’t wish this feeling on my worst enemy. That’s really what I was feeling that entire time for five years. And later learned that it’s quite dangerous to have your kundalini go down your Pingala and people go into kundalini psychosis. Some people.

Mark Divine [00:09:59]:
You wanted to go up to Tsushima, the central channel.

Curtis [00:10:02]:
Oh, yeah. I would have loved that.

Mark Divine [00:10:04]:
Yeah. No, I think that’s really interesting. I wish we had more knowledge around that, you know, just how to prepare for kundalini and then how to activate it and then how to reintegrate it. A lot of people have been really screwed up in the kundalini community and Korea, yoga and, you know, like, even I think, like, with breath work, you know, that you could really move a lot of energy. And if you’re not ready for it energetically, emotionally, physically, then it could mess you up.

Curtis [00:10:33]:
Well, that was the issue, is that I couldn’t find information.

Mark Divine [00:10:39]:
Yeah. And what this much in the West. Yeah.

Curtis [00:10:42]:
I mean, like, Gopi Kushner was the one I think had the closest story to me about his kundalini awakening. And I knew because he was saying things that it was so hard for me to articulate to other people. And that’s like, when, you know, somebody gets it is when they can really articulate the problem better than you can.

Mark Divine [00:11:00]:
Yeah.

Curtis [00:11:01]:
Because you experienced it, you must have the solution. Like, you’re the only one that could articulate the problem. So I really resonated with that. But even still to this day there’s not much upon it.

Mark Divine [00:11:12]:
Do you have any insight into why that happened for your case and describe it a little bit more because I don’t think a lot of people listening would actually know what that means to have the go down the indala.

Curtis [00:11:25]:
Yeah. So your Pingala is your fiery channel. So the fiery energy, they call that your skull.

Mark Divine [00:11:32]:
Let’s see, back a little bit. So we’re talking about the Nadi system.

Curtis [00:11:35]:
Okay, let’s go back. Okay. So what the heck are naughties, right? So I think everybody can knows that we have blood in our body, right? And we have blood in our body because we can see these things called veins and arteries.

Mark Divine [00:11:48]:
Right.

Curtis [00:11:49]:
And this is how the blood gets distributed throughout the body.

Mark Divine [00:11:53]:
Right.

Curtis [00:11:54]:
I think we all can agree, most of us, that no matter what religion you are, that humans are made up of energy. We have energy. You can walk in a room, good vibes, meet person, feels, good guy, bad guy, whatever. So we have energy in our body, but how does that energy get distributed throughout the body that people don’t know? The energy gets distributed throughout the body through something called nadis. Nadis. We have 72,000 of these Nadis that go through our body. And they’re energetic highways for our prana, for our chi. And there’s actually one place in the body where all these nadis intersect.

Curtis [00:12:29]:
And it’s called the Times Square of our energetic body, which is right here. It’s in our gut. Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:12:36]:
That’s interesting. I didn’t know all the naughty’s intersected there. Yeah, I thought they just intersected at the six trackers, the seven chakras.

Curtis [00:12:42]:
Yeah. So all of them will intersect at one point here. And this is why they say this is our power center. This is where our energy comes from. And if you have an issue in your belly, I mean, it’s a really messed up problem to have because 80% of our serotonin is produced there, 80% of our immune system is produced there. It’s where all of our energetic centers intersect. And it’s also called our second brain. Trust your gut feeling, not trust your elbow feeling or trust your ear feeling.

Curtis [00:13:16]:
There’s a lot going on here. And 80% of our health and our happiness is in our gut. So we really get to give more attention to our gut. And that’s the, you know, physical things. The energetics is what I was starting to learn. And you asked why I think the universe wanted me to learn about energetics and the best way to learn about it is to experience the darkest part about it. And you know, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting when everything’s good on the outside and then. But something’s going in on the inside and it’s all energy.

Curtis [00:13:50]:
And I had to learn a lot about that and suffer.

Mark Divine [00:13:55]:
So when you said. So this, this Thai or this Indian person tapped your foot.

Curtis [00:14:03]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:14:04]:
And that was a catalyst trigger to release Kundalini energy, which serpent energy, which stored at the base of the spine. Right. Or somehow.

Curtis [00:14:12]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:14:12]:
Coiled up and you said it came down your Pingala. When normally I think of Kundalini is going up. It came up, up the Sashima channel. So did it go up or did you experience it coming down?

Curtis [00:14:24]:
So when she hit the.

Mark Divine [00:14:25]:
Talk about that experience and what did it feel like to you?

Curtis [00:14:27]:
So when I was in India and she hit my foot, can you guys describe that? The pingua where it runs in the Ida and the shash.

Mark Divine [00:14:37]:
Yeah, first. Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. Can you, um, we can. These are all editable, of course. It’s not in front of a live audience. No, that’s why I looked at you, because I think Catherine’s a yogi. We’re both have about a thousand hours of teacher training in yoga, so this is familiar to us. But I realize most people listening aren’t going to have a clue.

Mark Divine [00:15:02]:
I’ll ask that question again. I just asked. But just describe like a map of the, of the main Nadi systems, you know, Nita, Pindala and Tsushima. And. And related to the Western medical symbol so people really understand what’s going on.

Curtis [00:15:15]:
Yeah. So let’s start with number one out of 72,000.

Mark Divine [00:15:19]:
Exactly 72,000.

Curtis [00:15:21]:
How much time we have here?

Mark Divine [00:15:22]:
We had a lot of time here. Forget about all the peripherals.

Curtis [00:15:24]:
Right.

Mark Divine [00:15:25]:
The acupuncture points and everything. Just the main section.

Curtis [00:15:27]:
So your Shashimna right here is up the middle.

Mark Divine [00:15:29]:
Right. And it’s right up the center of the spine.

Curtis [00:15:31]:
Yep. And then you have your Ida in your Pingala.

Mark Divine [00:15:34]:
Right.

Curtis [00:15:35]:
So the sun and the moon. Yes.

Mark Divine [00:15:37]:
Which represent the different energies.

Curtis [00:15:39]:
So Ida is the moon, which is the one that is. It’s very cooling energy. It’s more feminine. And your Pingala is more masculine. It’s fiery. It has to do with the sun. And those are smaller channels.

Mark Divine [00:15:53]:
But I do think they relate to left brain, right brain thinking at all.

Curtis [00:15:57]:
Oh, absolutely, yeah. And even further than that, emotions, because they, they snake around that. But that middle one is the thick one.

Mark Divine [00:16:06]:
Right.

Curtis [00:16:06]:
And that’s the one you want to have your kundalini awaken and go up that one and come out the crown, and next thing you know, you’re a Buddha.

Mark Divine [00:16:15]:
In order for that to happen, all the chakras need to be clear. What do we mean by clearing a chakra?

Curtis [00:16:21]:
That’s a good point. Because when that awakened, my chakras weren’t clear. I wasn’t doing the work. I was being introduced to the work. It was probably my first three years into it, and I was dipping and dabbling, but I was teeter tottering from two different lifestyles. The hustle, bustle, know, work, go out friends, and then this spiritual lifestyle.

Mark Divine [00:16:43]:
Yeah. Welcome to the club.

Curtis [00:16:44]:
Yeah. You know, and that’s the thing. People need compassion for people. Because there’s always going to be a transition period.

Mark Divine [00:16:49]:
We live in the world. Even though we’re. We want to have a spiritual journey, we can’t. At least in this modern age, we’re not inclined to go sit in a cave somewhere.

Curtis [00:16:57]:
So I wasn’t doing the work and I paid the price. You know, don’t try to go and be spiritual and get all these, you know, things awakened and chakras blown out if you’re not doing the work because, you know, it can be dangerous. And I experienced that. So where my, you know, what happened to me was when she hit my foot and that energy awakened. Now when it awakened, it awakened through the Pangola. So whatever was going on with my Pingala, it felt.

Mark Divine [00:17:32]:
That’s the fire channel.

Curtis [00:17:33]:
That’s the fiery channel. It’s the worst one you want to have. Yeah. And, you know, I felt like my body was burning.

Mark Divine [00:17:41]:
Interesting.

Curtis [00:17:41]:
When I say burning, I don’t mean heat because my body temperature is fine. I didn’t have to wear, you know, take off clothing. It was an electric fire. And it was something that I can’t explain, and I don’t really expect anyone to even understand unless they’ve actually had that. And I don’t know how many people have it because I had so many, so much trouble finding people. Like on YouTube, there’s probably like three people that I could relate to. And YouTube’s a huge place.

Mark Divine [00:18:07]:
And you say it went up. Did it go all the way up the channel? No, because the channel will go up to your pituitary. You know, your six eye or six eye.

Curtis [00:18:17]:
It got stuck in my lower chakra. So from between my root chakra and my sacral chakra, that was the area where it stayed the most amount of time.

Mark Divine [00:18:27]:
Okay, take a Moment, since we were still describing the naughty systems, to describe the chakras, like their location and what their kind of energetic purpose or expression is.

Curtis [00:18:39]:
Your root chakra is kind of near your tailbone, you know, that’s red. That represents, you know, fear, your fears, your security as well. And that’s the base chakras, the first one. And then you move up to your sacral chakra, which is behind your belly button, which is that power center we’re talking about to add to that. It’s orange. But it’s our creativity. And our creativity is our creative life force, energy. So they say that’s the God chakra.

Mark Divine [00:19:07]:
Also. Sexual expression and creation, they’re synonymous, right?

Curtis [00:19:12]:
That creativity and sexuality. This is why a lot of those books, they talk about men transmuting their sexual energy. And when you’re able to do that, you can bring it into more creativity because they’re very much related. Right? And then next one would be your soul plex chakra, which is yellow, right? Represents the sun, you know, the will, your joy. You know, it’s like some people start slunching, like slouching. That solar plexus will cut off, right? So you want to kind of keep that open. And that is your. Your willpower, right?

Mark Divine [00:19:44]:
Your.

Curtis [00:19:44]:
Your desire. Next is the heart chakra, which is the green in color, right? You think it’d be red, but it’s green. All about love, right? Love and compassion. And the next one is the throat chakra, which is the blue, which. Blue represents communication. Even in business. If you look at colors in business, which color should I create? My brand, you know, Blue is trust and communication. There you go, guys.

Mark Divine [00:20:12]:
So authenticity.

Curtis [00:20:13]:
Authenticity, exactly. And true. Speaking your truth, Right, Right. And the next one is your. Your third eye, which is like a indigo, you could say. And that’s your intuition. That’s your pineal gland, and that is your inner vision. And then your crown chakra, which is like a whiter one.

Curtis [00:20:38]:
And that is your connection to the divine. It’s your connection to source. It’s where you get your downloads, your realizations, your epiphanies. And all of them supposed to be working together. And the problem is, is that they don’t work together all the time. Sometimes we get blockages, right?

Mark Divine [00:20:57]:
And caused by trauma. Trauma, Physical unhealth.

Curtis [00:21:01]:
Yep.

Mark Divine [00:21:02]:
Other life circumstances.

Curtis [00:21:03]:
Too many ways to mess those things up.

Mark Divine [00:21:05]:
Yeah. And probably even karmic energy, you know, you can come in with blockages.

Curtis [00:21:10]:
I believe that. Yeah, yeah, I believe that. And my daughter, I believe it because of my daughter. She came in with an attitude. She did. It was so cute and funny and, you know, she grew up. She’s 17 now, and she grew up to be such a beautiful woman, but she came in with a little attitude. It’s just so funny.

Curtis [00:21:27]:
I was looking at some pictures the other day. She’s good. But, yeah, we come in with a bunch of stuff. We all do different levels and magnitudes contingent upon your past lives, that you had ancestral karma, which kind of sucks for paying the price, the things that you didn’t do. But when you incarnate with the soul group, these are some of the arrangements that you make.

Mark Divine [00:21:49]:
Yeah, interesting. Okay, so back to the incident that got you kind of down this road. You had this. Let’s just call it a aborted Kundalini awakening experience. Or maybe a flawed one.

Curtis [00:22:04]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:22:05]:
Because you’d kind of wake up and say, wow, what’s going on? A, this is really painful. B, there’s this energy in this body is intense.

Curtis [00:22:11]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:22:13]:
And so you had to do a little archeological. Archeological work to understand why. Right. What’s going on? And where did that trail lead you?

Curtis [00:22:22]:
Yeah. So some people call it research. I call it me search.

Mark Divine [00:22:26]:
That’s cool.

Curtis [00:22:28]:
You know, and that’s the game at the end of the day is, you know, know thyself.

Mark Divine [00:22:33]:
Yeah, of course.

Curtis [00:22:34]:
That’s it. I love in the Matrix, when he goes to see the Oracle, right? And she says, look above you and there’s a sign. It says, you know, know thyself. So there’s a lot of. A lot of me searching. But ultimately, when I learned breathwork and got certified in breathwork, I was already a certified life coach, certified hypnotherapist, NLP practitioner, Reiki master, ISIS sports fitness professional, and then a bunch of certifications people probably never heard of. So I was collecting certifications and skill sets, and when I found.

Mark Divine [00:23:07]:
Sounds familiar, by the way.

Curtis [00:23:08]:
I know. I was sure.

Mark Divine [00:23:10]:
People used to be a certification junkie. Now I look at it all as a waste of time.

Curtis [00:23:16]:
But in hindsight, you needed those building blocks and those steps. Whether it’s to. Maybe not you, but to gain confidence. There’s a huge thing that people deal with, and that’s imposter syndrome. And when you have those little fancy pieces of paper, it helps a little bit. So it’s a process for everybody. And I think that for me, breathwork was the only one that could become the vehicle to house all of my other skill sets and certifications into one, you know, powerful modality that you didn’t need a tool Everybody can do it. Breathwork is very unassuming, depending on what style.

Curtis [00:23:57]:
Teaching free medicine. Right. And then I. You know, it drives me crazy when people say, oh, you teach alternative medicine? I’m like, no, I teach original medicine. Everything after that is alternative. The breath has been here way before Pfizer and all these other companies. Right. You might have to bleep that one out.

Mark Divine [00:24:14]:
That’s pretty funny. That’s so true. Oh, my gosh.

Curtis [00:24:18]:
So the irony of what I do, and it’s so powerful, you know, you can do very light exercises and be very consistent, and then you could do exercises, breathing exercises that transform the mind and get you into the right mindset, induce creativity, and then very extremely cathartic ones, which is what I had the breakthrough. That’s my main one. Because my goal isn’t just to heal people through the breath. My goal is to create awareness around the breath. And I think that’s what needs to happen for the masses to adopt. Because I’m going into organizations and companies and Fortune 100 companies doing these huge cathartic breathwork. And, you know, they’re waking up. You know, I remember I went to this company called the Capital Group, and, you know, it was way bigger company than I thought it was, but it was in Huntington Beach.

Curtis [00:25:11]:
But they managed. I should have done the research first before I built them, but they managed 2.3 trillion in assets.

Mark Divine [00:25:18]:
Wow.

Curtis [00:25:18]:
Yeah. And I was like, oh, man, I missed.

Mark Divine [00:25:20]:
Yeah, you could have put another zero under that contract.

Curtis [00:25:23]:
And it was. Yeah. And it was in person, breathwork. And there’s 150 people. And it was a live one.

Mark Divine [00:25:28]:
It’s a big group.

Curtis [00:25:29]:
Yeah. And it was all C level, like executives.

Mark Divine [00:25:32]:
And that’s impressive that they did this. Wow.

Curtis [00:25:34]:
So I go and, you know, I go up and I do my song and dance and I bring them through and, you know, the music playing and, you know, the full breathwork detox, you know, the one that I teach.

Mark Divine [00:25:45]:
How long is that process?

Curtis [00:25:46]:
The process has been around 28 minutes for a deep session, what I call them. And, you know, at the very end, there’s people coming up to you. Now, it’s very different when you’re talking to left brain people and right brain people. So what? I work with NASA. NASA, Left Brain Capital Group, Left Brain Nike, a little bit more right brain. So there’s a guy waiting to come and talk to me. And he’s waiting, and he comes and he said, hey, I just want you to know that I was the one that was most skeptical to bring you here today. And I was like, okay.

Curtis [00:26:21]:
And then he goes. But he puts out his hand and he goes, I need to shake your hand because you just made me a believer.

Mark Divine [00:26:29]:
That’s cool.

Curtis [00:26:30]:
And it was the chairman of the company, and I was like, oh. So that moment right there is like, yeah, that’s why I do what I do, because that guy has so much influence. And they asked me to come and do their offices in Hong Kong, you know, because if you start influencing corporations.

Mark Divine [00:26:46]:
And big CEOs, you get 150 people laying down on their back. Laying down your back to do breath work.

Curtis [00:26:52]:
All of them.

Mark Divine [00:26:52]:
Yeah, yeah, we do that. We’ve done it with about 100 before. And we have about a 45 minute process. Yeah, it’s. It’s. We could share the different details, but they’re all basically the same. Yeah, you’re just breathing hard.

Curtis [00:27:06]:
Yeah. Right. Breathe in.

Mark Divine [00:27:08]:
Pushing through the resistance. And you experience all sorts of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual things as you are ready for them.

Curtis [00:27:16]:
As you’re ready for them. It’s a good point. I will say that, you know, I’ve led for tens of thousands of people in over 27 countries now, and I witnessed miracles with this technique. Yeah. You know, I coupled all those other certifications into this one. It’s very simple to do, but it absolutely is the most powerful breathing technique you can ever do. So that’s. There’s a caveat to it.

Mark Divine [00:27:41]:
Yeah, that’s cool. I still feel like I missed something with your healing journey, like, because it’s still happening. It’s still happening. But. Well, okay, so tell me about your childhood and your understanding of the conditioning and traumas that created the Matrix of Curtis.

Curtis [00:28:05]:
Yeah, traumas very much familiar. You know, my mother, one point, was a drug addict. My father, at time, I know each of them went to prison.

Mark Divine [00:28:17]:
No kidding.

Curtis [00:28:19]:
My brother was. I don’t know the proper way to say this, but in the streets.

Mark Divine [00:28:23]:
So you lacked some fundamental nurturing as a child.

Curtis [00:28:26]:
Yes and no. Because, you know, I remember when my mother got out of prison, she made. That was her wake up call. And she made the decision, you know, is this the life that I want to live? And I watched my mother go from being a high school dropout drug addict to going back to getting her ged, going back to college, getting her associates, going back, getting her bachelor’s, going to become a schoolteacher, getting her master’s degree, running guidance departments and school systems. You know, she’s on her third book right now.

Mark Divine [00:29:01]:
That’s great.

Curtis [00:29:02]:
And you know, it’s, you know, so I was very much nurtured. She turned into the best mother I could ever have. And I would never change that for anything. But we definitely experienced some trauma, but we all have. But I’m at the level of consciousness where I’m like one. I needed to have those experiences to shape me and give me compassion for others as I help them, you know. Gotta add a little spice to this life, you know.

Mark Divine [00:29:26]:
No, I’ve often said this, but I’ve done a lot of interviews, especially like with a lot of academic researchers who have the audacity to talk about their own. Her childhood being kind of like perfect and rosy and not having experienced a lot of that. And I’m like, well, that’s interesting. Good for you. It reminded me of when I met my wife, who’s a therapist. I told her I had a perfect family.

Curtis [00:29:54]:
Did your nose grow?

Mark Divine [00:29:55]:
Yeah, my nose? My nose. Well, actually no, but I believed it because you’re inside the bottle, you can’t read the label. And those childhood trauma strategies are there. They’re designed to protect you and so you can’t see the truth because the truth would scare the shit out of you as a kid. It’s life threatening. But as listeners know, I have far from a perfect family and I was 30 years old.

Curtis [00:30:18]:
Right.

Mark Divine [00:30:19]:
Still believing it. Isn’t that fascinating?

Curtis [00:30:21]:
It is fascinating.

Mark Divine [00:30:22]:
So trauma doesn’t discriminate. Trauma is life. Life is trauma. And so if you have a problem with that word, just change it to conditioning.

Curtis [00:30:32]:
Right.

Mark Divine [00:30:32]:
You’re going to have conditioning and come in all shape, size, tastes. Right?

Curtis [00:30:37]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:30:37]:
It’s not all going to be good. It’s going to run the full spectrum.

Curtis [00:30:40]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:30:40]:
And so the key though is as adults, the trauma strategies that we had is a child. Those adaptive strategies don’t work for us. They tend to cause harm to others or disrupt your physical health like they did in your case with your stomach, disrupt relationships. So this is the whole idea of trauma therapy, trauma informed therapy. You know, even, even psychedelics and all the therapeutic processes that you were involved in. You know, people want to go straight to the mystical spiritual beauty and skip all the work. And the work is right if you want to live a happy, healthy life. If you want heaven on earth, you’re not going to find it by just doing the spiritual work.

Mark Divine [00:31:28]:
Unless you live in a cave. If you want to be in relationship, right? And you want to be healthy and thriving, it’s an all in effort, right? Physical, mental, emotional, intuition and spiritual. In fact, I call those the five Mountains. That’s what we work on. Full integration. And the hard part, especially for guys and left brain folks, is the emotional part.

Curtis [00:31:50]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:31:51]:
Working on the trauma, and guys have trouble going there. I think that’s the power of breathwork, is you can get a guy pretty easily to sit down and breathe hard because they treat it like a sport. You know what I mean? That NFL guy was like, yeah, I got this. I can take the ball into the end zone here. This 30 minutes of hardcore breathing. And then, you know, so if that’s the way they approach it, that’s fine, because the breath will still do its work. Even if you’re goal oriented around it.

Curtis [00:32:15]:
Love it. Yeah, right. That’s true.

Mark Divine [00:32:16]:
So there’s an access point that is very easy for a lot of people to. To wrap their heads around. And what they find, though, is at the end of that journey, they’re now being exposed to the emotional stuff that they’ve never had access to before.

Curtis [00:32:31]:
Exactly.

Mark Divine [00:32:32]:
They’re staring it right in the face.

Curtis [00:32:33]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:32:33]:
Or vice versa.

Curtis [00:32:34]:
Yeah. And it’s a big issue, like you said, particularly in men, because we feel like we need to be extra masculine, can’t show our emotions or our vulnerability.

Mark Divine [00:32:47]:
Western culture is that staunch individualist, stoic, and that is exalted. Right. And the problem is it’s incomplete. It’s only 50% of the solution.

Curtis [00:32:57]:
And a lot of people cry and have that big release. It doesn’t matter who’s in the room. I can have a room of 100 people. I’ve done this for Navy Seals. I’ve done this for NFL athletes. I’ve certified some NFL athletes in breathwork, detox and war veterans. Everyone cries, you know, everybody does. There’s no one who’s exempt from crying.

Curtis [00:33:22]:
And I would say without exaggeration, at least 60% of the people in the room will have some sort of release. And then by release, crying is just one of them.

Mark Divine [00:33:35]:
Right.

Curtis [00:33:36]:
Some people laugh hysterically.

Mark Divine [00:33:38]:
Right.

Curtis [00:33:38]:
Some people, their body shakes, arms flying, you know, because the trauma needs to come out. You know, it gets stuck. And then this is why they say the issues are in the tissues.

Mark Divine [00:33:48]:
Right.

Curtis [00:33:48]:
The body keeps score. And the body’s a living library for all these traumas. And the issue is, you know, these traumas have accumulated over the years. And when we’re children and we experience trauma, we don’t have the emotional intelligence at that age to process it.

Mark Divine [00:34:04]:
Right.

Curtis [00:34:04]:
So the body will store it until later. Well, the issue is, I don’t think we all expected this. Left to the body will Store it.

Mark Divine [00:34:11]:
And the psyche will create an adaptive strategy to survive for survival.

Curtis [00:34:15]:
Absolutely.

Mark Divine [00:34:16]:
So you have both and.

Curtis [00:34:18]:
Yes. Double whammy.

Mark Divine [00:34:19]:
Double whammy. And so you can. Like, if you’re all in your head and you’re in talk therapy, this is the reason talk therapy combined with somatic work or breath work is so important, I believe.

Curtis [00:34:29]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:34:29]:
Because if you’re just sitting in talk therapy and you’re a guy and you’re. You got a. And you got a male therapist, let’s just say, doesn’t even matter. You can begin to understand the psychological, you know, adaptation that the child did. You can even think about behavioral patterns that would be, you know, counter it and create better outcomes in life.

Curtis [00:34:53]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:34:53]:
But unless you tackle that underlying energetic emotional pattern, it’s still going to play out.

Curtis [00:35:01]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:35:01]:
Because the emotions then affect, you know, we call that subconscious programming. And the subconscious drives most of your behavior.

Curtis [00:35:08]:
It pings.

Mark Divine [00:35:09]:
Yeah.

Curtis [00:35:10]:
Right. Until you give it attention. Very similar to think of an airplane, right. Where airplane is crashing, you know, this terror going on. Screaming. This is how that happened.

Mark Divine [00:35:22]:
I haven’t experienced it personally.

Curtis [00:35:23]:
Traffic.

Mark Divine [00:35:23]:
Hope I never will.

Curtis [00:35:25]:
Traffic control doesn’t really know what’s going on. The families don’t know what’s going on. Let’s say it crashes and goes under. Well, there’s a thing in that airplane called the black box. That black box is an indestructible box that records everything that’s happening during that time of traumatic event. And then it doesn’t matter if the airplane explodes or goes into the water. That black box, you know, will ping. And you search for the black box.

Curtis [00:35:51]:
Well, our body has these black crystals or all these black boxes in it.

Mark Divine [00:35:54]:
That’s a great metaphor. You know, it’s kind of gruesome.

Curtis [00:35:56]:
It’s gruesome. But this is the right show. I don’t know. A little bit of Navy seal, a little bit.

Mark Divine [00:36:01]:
Life is crashing like an airplane. Don’t worry. You got a black box.

Curtis [00:36:04]:
We got a black box. That black box will continue to ping and ping and ping until you get the black box. You open the box up now, you could be open in Pandora’s box. Right. But when you do open the box, no matter what comes up, no matter what processes, the families are able to get closure of what really happened. And everyone gets a little closure and then it’s done, it’s gone. And you know, sometimes, and it is scary. You’re absolutely right to open up those black boxes within us, see what’s really going on, unpack that trauma you know, so we can release it, so we can let it go.

Curtis [00:36:42]:
Sometimes you have to feel it to heal it, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you can release things without it having to filter through, you know, your conscious mind. Right.

Mark Divine [00:36:51]:
Now we know that with vets, sometimes, like you don’t need to remember incidences to heal from them.

Curtis [00:36:56]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:36:57]:
You just work with the energy and the feeling. And that’s why sometimes we don’t use imagery. Work with vets who are suffering from serious complex.

Curtis [00:37:04]:
Why is that?

Mark Divine [00:37:06]:
Because it’s too hard for them. It’s dangerous for them to relive the experience.

Curtis [00:37:11]:
Gotcha.

Mark Divine [00:37:11]:
To retraumatize from the experience. And a lot of times they can’t remember. And this also works for extreme abuse, childhood abuse, like sexual assault or something like that. The memory is actually blocked and so the individual can’t access the memory.

Curtis [00:37:26]:
Yes.

Mark Divine [00:37:27]:
And the point is you don’t have to remember it to heal from it.

Curtis [00:37:31]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:37:31]:
You just have to locate the energy. Thank God, move the energy. So I’m so curious about a few questions about your breathing, but also, you know, I think of a breath session, like a 30 minute or 45 minute, like intense holotropic breathing or, you know, breath detox, what you do as an activation or a release or an opportunity for release or some sort of opportunity to transcend. But then it’s just kind of like the beginning. It’s like life before, now there’s life after. But it doesn’t suddenly turn you into a saint. There’s a lot of work to do for reintegration, for understanding how those trauma patterns are still driving behavior. And that’s where a mindfulness practice or a practice of integration could come in really handy.

Mark Divine [00:38:22]:
Do you work in that way, like for clients who maybe have a longer term relationship with you? Like use the breath, like a psychedelic experience as a catalyst and then you work with them on a daily practice to integrate and to heal. And I would love, you’d love for you to talk about that juxtaposition of breathwork as a catalyst versus breath work and mindfulness as a daily practice.

Curtis [00:38:42]:
Yeah. So even in my, not even my longer term clients, but anyone who from this day forward, this was starting six months ago, we started to include an integration station after each breathwork because people would go through the breathwork. And then some people are like, I want to sign up for a membership. I want you to certify me in teacher training. And some people are like, what just happened? My life’s falling apart. But those are the people who have a lot of things packed. And you gotta treat these people differently. So we started.

Curtis [00:39:14]:
Cause a lot of this we do is virtual. And we started having breakout rooms. Okay. If you had this experience, go here. If you’re interested in taking breathwork further, go here. And then if you had a deep process and you feel like you haven’t processed, or maybe you have some questions, come into the integration station. And then in that integration station, we have a certified teacher who talks to them, answers Q&As, journaling. I think journaling is underrated of what it can do for helping people process.

Curtis [00:39:49]:
But journaling and then having somebody that you can talk to, those two most important things, if you just know, you can go to somebody and ask them something. And the other one’s for you. Right? So those two things, the breathwork is the catalyst, right? To awake, it’s the grenade. And I like to give the example of. Think of like cleaning your car. Breathwork is like cleaning your car with a power washer, right? That’s what you want to do. Meditation. Yeah.

Curtis [00:40:20]:
It’s like cleaning your car with a toothbrush, right. It’s like there’s only so much you could do. I use all of them. Breathwork, yoga, meditation. But in very different ways for different reasons. They’re all tools. But after someone does this huge experience, it’s good to have maintenance. And that maintenance should be something that.

Curtis [00:40:43]:
Just something that you’ll do. Right. I think everyone’s different. And whether that’s journaling, whether that’s meditation, whether that’s yoga, whether that’s mindfulness, and probably mindfulness, out of all those is the hardest one is being aware at all times. As much as somebody thinks that they are. You can always find more awareness. And I find it daily, even at the airport.

Mark Divine [00:41:08]:
It’s a moment to moment practice.

Curtis [00:41:10]:
Moment to moment practice.

Mark Divine [00:41:12]:
Let’s define this real quick for people, because a lot of people just bucket all of this under the term meditation. They would even say breathing, breathwork, breath awareness. We teach a practice of box breathing. People think, oh, that’s meditation. Visualization is meditation. Mindfulness is meditation. Right? And so meditation to me is like a term that is like a bucket. It can wrap around and be inclusive of hundreds, if not thousands of different practices.

Mark Divine [00:41:42]:
So when we’re talking about like strictly using meditation to talk about it as a singular practice, then it looks a lot like a session, 20 minutes or so or 30 minutes, where you’re doing something with your mind. And it can be like a Zen practice of concentration. It can Be following a guided meditation. It can be some sort of non dual meditation where you’re just trying to touch spirit. It could even look like contemplation. Right. Like read a Bible verse, sit there and contemplate it. So those are all what I would call meditation.

Mark Divine [00:42:17]:
Mindfulness is when you take the meditation off the mat and you’re working to keep your mind radically focused in the present, which means you gotta keep it out of the linear left brain, which is always either remembering or projecting. So it’s much more of a holistic and even right brain practice. But to be able to do this while you’re engaged in conversation, in work and everything.

Curtis [00:42:44]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark Divine [00:42:45]:
And so, like you said, it’s extremely hard. It’s not taught very well. That’s why in the. In the east, it’s usually generally taught as an outcome of a long period of strict seated meditative practice. And when the student’s ready to take it off the mat, then the practice will be right. Just inhale, exhale, pay attention, pay attention, and try to get to that moment that precedes the thought to be able to observe the whole process.

Curtis [00:43:19]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:43:20]:
Anyway, so. So that’s mindfulness. Right. Meditation is still like, depends on what you’re trying to accomplish, how you’re trying to train your. Train your mind.

Curtis [00:43:29]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:43:30]:
And breathwork. I like this new kind of era where breathwork is being kind of separated out as its own thing.

Curtis [00:43:37]:
Yeah, yeah. You know, I’m glad about that.

Mark Divine [00:43:40]:
I think that’s kind of cool because it is, it is. It has a physiological aspect to it. It’s got a psychological. It’s got an emotional, intuitive, and even a spiritual aspect. So it’s so rich.

Curtis [00:43:51]:
Yeah. And depending on which breathwork, you know, it’s more like breath work. The holotropic breath work detox is more Yang. And some people, that’s all how they learn.

Mark Divine [00:44:03]:
Right.

Curtis [00:44:03]:
They can’t sit still. Like, there’s a lot of people struggling, whether you believe it or not, with adhd. Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:44:09]:
And they shouldn’t be doing Wim hof.

Curtis [00:44:11]:
Yeah. It’s like, you know, some people can’t concentrate.

Mark Divine [00:44:16]:
Right.

Curtis [00:44:16]:
It’s really hard for them to sit down, sit still, and don’t think a thought, you know, for the next 20 minutes.

Mark Divine [00:44:23]:
Oh, I see what you’re saying.

Curtis [00:44:24]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:44:24]:
So they’re contraindicative to like doing a meditation, but breath work will work with them.

Curtis [00:44:30]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:44:30]:
So that what I was going. What I was saying about that is even when it comes to breath work, the type of breath work that Someone who’s in hyperarousal or has ADD or ADHD should do is going to be different than someone who’s like, maybe an athlete and has done some concentration training through athletics or endurance sports or something like that. This is why it’s gotta be very personalized or at least thoughtfully. Right.

Curtis [00:44:55]:
See, I think that’s what it is. Because if we could, you go to the doctors, you sit down, they hear you out, they pull out their pad, they write you a script for some pills. Maybe we do the same with people. You come, you write them a script.

Mark Divine [00:45:10]:
For what they need.

Curtis [00:45:11]:
Maybe meditation, maybe this type of meditation, because there is more than one. Maybe yoga, but Kriya Yoga, Kundalini Yoga and flow yoga, completely different yogas. They’ll do completely different things to your body. This breath work, that breathwork technique, different techniques will activate certain energy centers within the body. Maybe we start prescribing them certain techniques. And I think that comes down to the quality of your teacher as well. Because a good teacher will look at you and say, you don’t need that. You know what? You need this.

Curtis [00:45:45]:
Because we all have our opinions on different modalities. There’s certain modalities that you love that work well for you, but it could be the complete opposite for somebody else on a similar but different path. But at the end of the day, for me, it was what worked for me. I needed to know what moved the needle. I was suffer.

Mark Divine [00:46:06]:
Like me, you had to experience a whole ton of different things to figure out what was going to work. And some of them, A, didn’t work or B, actually kind of set you back.

Curtis [00:46:14]:
Yeah, right.

Mark Divine [00:46:16]:
Or became obstacles. I got involved in this work through Zen, right? And when I was 21. And so for years, that was my go to.

Curtis [00:46:26]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:46:26]:
Concentration training and literally took a Zajin instructor to like, smack me upside the head and said, mark, you’re a freaking ex Navy seal, right? You’ve written five books. Like, you don’t need to learn to concentrate anymore. You let that shit go, right? Move on. Yeah, yeah, that’s a good point. Don’t need to practice it anymore. And, you know, I was reminded of, like, Karate Kid, right?

Curtis [00:46:53]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:46:53]:
So you go, the kid goes to Miyagi. He wants to. He wants to go right to the secret sauce. And he goes, no, no, go to wax on, wax off.

Curtis [00:47:00]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:47:01]:
And so a lot of people actually need that, right? That’s like when I talk to a lot of people say they want to go right to, you know, the really cool meditative practices and I said, no, you know, what you need to do is lose some weight.

Curtis [00:47:13]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:47:13]:
And move your body and get healthy. Right. So those fundamental things like get the body healthy, because the body and the brain, the body and the mind are not separate. Same.

Curtis [00:47:21]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:47:22]:
And so if you’re getting your body healthy, you’re getting your brain healthy, you’re getting brain healthy, you’re getting your mind healthy, everything’s healthy. And working your gut. And like you said that second brain. Now all of a sudden, when you sit down to do the breath work, whether it’s a daily practice or even like an intense session, you’re gonna have a really different experience with it.

Curtis [00:47:40]:
Yeah. You know, really different experience.

Mark Divine [00:47:42]:
A much better experience.

Curtis [00:47:43]:
And I’ll say that was. That was the benefit of. Of implementing the deep diaphragmatic cleaning out breath work. Because what I noticed that, you know, you run the risk of blowing someone’s top right. In the deep diaphragmatic breathwork.

Mark Divine [00:48:00]:
That’s what happened with the Kundalini peeps.

Curtis [00:48:02]:
Yeah. So.

Mark Divine [00:48:03]:
And it’s a small percentage straight through the crown chakra. Blew it off.

Curtis [00:48:06]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:48:07]:
And no reintegration.

Curtis [00:48:08]:
Yeah. And I was one of them. So I do have compassion for that in a particular area. But it was, you know, ironically, also the thing that. That saved me and was able to move the energy that was stuck and cleared out. But what I noticed is that for the masses, when they. When they do the deep diaphragmatic, usually that’s the one that’s going to awake them, you know, wake them up to the power of the breath. Like, oh, my God, I didn’t know that was possible just through breathing.

Curtis [00:48:36]:
Right. And that’s what it takes to get somebody on the path. So that’s always kind of been my intention, to awaken people and to give them the right tools. But also what I noticed is that it made meditations for them more effective and more enjoyable. Because trying to meditate when you got all this junk and gunk energetically going on, you can’t focus, you can’t concentrate. It’s not enjoyable. And that’s why I was saying, trying to get some. The average human to sit down, sit still, and don’t think a thought for the next 20 minutes, they’re gonna get more stressed out.

Curtis [00:49:06]:
So meditation is even more of an advanced practice because of all this crap that’s going on.

Mark Divine [00:49:10]:
That’s right.

Curtis [00:49:11]:
So by giving them that, you know, deep diaphragmatic breath work detox, it opens up their mind. It opens up to the power of breathwork. It clears them out and it allows for them to settle into these other maintenance that become more effective and more enjoyable. So I noticed a lot of that working with people and which is why I always introduce breathwork detox to them, to have them experience that.

Mark Divine [00:49:34]:
Yeah, I think it’s important pretty much again for anyone here in the West. Most people are in a state of hyperarousal. They’re just not aware of it because their body is compensated. And so that diaphragmatic breathing that massage the vagus nerve, it’s activating that parasympathetic rest digest. So it’s calming you down and just that is going to allow your brain to, you know, to slow down and drop into that alpha state where you’ll find success with, you know, other, what.

Curtis [00:50:01]:
You call maintenance practices and consciousness. Right. So you hear that word thrown around all the time. But when you’re doing the mouth breathing now, first of all, 99.99% of the time you should be breathing through your nose. That’s right, you shouldn’t be breathing through your mouth. Even people now, they’re taping their mouth when they shut. But this one technique is the only time really you should be breathing through your mouth. You know, unless you’re like a boxer.

Mark Divine [00:50:26]:
10Th round boxer, extreme intense work out or something like that, which is okay. But you always want to get back to the nausea breathing exactly as soon as possible.

Curtis [00:50:34]:
But when you do this technique and you’re going deep into your belly first, you’re not hyperventilating, right? You’re going to your belly first, then coming up here. This offsets the distress trigger massages that vagus nerve puts calm into you. But when you are breathing in that air, that air is consciousness.

Mark Divine [00:50:55]:
That’s right.

Curtis [00:50:55]:
So if I close my mouth and I stopped breathing right now, for three, four minutes I held my breath. I wouldn’t die. My brain would start going. My brain would still be going, my heart would still be beating. What would I lose? I lose consciousness, right? That was the first thing that would go. But when you breathe in that air consciously, right, in this, in this particular manner, you’re breathing in consciousness. And people get all types of amazing ideas and realizations, epiphanies. Because you’re breathing in so much vital life force energy, so much consciousness, you know, God energy.

Curtis [00:51:31]:
There’s also something happening in the brain calling, happening in the brain called transient hypofrontality.

Mark Divine [00:51:36]:
That’s a new one for me. Transient hypo frontality.

Curtis [00:51:40]:
Yeah. So it’s when the prefrontal cortex begins to quiet down while you’re conscious and breathing. And that’s the part of the brain that’s like the executive decision maker.

Mark Divine [00:51:48]:
It’s like open up to more holistic thinking. Right.

Curtis [00:51:52]:
This is good, this is bad. You know, some people call it the judge, the mind critic, the judge, jury.

Mark Divine [00:51:59]:
And the executioner, the ego, whatever you.

Curtis [00:52:02]:
Want to call it. But that, that, that monkey mind, when you quiet that down, you go into a space of kind of wholeness and oneness. Usually around, you know, somewhere after 12 minute mark in breathwork, people will go into that transient hypofrontality. Steven Kotler talks a lot about the flow state. It’s another word for flow state. And that’s why, you know, people in the breath work, if you ever watch them, even if you’ve never breathed before, you’ll see, like their arms going like this. And they’re just in this oneness and this dancing, you know, all different reactions, but that’s one of them. And yeah, I value the clarity, you know, because the opposite of clarity is confusion, and confusion is temporary insanity.

Curtis [00:52:45]:
So I value clarity the older, and, you know, the older I get as well. So I think that’s one of the big things besides, you know, the deep emotional healing, the clarity. We all need that stuff.

Mark Divine [00:53:00]:
Can you describe your breath practice itself?

Curtis [00:53:03]:
Yeah, my personal one.

Mark Divine [00:53:04]:
Well, the one you teach or your personal. Or both.

Curtis [00:53:07]:
Yeah. Okay. Because, you know, I have my own. That I do. Because I don’t do deep sessions, you know, like I, like, I teach. I do the. I teach those every two weeks.

Mark Divine [00:53:14]:
You’ve done them? I’ve done like almost a hundred of them, but they’re not necessary to do that often.

Curtis [00:53:21]:
I’ve done the deep diaphragmatic breathwork detox, 30 minute sessions every single day for 10 months.

Mark Divine [00:53:27]:
Okay. Wow, that’s interesting.

Curtis [00:53:29]:
Yeah, but that was like more of, you know, looking back, I think it was more of my initiation into the breath. To teach it, I had to really understand what it does, you know, And I’ve done that. I don’t do it anymore. I don’t, I don’t. I don’t need to do that much breath work, you know, But I do. The kind that I teach is deep diaphragmatic breath work. In through the mouth, out through the mouth. Two breaths in, one breath out.

Curtis [00:53:55]:
Deep into the belly. Two breaths in, two breaths, two breaths in. A lot of people do one. You’ll have a completely different experience if you do two breaths in.

Mark Divine [00:54:04]:
Right.

Curtis [00:54:04]:
And you have to go deep into the Belly. Now, you watch people, and some people’s bellies don’t move at all, right? And that’s because they’re stuck in paradoxical breathing. You know, they. You take them to take a deep breath. Everyone does this.

Mark Divine [00:54:19]:
Your chest expands, your belly should expand.

Curtis [00:54:21]:
The belly never breathes. Even if I catch myself, you know, even sitting here, if I’m breathing up here, I’ll just do at least one and get one down there because you gotta really learn to breathe down here. And the reason why people don’t breathe into their belly is because this thing happened to us called life. And you get these stresses, you get these traumas. And there’s other issues too, of why that doesn’t happen. But breathing down deep into that belly, that is the main part of the detox and even the reason we call it breathwork detox is because it is a physical, mental, emotional, spiritual detox. You are detoxing your naughties right in those energetic channels, right? You have energy in motion, right? They call emotion energy, emotion. Well, what happens when you get a block? Not good.

Curtis [00:55:09]:
It’s like water, right? Think of the water when it hits the dam or there’s a block.

Mark Divine [00:55:12]:
It’s like a rock.

Curtis [00:55:13]:
It goes in other areas, going to.

Mark Divine [00:55:16]:
Create some turbulence and water’s got to flow around it.

Curtis [00:55:18]:
This is why people don’t feel comfortable in their own body, right? We’re energetic. We’re energetic beings. So the one thing that connects all the knives together. Take a guess, guys. The breath. The breath will cleanse and clear. And you can, you know, go like this and just do one of those. You can go this one.

Curtis [00:55:37]:
Now you’re just clearing out the Pingala. So there’s a lot of breathing alternate. That’s really good. 1. To balance the energetics within your body. To be able to clear the breath is the thing that’s going to be able to clear those stuck emotions.

Mark Divine [00:55:51]:
So that intense practice is just that for 30 minutes. Or is there some other structure? Any. No breath holds or anything like that?

Curtis [00:55:59]:
No, I don’t do breath holds. I know some teachers do breath holds. I know Wim Hof does breath holds personally for this practice. No, because I don’t want the conscious mind involved. Because when people are sitting there, they’re like, all right, cold every 30 breaths. And like, wait, 17, eight, nine, wait, what was I on again? And then they go back to one and then their brain’s kind of whatever. So I just want to go in there and I want them just to focus on taking the next breath as Their best breath, the next breath as their fullest breath. But I do breath holds personally, because I’ll do breath work every single morning, and I’ll just do, you know, short sets of 10.

Curtis [00:56:37]:
I’ll do a deep session every two weeks, and then mostly awareness breathing, which means, like, you know, I like to gamify it, and I, you know, teach that to people. You know, I think the most underrated breathing technique is the sigh.

Mark Divine [00:56:52]:
That’s a great one.

Curtis [00:56:53]:
It’s a great one.

Mark Divine [00:56:54]:
My friend Dan Brulee has really pioneered that one.

Curtis [00:56:59]:
Oh, he has. Actually, you know, I’ve been to quite a few of Dan’s workshops in LA and New York, and he was one of the guys that yawn, too.

Mark Divine [00:57:06]:
This is a more recent thing to talk about the yawn and how to activate the yawn and the benefits for, like, a reset of your entire nervous system from the yawn. The sign yawn, have a lot of similarities.

Curtis [00:57:16]:
Yeah. Because if the body’s natural way of releasing pain and stress and tension from the body. Just think when it builds up, it builds up. It builds up, it builds up. Then the body goes. And you have that sigh of what? Relief. Right. We want that sigh of relief.

Curtis [00:57:32]:
But the cool thing is we can consciously do that. You know, we can induce that in the body and just. And, like, what Dan talks about, it’s not the inhale, it’s the exhale.

Mark Divine [00:57:45]:
Right.

Curtis [00:57:46]:
And what I tell my students is when you release that exhale, I want you to release something else along with it. Something that doesn’t serve you, something that’s not in your highest and greatest good, something that you’ve been holding on to. And that little switch in the mind, that intention is everything, and it’s a huge release. And just doing three of those in a row. And you can gamify it where like, okay, well, when are you gonna do it? Do it three times a day. People get stuck in their days. They don’t know when to do it. They don’t allocate the proper time to do it.

Curtis [00:58:13]:
Okay. Every time you walk through a doorway, do one sigh.

Mark Divine [00:58:16]:
That’s right.

Curtis [00:58:17]:
Every time you see a red car, do a sigh. Right. Whatever it is. But you know what they learned that way? They like it. You know, so I’ll do it. You know, let’s switch it up. So, yeah, man, it’s working with.

Mark Divine [00:58:30]:
Every time you see a trauma pattern play out all day long. Oh, boy, there’s another one.

Curtis [00:58:39]:
Those are hard to catch, though. That’s. That’s the. That’s that mindfulness awareness.

Mark Divine [00:58:43]:
Right.

Curtis [00:58:43]:
That’s the game that I’m playing every day, you know, even the airport. You know, I just noticed like, you know, when I first started the spiritual journey. Do you judge people? No, I don’t judge people. I started the mindfulness. I was like, wow, I judged.

Mark Divine [00:58:55]:
There’s a lot of people.

Curtis [00:58:56]:
Like, you know, and then now I remember one lady, she changed it for me, and I was. This was after Covid, like a year or two after Covid. And this lady was wearing a mask. And she’s wearing the mask, and I’m like judging on my head, like, why is she wearing the mask? And I actually said something to her. But this was meant to happen. So guys, don’t judge me. This is meant to happen.

Mark Divine [00:59:17]:
We’re working on our non judgment.

Curtis [00:59:18]:
And I just said, why are you wearing a mask? You know, Covid’s been over for a year, and she said, I’m actually really, really sick, and I don’t want to get. And I don’t want to get other people sick. I said, oh, my God. I was about to school around breath work.

Mark Divine [00:59:32]:
No, no, I totally get it. A lot of times, you know, they’re medical professionals.

Curtis [00:59:36]:
Yeah, that’s another one.

Mark Divine [00:59:38]:
You know, and so I learned that one too. I was like, wow.

Curtis [00:59:40]:
But this is what it taught me.

Mark Divine [00:59:41]:
That’s. That’s mindfulness right there. Just watching your mind propensity to judge, categorize, classify.

Curtis [00:59:48]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [00:59:49]:
And project. And so getting in and just watching, that’s mindfulness. Because when you become the watcher or the witness, then that’s mindfulness.

Curtis [00:59:59]:
So this is.

Mark Divine [01:00:00]:
And then of course, you got to work on the non reactivity.

Curtis [01:00:02]:
Well, that’s the part.

Mark Divine [01:00:04]:
Watching is one thing you got to watch with non attachment.

Curtis [01:00:08]:
So what I do to myself now, I trick myself. You know, because we’re tricking ourselves every single day. Right. You said, you said earlier, you know, you said you thought your family, by the way, no offense to your family. I’m just going off what Mark said. You know, they’re perfect, they’re this and that. But that’s your belief system. So we tell ourselves things and we believe that.

Curtis [01:00:26]:
But instead I found myself judging people. So then if like a car was going really fast and cut me off, instead of flicking them off or road raging them, I would say, oh, wow, that guy has his daughter in the car.

Mark Divine [01:00:40]:
He’s having a tough day.

Curtis [01:00:41]:
Yeah, he has his daughter in the car. She has an appendix that’s about to burst, and he’s trying to get her to the hospital. This person just lost their job. And this. I just make things up in my head. But it changed the energy from anger to compassion.

Mark Divine [01:00:55]:
Yeah.

Curtis [01:00:55]:
And that ended up being my compassion exercise. I said, oh, yeah. They just cut me off. Yeah. They just did the. Yeah, they did all this. But instead of reacting in the way that 99.9% time react, what if this. What if this happened? What if.

Curtis [01:01:10]:
And I’m like, oh, and now I feel compassion. Who cares if I lied to myself? Because we’re doing it anyway. But it was. The real exercise was switching from anger to compassion and how fast I could do it. And it worked.

Mark Divine [01:01:23]:
That’s a great practice. Yeah, I love that. Amazing. You’ve written a book. What’s the title of the book?

Curtis [01:01:30]:
I’ve written two books. One’s called the world is yours, the Secrets behind the secret. And the second one is Breathwork, Detox, how to thrive in the age of anxiety.

Mark Divine [01:01:38]:
Which is now.

Curtis [01:01:39]:
Which is now. Yeah. Which is like. For me to be on this couch from where I came from, talking to you is like a miracle. You know, people think, you know, because I’ve, you know, I’ve been teaching breath work, and I’ve been. I’m the best breather in the world. No, no, guys. I was actually the worst breather in the world.

Curtis [01:01:57]:
The worst, like, holding my breath. I remember when I was clenching my fist, holding my breath, and. And that’s the only reason why I noticed. I went gasping for air, and I’m like, oh, something’s wrong. Something’s not right, you know? So I had to retrain myself how to breathe. Conscious breathing, everyone’s breathing, but not everyone’s consciously breathing or at least aware of their breathing. So that’s how I got into breath work. It’s just like, okay, now, what else could I learn of breath work? I got the deep diaphragmatic.

Curtis [01:02:29]:
But what else is there? What’s the maintenance? How do I stop holding my breath? And just started to really clean and weed out all the trauma and the garbage. I just heard my Rhode island accent. The garbage. Park the car in the garage. I never catch it. Which is. See, that’s interesting.

Mark Divine [01:02:49]:
It’s mindfulness.

Curtis [01:02:50]:
Yeah, yeah.

Mark Divine [01:02:51]:
But you didn’t catch it before it came out.

Curtis [01:02:54]:
Okay, okay, That’s a challenge.

Mark Divine [01:02:56]:
Dan, my Zajin instructor, the same one who told me to stop concentrating. He talked about catching the snake at the head instead of at the tail.

Curtis [01:03:04]:
Oh, interesting.

Mark Divine [01:03:05]:
Catching the snake at the head would be like in witnessing, which is the power, the time speed of now. Right. Whereas when it. When it starts to go into the left brain formulation of thought, it’s like ten thousandths of a second later.

Curtis [01:03:19]:
Well, that’s the mastery.

Mark Divine [01:03:19]:
So speed of now is you see it happening and you just cut it at the head.

Curtis [01:03:23]:
Yeah, that’s the mastery. When you able to catch it from the head now. But still, to give yourself credit, if you catch it from the tail, because that’s where it starts.

Mark Divine [01:03:32]:
At least you’re catching it.

Curtis [01:03:33]:
At least you’re catching it. And that’s a lot of things. Even some. When people like myself, you say you do something that you’re like, oh man, I shouldn’t have done that, or I.

Mark Divine [01:03:41]:
Should have, because you have time to now recover from it. And that’s the healing process.

Curtis [01:03:46]:
You know, just being aware. Okay. You know, don’t beat yourself up because you did that or said that or whatever it is. Realizing that you messed up or realizing whatever, you know, and saying, okay, cool, next time I’ll do that.

Mark Divine [01:03:58]:
Well, and also gives you. When in relationships, gives you an opportunity to heal that right away.

Curtis [01:04:02]:
Yes.

Mark Divine [01:04:03]:
As opposed to having those things kept sweeping them under the rug and.

Curtis [01:04:06]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [01:04:07]:
Not being aware of them.

Curtis [01:04:08]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [01:04:09]:
And then that just bleeds off. Trust.

Curtis [01:04:12]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [01:04:13]:
Amazing. So you teach Breathwork and certified coaches. Where do people. Where can they go to learn more about the work?

Curtis [01:04:21]:
Yeah. So Breathwork Detox is the website and on the website has the program suite, so you can go there if you’re interested in virtual events, which I lead every two weeks if you wanted to go to and get certified. In Breathwork, we do trainings every three months and virtual on demand corporate breathwork as well, which, you know, I’m putting my energy mostly into corporate and into training teachers so they can go out there and like, that’s the only way I can be as effective as I want to. I stopped doing one on ones five years ago, four years ago, something like that. And I do like large groups. Like, I like making that big impact and just waking people up. And then all my teachers are the ones that kind of hold their hands afterwards, bring them through the integration process. So it’s a nice little system that we have.

Curtis [01:05:05]:
But they can go to Breathwork Detox and it’s all there. And if they want to get in touch with me, I’m constantly posting about, you know, breath work and, you know, spirituality and a lot of the things that you talk about here, which is impressive, by the way. I watched listen to a podcast on the way here. I was like, okay, this guy’s Cool. Yeah, yeah. So man from the Stars is my Instagram name.

Mark Divine [01:05:26]:
Cool.

Curtis [01:05:26]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [01:05:27]:
Man from the Stars.

Curtis [01:05:28]:
I wanted to ask you something. So did you ever reach Steel and Fire by Cutler?

Mark Divine [01:05:32]:
Yeah, I know.

Curtis [01:05:33]:
So you remember the part in there where he talks about he went to work with the Navy seals and they were working in float tanks, and then they were doing, like, affirmations in the float tanks. I asked Steven about that and, like, you know, it was one of his workshops. And he goes, you know, that’s one of the things that I get asked about. And the Navy seals told me I shouldn’t have published that. He got yelled at. But putting that part in there, it was, like, secretive. Like, he wasn’t like, whatever. Do you know anything about, like, why the float tanks? Why? Like, it seems like to me, it seems like a really powerful biohack that the Navy SEALs learned that they didn’t want to give to everybody.

Mark Divine [01:06:08]:
Here’s what was going on there. So nowadays, the seals, through their human performance program, will do these things that we’re talking about for peak performance, for development. But when Stephen was working with them, they were doing it for recovery, for healing trauma. And those are protected client privileged relationships. Does that make sense?

Curtis [01:06:36]:
Okay.

Mark Divine [01:06:36]:
Yeah. They were doing it for post traumatic stress.

Curtis [01:06:39]:
Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Okay, I didn’t know that.

Mark Divine [01:06:41]:
Yeah. And because as you know, breath work can be used to heal trauma, like we talked about, but also to go from good to great.

Curtis [01:06:48]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [01:06:49]:
You know, that’s like mind meal, mind program. I work with really successful people, but I also have a foundation that works with vets that use the same program for post medic stress recovery.

Curtis [01:06:59]:
Gotcha, gotcha.

Mark Divine [01:06:59]:
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what the situation was.

Curtis [01:07:02]:
Yeah, yeah. Because. Yeah, he didn’t go all the way in.

Mark Divine [01:07:07]:
And it’s. It’s kind of a. I love Steven, but he’s like the thousands of people who say they work with the seals. It’s a little bit of a reach.

Curtis [01:07:15]:
Yeah, yeah. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

Mark Divine [01:07:18]:
You know what I mean? Yeah.

Curtis [01:07:19]:
I worked with the seals. Guys. Hey, take a breath.

Mark Divine [01:07:25]:
Because you work with the SEALs. We did breath work with the Navy SEALs. That’s it. That’s awesome. What a great conversation. I really appreciate you coming here and doing this with me.

Curtis [01:07:35]:
Yeah. Thank you.

Mark Divine [01:07:36]:
I know you came all the way down from St. George, Utah.

Curtis [01:07:41]:
Yeah, well, China. Really? Yeah, I went from. It was in Tibet and then the jungle, and then I came to Utah. Incredible experience, but it was cool. Yeah, I enjoyed it.

Mark Divine [01:07:53]:
Catherine just spent Weeks down in Ecuador.

Curtis [01:07:56]:
Oh, nice.

Mark Divine [01:07:57]:
Doing a vision quest and some ceremonies.

Curtis [01:08:00]:
Nice.

Mark Divine [01:08:01]:
Yeah, yeah, I’m due for something like that. I don’t know if I want to do the ayahuasca again, though. You done a vision quest, though? I’ve done it three times.

Curtis [01:08:08]:
Okay. Was it. Was it three times singular or was different experiences? Okay, I gotcha.

Mark Divine [01:08:14]:
Yeah, I’ve never done, like, consistent nights.

Curtis [01:08:18]:
Okay.

Mark Divine [01:08:18]:
Actually kind of scares me a little bit.

Curtis [01:08:20]:
I just did 6 and 12 days, but this is my third time going to the same place, so it’s called the Temple of the Way of Light, and it was my third time there. Anyone who wants to go try ayahuasca for the first time, I would absolutely go there. I know there’s other places, like Rythmia. This is in Quitos. Peru.

Mark Divine [01:08:39]:
Peru, yeah.

Curtis [01:08:40]:
And they just. They got it down. It’s very professional. They work with the original Shipbo tribes.

Mark Divine [01:08:45]:
It’s so important to have that authenticity and the original Shamas and that lineage.

Curtis [01:08:50]:
So important. Because it is dangerous if you go to someone’s house in LA on a Sunday.

Mark Divine [01:08:57]:
Totally.

Curtis [01:08:57]:
Which I’ve got invited many, many times. And hey, you want to do breath work? We’re doing ayahuasca. No, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want anything to do with that. Don’t even say talk to me.

Mark Divine [01:09:05]:
Yeah.

Curtis [01:09:07]:
So, yeah, they just got. They. They got it down and I’m fresh from there, so I’m like, you know, it’s. And watch the progression.

Mark Divine [01:09:14]:
Full autumn light.

Curtis [01:09:15]:
The Temple of the Way of Light. I could have gave him a better way, but it’s a little long. Good testimonial, but really, really, really good. And, you know, they, you, every one that you do, you’re peeling back more layers. So they’ll do six ceremonies in 12 days. And you’re in that container.

Mark Divine [01:09:33]:
Yeah.

Curtis [01:09:33]:
You know, no phone. I didn’t touch my phone for, you.

Mark Divine [01:09:35]:
Know how many people?

Curtis [01:09:37]:
21, 22.

Mark Divine [01:09:38]:
Yeah.

Curtis [01:09:39]:
That’s five shamans.

Mark Divine [01:09:40]:
It’s not too big.

Curtis [01:09:42]:
No. Five shamans. But you go there. Like someone said they went to Rythmia and there was 90 people there and packs 100 people. It’s a lot of people.

Mark Divine [01:09:53]:
Wow.

Curtis [01:09:54]:
You can’t give that many people that much attention unless you have, like.

Mark Divine [01:09:57]:
No. Plus you’re getting all sorts of cats and dogs. You know, the environment impacts. Right. So the people in there are going to affect the experience 100%. You know, one of my experiences had like 40 people in it. This was not in Hawaii. This one I did up in Santa Cruz, and one individual with just massive breakdown the entire night.

Mark Divine [01:10:17]:
Like, just screaming and crying and more screaming.

Curtis [01:10:21]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [01:10:23]:
They’re trying to have a pleasant experience. Just going like. That’s kind of distracting.

Curtis [01:10:27]:
I’m sorry.

Mark Divine [01:10:27]:
You know.

Curtis [01:10:28]:
Yeah. And they’ll. You know, the facilitator should come in and dose them down.

Mark Divine [01:10:32]:
Right.

Curtis [01:10:32]:
You know, because, you know, one person can ruin.

Mark Divine [01:10:36]:
Yeah.

Curtis [01:10:36]:
A bunch of experience. Even though you’re not trying to, you know, pay attention to what other people’s going on, you’re sensitive to light and sound and.

Mark Divine [01:10:45]:
Right.

Curtis [01:10:45]:
Yeah, it’s a lot. It’s this very delicate process that.

Mark Divine [01:10:49]:
It’s interesting that you bring this up. So, like, I have heard of practitioners, you know, combining modalities like breath work and mushrooms. Yeah, Breath work and THC even.

Curtis [01:11:04]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [01:11:05]:
I’ve never heard of breath work in ayahuasca, but I imagine they’re. They’re really separated, right?

Curtis [01:11:10]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [01:11:11]:
Like a breath work in the morning, maybe some cleansing, and then into the ayahuasca in the evening. I just can’t imagine doing them.

Curtis [01:11:17]:
They don’t even put them together. Like, at this particular place, they won’t even have you do the two together because this. The breathwork’s so cathartic that. But the ayahuasca is so. It’s intelligent. It’s a plant, and that intelligence is inside of you, and it’s working its way. And then to come in and do this and take it over, it’s like things don’t go together. Like, even marijuana and ayahuasca, they don’t do it.

Curtis [01:11:44]:
They don’t go together because they’re fighting over the same space in the body. They both want to help you in their own ways because they’re plants. But the marijuana plant is very immature of its intelligence, and the ayahuasca is the grandmother.

Mark Divine [01:11:58]:
Are they related in terms of their genus and species?

Curtis [01:12:01]:
Somehow we are all one, Mark.

Mark Divine [01:12:06]:
Touche. True.

Curtis [01:12:10]:
Yeah. So I forgot we’re going with that.

Mark Divine [01:12:15]:
That’s all right. You know, we’ve already skidded off the highway from breathwork into the psychedelic.

Curtis [01:12:21]:
Yeah, there you go. That’s again.

Mark Divine [01:12:22]:
Both feminine.

Curtis [01:12:23]:
Yeah, they don’t. Aya doesn’t. I don’t think marijuana minds Aya, but Aya definitely doesn’t wear, like, when marijuana is present. Yeah, that’s true.

Mark Divine [01:12:32]:
Interesting.

Curtis [01:12:32]:
Yeah.

Mark Divine [01:12:37]:
Like, what about MDMA and breathwork? That sounds.

Curtis [01:12:40]:
Oh. But to answer your question, I’m open to trying that stuff. Yeah. I’m open to trying what works and what is supposed to Go together. Like certain things aren’t supposed to go together. But psilocybin is becoming more and more popular, becoming more and more legal. It does open up, up the body energetically and to add breath to that, that could be, you know, something amazing. I’m not looking to do anything that’s illegal, you know, but I think I want to do whatever is the most effective.

Mark Divine [01:13:18]:
Well, back to our conversation earlier. Right. So the wax on, wax off, if you’re interested and you’re listening to this. Right. So there’s going to be a protocol that is right for you. So finding you know, someone like Curtis or Mark or Katherine who can help you like, okay, here’s my life situation, here’s my issues. So I’m dealing with physically, mentally as best you can tell, emotionally, great. Given this makeup, here’s what we’re going to recommend.

Mark Divine [01:13:46]:
There’s a fitness regimen, some nutrition, get your sleep dialed in. You’re going to start some, some breath work. I just started with box breathing. Then we’re going to prepare you for curses program to really have a blast off experience. Then you’ll be ready to go down to Peru for the ayahuasca. And so we actually have people design an entire year long training program like that that’ll have that all those, we call them the five mountain training plan. And in there might be like one of our is a crucible, like extraordinarily intense. The most extreme that you would love is 50 hours nonstop physical, mental and emotional team training based upon the Navy Seals Hell week.

Mark Divine [01:14:24]:
That’s an incredible spiritual experience for people. They talk about, they, we talk about. We have like 12, anywhere from 6 to 12 hour flow state experiences in the tail end of that. And they’ve been awake for 36, 40 hours. Jeez, around the clock. And all those barriers are just gone. And they’re in radical just present moment. Just one task after another.

Mark Divine [01:14:48]:
They just get into the super flow state, all this energy. So that, that’s an example that would be like you’re ready for that or you’re ready for the ayahuasca, you know, and so but it’s designed for you. Yeah, it’s a, it’s a life, it’s a, it’s a specialized program that’s designed for you based upon where you’re at, your age, your body type, you know, your needs, your health.

Curtis [01:15:11]:
That’s important, you know, because not everything’s cookie cutter. Yeah. You know, so that you know. But that hell week sounds interesting. Remember I just came to my mind.

Mark Divine [01:15:18]:
Do some trade, you know, come down and do I have short versions. Right. Which we actually Recommend. People do 12. We even have a 6 hour version. But do the 12. Learn, identify your gaps and then go train for the 24, come back and do the 24 and then same thing. And then when you’re really ready, come back and do the 50.

Mark Divine [01:15:37]:
Cause the 50 hour is no joke.

Curtis [01:15:38]:
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Mark Divine [01:15:40]:
No joke. It’s been equated to like three back to back Ironman triathlons in terms of the output, but it’s actually much harder because you’re always carrying. You know, you got a lot of load bearing work, whereas you don’t have any load bearing work. And yeah, the monostructural stuff like a triathlon.

Curtis [01:15:55]:
Interesting. Cool.

Mark Divine [01:15:56]:
So if you’re interested, let me know.

Curtis [01:15:58]:
Okay.

Mark Divine [01:15:58]:
I can see you doing it. You can teach me some breath of work. I’ll take you through.

Curtis [01:16:02]:
Okay.

Mark Divine [01:16:04]:
All right, Curtis, thanks so very much, buddy. So we’ll, we’ll stay in touch.

Curtis [01:16:08]:
All right, thanks. Appreciate you, man.

Mark Divine [01:16:10]:
Yeah. Who y’all?

Curtis [01:16:11]:
Oh, yeah. Feed the fish.

Mark Divine [01:16:15]:
Feed the fish. That was great.

Curtis [01:16:20]:
Awesome.

Mark Divine [01:16:20]:
That’s awesome. Catherine and I laugh because we’ve been teaching breath work starting with Navy Seals since 2006, but we’ve never told anybody that.