Mark Divine  1:07  

Ya know, I was really excited to see you on the kind of docket I’m not sure how that happened. But, you know, I’m a big fan of Native American warriors, and deeply inspired by that tradition myself, and I’m super stoked to kind of get into with you. 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 1:23

Yeah.

Mark Divine 1:23

And get your your perspective. Give us a sense, um, before we kind of get into like, warriorship. What was your life like growing up? You know, were you in, in Ottawa up in Canada? Or where did you grow up? And what was your, you know, what were your influences like, early on?

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  1:38  

Yeah, my tribe is from Michigan. 

 

Mark Divine 1:41

So, Michigan, okay.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 1:41

Yeah, I’m an enrolled member of the Ottawa tribe. 

 

Mark Divine 1:43

Got it. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 1:44

But I grew up in a military environment. My dad was in uniform for 21 years, enlisted man in the Air Force. But also in my family, my grandma taught our traditional language, we had a history of military service in my family. So it was a familiar path, that kind of, you know, the alignment was all there, even from a young age. And so that’s why the progression of the work that I do now has just been such a, I guess it’s an on ramp I’ve been building my entire life, you know, through that exposure. But yeah, and I grew up all over the US grew up in South Dakota, North Dakota, Mississippi, you know, wherever the AirForce stationed us, and then I served in uniform for 14 years, myself and bounced around quite a bit, but

 

Mark Divine  2:27  

I understand the military culture fairly well. And I know, you know, Air Force is different than Navy and whatnot, but um, within that culture, what kind of rituals and things did your family do to kind of teach you and keep the Ottawa tribal culture live for you? Or bring it alive probably?

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  2:46  

Yeah, even as a kid, I mean, I was always taught, you know, who I was where we came from, I had a real good sense of that, and our pride in it, you know, that I understood from a young age that my people sacrificed a lot to allow me the opportunities I have today. Military service is always something that has been important in our tribal communities, we have the highest service rates of any ethnic group in America.

 

Mark Divine  3:09  

No kidding. You mean across all tribes, or just Ottawa

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  3:12  

across all tribes that makes them and it’s because of that warrior spirit tradition being expressed in military service. I was part of a PBS documentary a couple years ago called The Warrior Tradition. And it was telling that story of our service rate. And I was honored to be featured in that. But it was, you know, being able to tell that story of how we express those warrior traditions, especially when it comes to military service now, which highlighted that. And then that led to an opportunity to have my own PBS show that I wrote, produced and hosted called Discovering Your Warrior Spirit, which aired nationally last year. 

 

Mark Divine 3:45

That’s really cool. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 3:47

So it’s something important in our tribal communities always has been and will continue to be.

 

Mark Divine  3:52  

Do all tribes have a warrior culture? Or is it just a few select tribes like Ottawa and I remember, I’m from upstate New York, Mohawk Valley, and 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 4:01

Oh, yeah, 

 

Mark Divine 4:02

We’re made famous by the movie. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  4:04  

By our enemies. Well, they’re a part of the Iroquois League. So we fought them on the east and then on the west, we fought like the Dakota, which is like the woodlands,

 

Mark Divine 4:13

Right, 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 4:13

Sioux, but no, it’s most tribes have some semblance of a warrior culture, not all of them, like up in Alaska. You have tribes are a lot more Pacific. They deal with their conflicts in a very different way. The environment is so harsh up there that tribes, you know, collaboration was key for survival. 

 

Mark Divine 4:32

Yeah. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 4:32

So there wasn’t a whole lot of extracurricular activity, you know, raiding other villages. It was just hard enough to survive on your own.

 

Mark Divine 4:38

Right.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 4:39

But most tribes had some semblance of a warrior culture. It was, you know, the protectors, the leadership of the tribe, but you know, what I teach now without that warrior concept is the way that I share that with my groups that I work with. It transcends race, age, gender, or stage of life. It’s, I talk about the universal principles. that made our warriors special.

 

Mark Divine 5:01

Right.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 5:01

And can have an impact in our life when we apply them to. 

 

Mark Divine 5:04

Yeah, I agree with that, the calling in the warrior is an archetypal energy, right? 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 5:08

Yes. 

 

Mark Divine 5:09

And one has if you have it, then you pretty much know you have it. The military is one path, but certainly not the only path as you point out.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 5:17

Right.

 

Mark Divine 5:17

And you can be a warrior in any any particular domain of life, you know, Mother/Father, right?

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 5:23

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 5:23

Merchant, right? So, I want to get into that. But I do want to still stick with this. educating myself really about how you were taught about the history of your tribe, and what happened with the white men coming to the shores and kind of like spreading throughout.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 5:39

Yeah

 

Mark Divine 5:39

The westward regions in the hot weather that brought tribes together or split them apart. You know, what were you taught, you know, in terms of that history?

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  5:48  

it was a steamroller process. I mean, you know, when we talked about the history of this country with Native people, it’s not a kind or pretty history, it’s not continues to be challenging. 

 

Mark Divine  5:56  

It’s not at all, there’s a lot of cultural guilt around their collective guilt. I think we all have our own as well.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  6:02  

Yeah, it was, it’s tough. You know, the nation’s first people, you know, always got treated last, and it continues to be a challenge. But, you know, the thing that tribes found themselves, outmatched, outgunned, out technologied, but what made her warriors specialists, they still found a way to rally and protect their people, sometimes even winning battles against you know, being completely outmatched in so many different ways. 

 

Mark Divine  6:27  

Did the tribes ban together to try to fight, you know, the common enemy, that that was probably a problem, right, they might have had a little bit more success that they were going to come together?

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  6:34  

You’re right. And I always think about that I thought about writing a fiction story at some point in my writing career, where I talked about, you know, like these tribes coming together sooner and how that may have played out. But yeah, it was, it was kind of too little too late. There was a couple moments in time where that happened, of our Chief Pontiac of the Ottawa tribe, United 19 different tribes throughout the Ohio River Valley, which was unique that hadn’t happened before. Because typically, you know, tribes, we raided each other, we fought with each other, we didn’t try to decimate each other. But that was the way we kind of got our warriors to go on their first foray, you know, into enemy territory. And so that was how we created our warrior class. But it was a very different type of warfare, you know, but once tribes realized that it’s…

 

Mark Divine  7:22  

It’s really guerrilla warfare against kind of frontal assaulted type warfare.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  7:25  

Exactly. And it wasn’t siege warfare, it wasn’t like trying to starve an enemy out, try to burn a village down, it wasn’t that type of fighting, it was small scale engagements. And then another time, you know, like, for instance, Tecumseh, you know, one of my role models and heroes, did it again, to fight the Americans, he actually allied with the British, you know, during the War of 1812. But they were trying to shove Americans back to the shores of, you know, back to the colonies. And so he united a bunch of tribes too, but it was rare to see that happen. And then when it started happening on a more regular basis, it was, you know, kind of the, the battles were already lost. 

 

Mark Divine 8:01

It was too late. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 8:02

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine  8:02  

I’ve heard a lot about how one of the major things that really kind of put a nail into the part of the Indian Nations was the smallpox and how that was a US Army kind of trickery. Were they distributed..

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 8:14

Blankets.

 

Mark Divine 8:14

Blankets, that were infested with smallpox. Is that a true story? From your perspective?

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  8:19  

Unfortunately, it is. Yeah, by biological warfare was something that we were we didn’t have the immunities. 

 

Mark Divine 8:27

That’t right. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 8:27

So it wiped out, you know, entire villages, entire populations.

 

Mark Divine  8:32  

That’s horrific. By the way. I just think that’s one of the most horrific things I’ve ever heard. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 8:36

Yeah..

 

Mark Divine 8:36

We could do and, you know, we didn’t see it happening to this day you like, we really haven’t evolved that much.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  8:42  

Cringe worthy. 

 

Mark Divine 8:43

It’s cringe worthy. Yeah. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 8:44

But, but disease wiped out a lot of tribal populations, even right before first contact.

 

Mark Divine 8:50

Right. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 8:50

You know, even when, you know, Europeans made it to this hemisphere..

 

Mark Divine  8:54  

Yet, down down south. That’s what took out the Aztecs and the Mayans and all that,

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  8:58  

Yeah, and it went all the way up into North America. So by the time the English, you know, started landing on the Eastern Shore, they saw kind of sparse populations. You know, there’s a great book 1491 by Charles Mann, he talks about how the population of before it was United States, just the North American continent could have had up to 120 million.

 

Mark Divine 9:16

Really?

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 9:17

People while they were wiped out by 90%. 

 

Mark Divine 9:20

No kidding.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas

Because of disease, and that’s the that’s one of those figures that I read about from time to time, that becomes more and more based on scientific research and facts. 

 

Mark Divine 9:30

Wow.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 9:30

t’s pretty shocking. But again, you’re dealing with a population that has zero immunities.

 

Mark Divine 9:36

Right.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 9:37

Towards the diseases that you know, Europeans have been fighting for millennia. 

 

MArk Divine 9:40

That’s crazy. Yeah, I don’t think we need to go down that road about you know, the potential pandemics do great harm. Obviously saw that recently.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  9:48  

Yeah, we’re all kind of raw from that one.

 

Mark Divine  9:50  

A little bit of raw from that one. Now. By the way, the the other tribe that greatly inspired me, were the the Apache warriors and the only reason that I was inspired by them. was through a training from a fellow named Tom Brown. Are you familiar with his work? 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 10:03

I’m not.

 

Mark Divine 10:04

He’s the tracker, the very famous tracker.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  10:07  

Oh yeah, yes. I do know what you’re talking about. 

 

Mark Divine  10:09  

And he had a mentor who was an Apache, you know, who spent the last, like 20 years of his life with Tom, and Tom was in his formative years, like, like 14 or 15, up into his early 20s, mid 20s, and taught him all the scouting techniques and all the tracking and also the spiritual traditions of the Apache. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 10:25

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 10:26

They were really rich, right, I’m sure that you know, in your Ottawa tribe that the visualization practices that they had, you know, the the rituals around becoming a warrior, right, spending a year in the wilderness. And, you know, like I said, some of the imagery work that they had to do and some of the healing and forgiveness and the prayer work that they did, it was really quite extraordinary.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  10:46  

Yeah, there’s deep spiritual ties in that role of warrior.

 

Mark Divine 10:49

Right.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 10:50

You know, in our tribal communities, it was, it wouldn’t be on, you know, even the time that I had the military, you know, what made it different than that experience was, there’s a heavy spiritual component, you know, in our tribal communities when it comes to that role, and it was, you know, based on love. That was, that was our secret weapon we love who we fought for, and what we fight for. And that’s why they thought the way that they did, that’s why, you know, Apaches, with Geronimo, they fought to the bitter end. 

 

Mark Divine 11:18

That’s right.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 11:18

There was only a small band of them being tracked by 5000 US Army Soldiers. It was amazing.

 

Mark Divine  11:24  

They were like the public enemy number one, you know, with a reward on thier head, but they were so hard to kill.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 11:29

Right

 

Mark Divine 11:30

Because they’re just so advanced spiritually. I remember this learning, you know, that, that I’m sure again, the other warriors like in your tribe were able to do these things, but notion of understanding psychology and how the brain works so well that they could literally hide in plain sight. Right? So they understood that, you know, like, if I’m standing, and I’m looking at a scene that is not familiar with me, unless like I’m traversing some, some new countryside, that, you know, my brain, my eyes will pick out the big features, right? Like, oh, there’s a big mountain range over there. And there’s a cluster of trees, but then it kind of like to save energy, it fills in the gaps.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 12:04

Right.

 

Mark Divine 12:04

Leaving out details. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 12:06

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 12:07

And so if you know where to hide, it’s better to hide, like in plain sight, where there’s not a feature that your brain is going to like, zero in on the details, you know, I mean, so they would hide literally, like in plain sight. It’s so cool.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  12:18  

Well, that Yeah. And that’s the thing, though, warriors and scouts. I mean, there were so tied. I mean, tribal people in general, were so completely tied to the environment.

 

Mark Divine 12:26

Right.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 12:26

And knew the comings and goings and the patterns and kind of predict weather changes and migration patterns. 

Mark Divine 12:33

Yeah, and understand what the animals are up to. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 12:34

Exactly 

 

Mark Divine 12:34

And you can see all the patterns. You know, Tom Brown called that reading the morning newspaper.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  12:38  

There you go, completely integrated into your environment. 

 

Mark Divine  12:42  

He would get up every morning, and he would see what all the animals had done that morning.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas12:46

Yeah

 

Mark Divine 12:46

Early morning in their foraging and be like, oh, yeah, so the fox went after the critter over here. And this happened over there. And, you know, you can start to orient your day based upon what the animals..

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  12:55  

That’s it Yeah, cuz when Europeans came to the shores of North America, they thought native people were magic.

 

Mark Divine 13:00

Right.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 13:01

You know, because of how, you know, accurate, they were with their predictions, how integrated they were into their environment, they could read the signs. And, you know, it was it was an incredible, you know, system that had been developed through a lifetime.

 

Mark Divine  13:15  

I was a SEAL, as you know, and now I’ve done that, three different trainings with Tom. And that kind of stacked on top of my meditation and spiritual practice, which started with Zen went in through the martial arts when I was 21. So, so 4 years before joining the seals, I got my black belt, I’ve been studying Zen pretty much every day. And that continued, you know, in the military, but as you know, sometimes in the military, given the schedules and what we’re doing, you know, it’s hard to keep a daily like, seated meditation. So I taught myself to take it wherever I was, you know, to carry my meditation around kind of like, like I would my sidearm, you know what I mean? 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 13:51

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine

So whenever I had downtime, and as you know, in the military, there’s a lot of downtime. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 13:55

Yeah. Fit it in where you can.

 

Mark Divine 13:57

What you said, I’ve just been meditating and contemplating and breathing and whatnot. And so I had a lot of like, really, really cool experiences. And that led me to, as I tried to continue my martial arts training here in San Diego, and there wasn’t much going on here. I got into yoga, yoga was a huge yoga community here. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 14:16

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 14:17

And that led me down a whole nother rabbit hole of the, you know, the Eastern traditions, you know, Patanjali yoga sutras and Paramahansa Yogananda and recognizing that yoga is was also like the foundation of most of the Eastern martial arts. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 14:32

Yeah

 

Mark Divine 14:32

But there was like these parallel systems, right. And so the natives had their systems and then the Easterners had their system but the people didn’t have any system where the Westerners who came out of Europe.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 14:43

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 14:43

Because they relied on dogmatic structural religion right for their spirituality and..

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 14:48

Right.

 

Mark Divine 14:48

And it lacked or they had stripped out all these these deep personal practices that led you to find God within

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  14:55  

Thier you go, yeah, the holistic approach.

 

Mark Divine  14:56  

The holistic approach. So I was like, I In my whole life, I was so inspired and has such extraordinary success and experiences, because of my martial arts and the yoga training and then recognizing the sameness in the Apache traditions. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 15:11

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 15:12

That I wanted to bring that to the SEAL’s. And that’s why I started SEALFIT. Isn’t that interesting? So, so my intention behind SEALFIT was to create a whole warrior again, that was lacking in the Western military. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 15:25

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 15:25

And so I started teaching SEAL trainees as special operators. I had to simplify everything, I call it taking the foo out of the Kung Fu. What I got from the Apaches was something called Fox walking. Fox walking is basically mindful walking, where you basically you take one step per minute, and you use a soft gaze. So you’re turning your attention inward, allowing information to flow in, as opposed to projecting outward. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 15:48

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 15:49

With a hard gaze. And you do this for about an hour. This is like the last few feet you would take if you were stalking, you know, a deer, right?

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 15:56

Right.

 

Mark Divine 15:56

You’d stalk a deer and then the last few feet or less like 10 or 20 feet, you’d do this fox..

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 16:01

Go really slow. Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 16:03

Extraordinarily slow. No sound, your mind completely empty. So the deer can’t feel you can’t feel your energy. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 16:08

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 16:09

So I would use those. But I could explain that very well to the SEAL candidates. But anything that came from like an Eastern or esoteric tradition, yeah, they just went there glazed over. So I took it all that out. And I just started calling it like box breathing. Right? 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 16:22

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 16:22

And when it came to, like, internal dialogue and managing the mind, you know, I just called it what it was, you know, mental control, right? Yeah, stuff like that. And for that they love it. And 90% of these guys got through SEAL training, or getting through SEAL training. And now the SEAL’s are using these skills that I call unbeatable mind, which is really cool. But my point for bringing this up as the whole rationale was to create a more complete warrior because I was so deeply inspired by those traditions. And what I learned from the Apaches that the warrior is the last to pick up the weapon, literally the last to pick up the spear or the lands. And when they do so they do so with great reverence, and even love for their enemies. And I remember a poem I wish I had in front of me, but a poem from this Apache scout written in like 1890, or something where he’s about to send the scouts into battle. And he’s asking for forgiveness. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 17:12

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 17:12

And he’s asking for, you know, the great spirit that runs through all things to guide their hands and to guide their hearts for they love their enemy as they love themselves.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  17:21  

Yeah, it’s it. Well, that’s the honor part in battle.

 

Mark Divine 17:24

Right.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 17:25

How it was done traditionally, not the decimation. And, like I said, complete destruction of a village or or population of people. There was an honor there, because of what it required. It tested us in ways that were very unique, that were very powerful, and deep. And that’s one of the things to that integrating that spirituality, those personal practices, you know, like, I’ve been through traditional vision quests. I’m also a veteran Sundancer. Now, you know, like, you go through these ceremonies, I mean, I went through ceremony that mean Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull had gone through, you know, they were Sundancers. It was, you know, to go through these experiences, you realize that there’s an integration there, of the spiritual and what goes much deeper than just the skill sets that a warrior would get, you know, how to shoot a bow and arrow, how to throw a lance, how to fight with a tomahawk. It’s,

 

Mark Divine  18:14  

It’s important to master all those, of course, but then you move beyond those to master the mental and spiritual domains. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  18:21  

Exactly. One of the things I talked about in my book, The Warrior Within was how the katana blade was crafted and why it was a unique, probably the, you know, the finest sword ever crafted on the face of the earth because it was made from two types of metal, one that has hardness which resists impact. It’s stiff, it’s inflexible. But if you build a whole sword with that, it becomes brittle. And that’s what happens to us if we just get a skill set. And we don’t develop that deeper side of resilience. What real resilience is like it’s being strong like grass, not like a tree. And so that second type of metal in the Katana is soft. What metallurgist call it has toughness, which means it can absorb impact, it can flex under strain. And when we do that, we develop that emotional capacity, that spiritual capacity to absorb whatever’s happening to us. So we can get back in to the fight and it’s sustainable. You know, we can do it day in and day out throughout our journey. We don’t burn out, we don’t break. That’s what happens when we’re flexible, inflexible and stiff without that deeper capacity.

 

Mark Divine  19:25  

Yeah, and the forging that sword is a long, long process of interweaving the hard and the soft, the yin and the yang. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 19:32

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine19:33

Right. And so that they are, they’re inseparable.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  19:35  

And so it is to build a warrior too, right? 

 

Mark Divine  19:38  

Right, exactly. I love that. Yeah, that’s a big part of what I’m teaching people is like, we’re so over yang in our culture. We’re all hard. We’re all biased toward action doing skill based training. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 19:50

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 19:51

And, you know, do more equals more success. And I think the last few years, you know, the, the bloom is off that rose. People are starting to recognize it. That’s it. That’s a flawed approach, you know? 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 20:02

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 20:02

So they’re looking for answers. But then the funny thing is, you know, the answers have been here all along. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 20:07

They have.

 

Mark Divine 20:08

They were on this, they were on this territory before the white people arrived.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  20:12  

And thank God, I mean, isn’t it a great boost to know that the fundamentals are still fundamental? Like, the basics are still basic, and they work. You know, these are timeless ideas.

 

Mark Divine  20:22  

It just requires an acceptance and appreciation that, you know, these are the advanced technologies, they but they just don’t look advanced to you because they don’t come wrapped in a shiny package that you open like in and out pops, like an iPod or something like that. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 20:36

That’s it.

 

Mark Divine 20:37

And so you’re seeing some people now kind of who get it who are like, okay, well, if I can wrap, like, I got this breathing device, which literally comes in a box, and it’s nothing but a little toy that expands and contracts in your hand, and you’re supposed to like, synchronize your breathing through it. I’m like.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 20:52

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 20:52

It’s kind of sad. But it’s also a little bit genius, because they recognize that people need a shiny object. But problem is that they won’t stick with it, you know, the batteries will go out or lose it. And then they’ll 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 21:03

Yeah, yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 21:04

So I’m wondering, how do you teach and how did the Ottawa tribe to teach the practice or the disciplines of the warrior so that they became just inculcated into your daily life,

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  21:17  

It was integrated into everything. I mean, I’ve worked with over 500 tribal nations, including my own, but that’s one of the things that comes back, as you know, over and over again, is the way that warriors were developed was on purpose with purpose. And with with a clear cut design, and it’s happened from childhood, you know, where people got used to being in the elements, being uncomfortable, being patient, being in a place of solitude, you know, not just learning the skills but like I said, you know, what we’re talking about before that developing that mental toughness piece where you can deal with adversity, you’re gonna deal with setbacks, discomfort, pain, fear.

 

Mark Divine  21:54  

So you’re saying it was all like in the dialoguing the dinnertime and…

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  21:59  

Everything it was integrated into everything. Yeah. This was this was a way of life truly. 

 

Mark Divine 22:05

Yeah. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 22:05

Because there are people depended on that group for, you know, for protection for defense. And so it was a big role.

 

Mark Divine  22:12  

Right, was there anything that looked like a what we would call a meditative practice that was taught? 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 22:18

Oh, yeah, definitely. 

 

Mark Divine 22:19

So what did that look like for you? 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  22:20  

Prayer prayer, you know, all of our ceremonies when we talked about prayer, like, for instance, Vision Quest. I did that for four years, and that’s the Lakota call it Hanbleceya. Which means to cry for a vision, and you don’t understand why they call it that until you go out on yours.

 

Mark Divine  22:36  

Yeah, cuz you’re alone for days, right? 28 days?

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  22:39  

Well, four days, four nights, no food, no water, no shelter. You do this every year. 

 

Mark Divine22:44

Right? I want to do one of those by the way. I’ve always wanted to. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  22:47  

Well, it was one of the most clarifying experiences I’ve ever had in my life. And, you know, you’re with your medicine people they put you it’s called putting you out on the hill. So you’re out in isolation. And I’m telling you, Mark, I’ve never had more clarifying experience in my life.

 

Mark Divine  23:01  

I saw that the Navy SEAL character do that on the movie, Yellowstone. Have you seen Yellowstone? 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  23:05  

I haven’t seen that series. I’ve seen 1883. 

 

Mark Divine 23:08

Oh, 83 is incredible. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 23:10

I loved it.

 

Mark Divine  23:11  

It’s pretty violent. But other they do send the son who was a Navy SEAL ends up going on a vision quest.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  23:18  

Yeah, they’re powerful. And the and it’s, you know, the whole purpose was to pray for guidance.

 

Mark Divine  23:22  

Is there any medicine involved? You know, like, like plant medicine? Or? 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  23:26  

Well, I mean, you have your pipe.

 

Mark Divine 23:28

Okay. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 23:28

And, you know, what we burn in our pipe is, you know, just traditional tobacco or Cansasa, which is red willow bark. But as far as any other type of medicine, I mean, we can smudge you know, we burn sage, sweet grass, that’s a medicine for us.

 

Mark Divine  23:42  

You’re just, it’s just human nature and your thoughts are getting away from your thoughts.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  23:47  

Yeah, that’s it. And I’m telling you, it’s, you know, to let that dirt settle in your mud puddle that clearly no media, no traffic, no other people, you know, is a clarifying experience unlike anything I’ve ever had before. But the point was that prayer aspect was integrated into our sweat lodge ceremonies, all of our traditional ceremonies, Prayer, solitude, you know, we didn’t call it meditation. But it absolutely was. I mean, when you’re out in VisionQuest, you’re meditating continually. You’re thinking about your breathing, you’re observing nature. I mean, you are in a zone that is is very powerful. And and I’m an active, you know, I’m a practitioner of meditation and yoga, and I’ve done martial arts. You know, I’ve boxed in college. I did four years, four and a half years of Krav Maga, and did kickboxing for a while. So it’s always been like that. There’s been an overlay and integration of all these different practices.

 

Mark Divine 24:41

Right.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 24:41

But meditation is critically important. And it was for our tribal people too still is. 

 

Mark Divine  24:46  

When I did the Tom Brown training in what he calls his philosophy track, which was the spiritual track. He talked about the Apaches training with their minds where they would develop or or access, what they call their sacred space. And they would actually, you know, it sounded a lot to me sort of like what the hypnotherapy profession had kind of tapped into where, you know, they would walk down kind of through their conscious mind. And then they would access…

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 25:18

Those deeper places. Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 25:20

Yeah, they would access the subconscious by walking through a literally what they consider to be a portal, which was the doorway between, you know, the kind of outer material realm and the first what they call band of the spiritual realm, right? You know, so, so that you could consider that maybe to be the same band that you know, someone who’s learned to astral travel, or who has an out of body experience, you know, they kind of like that go into that band, and yet, they’re still connected to their physical body, so they can kind of snap back it really quick. They don’t get lost, so to speak.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 25:49

Right. 

 

Mark Divine 25:50

I thought this was fascinating. And he talked about how that grandfather, who was his mentor, told him that to the Apache envisioning, they called it envisioning, which is creating a vision and having visions and experiencing visions, when they had it when they were when they were trained, like deeply trained after a number of years, that the vision was more real than their experience in the material world. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 26:16

Yeah, interesting. 

 

Mark Divine 26:18

He tells us this is fun story, you know, this is just one of like many, but like he’s with grandfather, and they’re in there on this trail, and they sit down along this trail to meditate and and they go into the state and Tom goes into one of these vision states. And while he’s doing this vision state, he sees some Apaches walking along the trail, you know, this is must have been hundreds of years ago, right. And the last one walking along, this trail was just a small, like 12-14 year old boy, and something falls out of his pouch. And then they go off on their way. And when Tom came out of his vision, he was like huh, he went over to where this artifact ID trap and he started digging in it. And he pulled up an arrowhead. And that was right there. You know, I mean, right? Exactly. Isn’t that cool?

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  27:02  

Yeah, I tell you, there’s there’s a lot in the universe, we don’t understand. But there’s these practices have been around for a long time, that belief is strong. And it’s for reasons like that. I mean, Crazy Horse had an idea of, you know, a philosophy as well that this world that we live in is the dream world, and that when we actually sleep, that was the real world that was a spiritual realm,

 

Mark Divine  27:22  

That lines up with kind of the yoga tradition that says that what we are experiencing here really is an illusion or a dream. And that there’s another aspect of us that is having this dream that is our real self. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 27:33

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 27:34

So it’s fascinating. It’s fascinating philosophy. It’s a little hard for people steeped in the material without any of this training, or any, any kind of research or investigation in this or experiences to really wrap their head around it. But I’ve been deeply inspired by that. And I think it’s true. You know, and I’ll say that publicly, I really do think it’s true. And then you start to kind of marry that up with the the notion of synchronicity and you know how that right when you surrender instead of instead of just trying to force your way thinking that everything is material, linear time and space, cause and effect when you surrender to the fact that there is this kind of unity that underlies everything, and you begin to vibrate at that frequency, then you have synchronicities pop up all the time, they just 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 28:15

Yeah, your in flow, right.

 

Mark Divine 28:15

Life just starts to experience that life flow, right.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  28:18  

The older I get, the more I realize, that is a much better way to walk the journey. 

 

Mark Divine 28:23

100% 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 28:24

Is be open to you know what’s happening. And whether you say that, you know, the mantra let go and let God you know, be in flow be in state be mindful. 

 

Mark Divine 28:33

That’s right. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 28:33

It’s just, you know, taking our hands off the wheels to control every dang aspect of our lives. I mean, which burns up a lot of time and energy usually doesn’t get the results we want anyway, sometimes can completely backfire.

 

Mark Divine  28:44  

Right, you can get some results, but they’re often not the results that you want long term. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 28:47

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 28:48

Or it comes at great cost.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  28:50  

Yes, absolutely. To to ourselves or to our relationships. I mean, it can get pretty chaotic because we are putting energy into places that it doesn’t need to be, instead of being open to what’s happening around us, we get I think we get a lot better results when we do that. 

 

Mark Divine  29:04  

You know, it’s coming to me now as another two terms that really have inspired me that came from the warrior tradition of the Japanese, you know the samurai and that that kind of ilk. One is Shibumi. And it speaks to what we’re talking about when you’re in that flow. Shibumi means effortless perfection. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 29:24

Wow. 

 

Mark Divine 29:24

Like things spontaneously arise. And they’re just are exactly the way they need to be in. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 29:31

Yeah, yeah.

 

Mark Divine 29:32

and you see this like when I when I first met my Zen master, who was also my martial art instructor, he was the founder of this style of karate called Saido and hundreds of 1000’s of students worldwide. He was about 45 at the time, and I met him. His name was Tadashi Nakamura. And, you know, I grew up in a small town in upstate New York and I’m literally 375 People in my town. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 29:52

Okay.

 

Mark Divine 29:53

And I had never experienced or come into contact with anyone who I would even remotely call enlightened. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 29:59

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 30:00

Just wasn’t something that we were able to access and, and most people haven’t to be fair. But when I stepped foot into that martial arts studios, like 2000 square feet, beautiful wood floor, hundreds of students training, and in the middle of the floor was this, this five foot five or six Japanese guy who was just like, He was built like a brick shithouse. And he was like, radically intense, but there was like, this energy around him. I can just see this energy around him, you know? 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 30:26

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 30:27

And you know, he would stop and correct people and do his thing. And then someone cracked a joke in the corner. Right? You know, I expected him to like to go all ballistic, right? 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 30:36

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 30:37

And he said, he looks over and you see a little smile crack in his face. And he just started bursting out laughing like a little schoolgirl.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  30:43  

Yeah. See, he’s in, he’s in the moment at the moment.

 

Mark Divine  30:48  

He was in the moment.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 30:48

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 30:49

And it was like spontaneous perfection. And it didn’t bring any kind of discredit to his authority at all. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 30:54

It didn’t diminish anything. 

 

Mark Divine 30:55

It actually uplifted it, because everyone’s like, Oh, this guy is a grandmaster. And he’s human. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 31:01

Yeah, there you go. 

 

Mark Divine 31:02

And he’s human, and so that he’s not hiding, right behind any mask, like what you sees is what you get moment to moment, moment moment, I think that’s like, to me, it’s always been my tell of an ultimate warriors. Like, are they wearing a mask? 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 31:15

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 31:16

Or not? And most people do, they’re not aware of it. Right? They’re hiding behind some masks.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  31:21  

Yeah, I mean, we get rewarded for it. Unfortunately, you know, when we’re putting that facade out, and we’re portraying this image, false image of perfection, and we’ve got it all tied together at any given moment, we get rewarded for that. 

 

Mark Divine 31:34

That’s right.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 31:34

It’s, it’s not real, you know, there’s we all stumble, we all struggle, we all need outside support and encouragement or answers at times. And the more we can embrace that, I think that’s where true strength, you know, really starts to emerge. Because we realize it’s, you know, again, you’re thinking big picture here, it’s not about us, you know, our warriors were very clear in their purpose, it was to feed and protect their people, not to feed and protect their ego.

 

Mark Divine 32:00

I love that. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 32:01

So when you get out of your own way you can really deliver, you can really contribute at a much higher level.

 

Mark Divine 32:05

Right.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 32:06

Because you’re removing yourself from stopping the flow of what you could ultimately do.

 

Mark Divine  32:11  

Right. But we also recognize even though, you know, because they were scarce resources, and their tribe was the most important, they also recognize that everything and everyone was important.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 32:23

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 32:23

So they didn’t disrespect nature. Right? If they were going to cut a tree down, they made sure that it was the right tree to cut down and then ceremony around it, if they were going to go into battle because of the scarce resources against neighboring tribes or to protect their tribe from them. You know, it was with great reverence, than the loss of life was a big deal. I think if we can bring that back to get people to recognize the sameness in everything and everybody and to appreciate the diversity. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 32:50

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 32:51

Right. Instead of using diversity as a club, right over people.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  32:55  

Yes. Yeah. That’s, that’s unfortunately, been all too often the pattern, recently. And that’s what makes the environment beautiful. That’s what makes the world beautiful is that diversity, that we’re not all the same? That…

 

Mark Divine 33:09

Right.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 33:10

You know, environments are stronger when they’re diverse.

 

Mark Divine  33:12  

And yet, we can all come from the same source. And we’ll all go back to the same source. And we all have that same spirit that runs through all things that the natives talk about,right. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  33:21  

But we love to focus on the differences. 

 

Mark Divine  33:25  

That’s right, we do because that’s where we’re trained. And like you said, we’re rewarded for that. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 33:27

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 33:28

The other word that really inspired me and I’m wondering if there’s a corollary in the native tradition, or Ottowa tradition, and we use it for our big 50 Our crucible event, which is like, you know, it’s my version of hell week where we really have to bring yourself ,mind body and spirit and work in the spirit of harmony and, or else you just won’t get through it. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 33:47

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 33:47

It’s Kokoro. And Kokoro means to merge your heart and your head, into your hands or into your actions. So…

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 33:54

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 33:55

Head heart, Hara, head heart, hands. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 33:56

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 33:57

You know, integration, right, leading from the heart. No, however you want to say a whole mind is another way to say it.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  34:02  

Yeah, we have a tradition in my tribe. We have two ways of learning. We have both XXX and XXX. And XXX, one is head learning. It’s logic, it’s you know, it’s important.

 

Mark Divine 34:12

Information and knowledge.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 34:13

Information and knowledge and it’s important in the world we live in. But the other type of learning is XXX. It’s the the learning that comes to us when we’re in a place of solitude or quiet. When we turn down the volume of all the crazy that we’re in the chaos and get to that space, where you meditation prayer, where you’re isolating yourself, or in listening to that internal voice, it can’t be heard, you can’t honor it, if you never give yourself time to actually listen to it. And so that’s, that’s an important concept. And, you know, I think those are where the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life have come from. I’ve made a lot of decisions based on just this that you know, for sure. It’s kind of a mixed bag. Those results, yeah, but I can’t you know, but I tell you, it’s few and far between I’ve ever made by using that, that type of learning, you know that intuition that gut level whisper that talks to us when we’re quiet. And when we honor it, you know, sometimes we train it out of us. Sometimes we ignore it, especially if it’s telling us messages that we don’t want to hear, you know, if that message is coming up to play, like, you should take care of yourself, I’m like, shut up, I’m working on this, I’ll get to it later. We pay for that. There’s, there’s a real cost in in ignoring that.

 

Mark Divine  35:26  

Gosh, I remember training for the CrossFit Games. And this is, you know, I’m well into all this training. So I could have had a version of this conversation with you at that time. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 35:34

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 35:35

And my point for telling the story is that how easy it is to kind of ignore the intuition of the inner voice, even when it’s kind of like, fairly loud. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 35:43

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 35:44

Smacking your leg. So I was training for the CrossFit Games, you know, for my age group, the open and, and I was doing this workout and my coach, the coach, who was coaching me was actually one of my coaches, you know, and I hired him, he was a young guy, but I was one, you know, have him hold me accountable. And..

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 35:59

Okay.

 

Mark Divine 36:00

And so the workout was like, three bars of death, it was benchpress, power cleans and deadlift, right and just doing a descending ladder 10 to one. And in the deadlifts he had stacked a little bit over my, my training weight, right? 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 36:12

Okay. 

 

Mark Divine 36:13

And in the first round of this workout, I literally had a vision of my back blowing out and me falling on the ground. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 36:21

Oh, boy. 

 

Mark Divine 36:22

And I didn’t do anything about it. I ignored it. And guess what happened in the very the second to last round, when we’re on the twos, I go to lift that bar, and I must have been just slightly out of position. And I’m laying on the ground, and I’m thinking immediately thought was, Mark, you know, better than that, you know, better, right? 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 36:40

Yeah, you felt to coming, you saw tit.

 

Mark Divine 36:43

That was the last time I was like, okay, never again, am I gonna ignore that?

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  36:47  

Yeah, you gotta listen. I mean, I did the same thing, Mark. I really, you know, when I first started this career, I was an officer in the military, we had just started a family, I had a lot of responsibility, there was a lot of moving parts and a lot of stress. And I kept ignoring, you know, taking care of myself. And I kept saying, I’ll get to it later, you get to it later. And I had all the classic signs of, you know, my body trying to tell me to slow down. I was hearing that internal voice. And I just basically said, shut up, I’ll get to you later. And later showed up with a vengeance. I woke up one morning with a, what I thought was a heat rash. On the right side of my body to the top of my thigh, it was shingles. And it was six weeks of a living, hell type of experience. I wouldn’t wish that on an enemy.

 

Mark Divine  37:28  

Yeah, that’s just an auto immune response from being so ridiculously out of balance.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  37:32  

Exactly. And the doctor I saw that have been practicing medicine for 30 years looked at me, he said, What are you doing to yourself? Because I was I was 28 at the time, you know, but you can push, you know, sometimes we don’t, you know, we can see the writing on the wall, we don’t change until we hit the wall. You don’t have to learn that way. 

 

Mark Divine 37:47

Right. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 37:48

By the way, you know, that was a painful experience. But that’s why I’m a born again, advocate for self care, you know, you are the only you you’ll ever have or be.

 

Mark Divine  37:55  

100%. The irony is that people don’t think they have the time. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 38:00

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 38:01

To slow down, or the time to sit in silence or the time to take a retreat or even a weekend off, right? 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 38:08

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 38:09

When you have that mindset, then universe will take that time for you in a painful way. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 38:14

Yes. 

 

Mark Divine 38:15

And furthermore, the other way to look at this is when you develop the skills to go inside and to tap into that wisdom that we’re talking about, it doesn’t take an equal amount of time as things do in the linear material where like, so now if I say I’ve got like this task list, you know, to work on my business, or to write my, you know, let’s say I’ve got, I’ve gotten working on a book, and I’m working on my business, and I’m working on my nonprofit, and all of which is true. And I’m working on my PhD right now. All of which.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 38:43

Oh my gosh.

 

Mark Divine 38:44

So like, I’ve got a pretty significant task list for all of those. And I could fill every single minute up.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 38:50

Right.

 

Mark Divine 38:51

Every day with that task list. And that’s how we’re, like you said earlier, that’s what we’re trained to do. That’s the training of our schools, you know, we just this endless insane list of projects and homeworks. And things to do that really don’t contribute much to learning. It’s just a fill your day up to keep you distracted. Same thing at work, right? You got to fill those 40 hours up or whatever. And then if you’re not doing a project, then culture is training you by filling it up with all this other distracting bullshit, the entertainment and social media. And, you know, honestly, it’s a genius way to keep people from going within 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 39:26

Yes.

 

Mark Divine 39:27

And and being healthy and finding out that they don’t need pharmacologicals. They don’t need to go to the emergency room every three weeks, right? Because they’re super healthy. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 39:37

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 39:38

They don’t need to go on the diet because their body is in perfect balance. They don’t need to overtrain because their body feels like oh, yeah, I know. I need to take a day off, right? Everything that is distracting us. taking extra time suddenly goes away because you spend just five minutes a day. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 39:52

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 39:52

Just five minutes or 10 minutes a day. I recommend to my team 20 minutes the morning 20 minutes in the evening. 20 That’s all you really need that Take a couple of little one minute breaks during the day.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  40:03  

We have a different view on that, that we’re medicine, you know, and that’s what we’re talking about here. Medicine in our tribal communities isn’t something we seek out when we’re already sick and out of balance. It’s something we incorporate into our lives daily to keep us strong and resilient. 

 

Mark Divine 40:15

Breathing fresh oxygen in nature is medicine.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 40:18

Anything and everything that keeps you healthy. Mind, body, and spirit can be considered medicine, we call it XXX, which translate into strength that you gather from the earth.

 

Mark Divine 40:27

I love it. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 40:28

Anything can qualify. But when you don’t incorporate it add into your life. This is where fulfilling your role becomes unsustainable. You know, being a warrior is somebody who can show up day in and day out, deliver on their responsibilities impact the world contribute. Being a martyr, is somebody who goes until the wheels fall off stands back and says, What the hell happened here?

 

Mark Divine  40:50  

Look at me,  look how good I am. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 40: 51

Yeah, exactly, yeah, look how good I am until I fall apart. 

 

Mark Divine 40:54

Yeah. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 40:54

And we, yeah, exactly. So that medicine is incorporated. You know, it’s critically important to have that in our life to keep a strong.

 

Mark Divine  41:03  

100%. It’s not just for health and well being and thriving as a human. You truly when you learn to slow down and go within, you tap into that wisdom of your inner voice, right?

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 41:15

You do.

 

Mark Divine 41:15

And the wisdom of your instinctual drives to say, don’t go there, because it’s dangerous, or it’s not your path. But do go follow this. And you know, that do might be contrary to what your fear based brain is telling you. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 41:27

Yeah. 

 

Mark Divine 41:28

So when you learn to go within every day, in these quiet time practices, you get better information. So you make better decisions. And you could be making one degree different, better decisions every single day with with an interior practice ended up in a really, really different place.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  41:43  

Absolutely, absolutely. And the thing that I found too is the slower I move, and the quieter I am, that’s when happiness in my life actually is able to emerge. I can’t do that when I’m squelching it by running around my hair on fire and occupying every waking second of my day, you can accomplish anything you want in the world, and it’s not going to fulfill you the way that just taking that time to reflect. actually can.

 

Mark Divine  42:07  

I love it. Slow down for success. That’s a good place to kind of pin this. Your book The Warrior Within congratulations, by the way, I know it’s your third book.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 42:15

Yeah. Thank you.

 

Mark Divine 42:16

 I’m sure it was like giving birth, you know, not that I’ve ever gave birth. But I’ve written five books. I know what it’s like. It’s a lot of work. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  42:23  

I think that’s the closest as men that we can come to to doing that. But that’s yeah, I I agree.

 

Mark Divine  42:28  

Do you have a, like a website that you want people to find that at? Or do you just send them to Amazon?

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  42:33  

Yeah, nativediscovery.com is my website. And that’s kind of an overview of everything I do who I am, and you know, information, obviously, on all three of my books, including the latest.

 

Mark Divine 42:43

Right.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 42:44

But that’s the best way to get a hold of me.

 

Mark Divine  42:45  

And what’s the name again of the documentary?

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  42:48  

The first one I was featured in is called The Warrior Tradition that came out in 2019. It was it aired nationally on Veterans Day. And then the second one that I was the host and producer of came out last year, and that’s called Discovering Your Warrior Spirit. 

 

Mark Divine 43:00

Awesome. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 43:01

Both on PBS.

 

Mark Divine  43:02  

PBS ought to look for those. Yeah. And what about social media to do play play in that realm?

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  43:06  

Yeah, I’m on LinkedIn. I have a Facebook business page. I’m on Twitter and have my own YouTube channel. So I’m pretty easy to find online. 

 

Mark Divine 43:17

Just search your name for those. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 43:18

Yeah, for LinkedIn and then on Facebook, it’s Building Warriors.

 

Mark Divine  43:23  

Well, AJ, it’s been a real honor talking to you. Thanks so much for your work and for doing what you do and for your presence and for keeping the warrior spirit alive. And training people it’s a really important right now as we head to this next decade. Right, we need warriors with a big heart. 

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas 43:36

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 43:37

To lead from the front.

 

DJ Eagle Bear Vanas  43:38  

Agree 100%, XXX, Thank you very much my friend for having me on today. Hooyah!

 

Mark Divine 43:43

Yeah, Hooyah, that means the same thing. Awesome, my friend. What an incredible discussion with DJ Eagle Bear Vanas, super enjoyed learning about his warrior tradition of the Ottowa and the Native Americans. We had a great conversation about my inspiration with the Apaches and to some of my training. Love, love, love his story and his message and his training. And I think I’m gonna go do myself a vision quest. Show notes will be up at MarkDivine.com copy of the YouTube video will be at MarkDivine.com/youtube.

You can find me at Mark Divine @ Twitter and @Real Mark Divine on IG and Facebook and or my LinkedIn page. If you’re not on my email list for the divine inspiration newsletter, you might consider doing that by going to MarkDivine.com and subscribing. I bring you a weekly blog, the show notes for the podcast, and other cool inspirational things that come across my desk. Shout out to my amazing team, Jason Sanderson, Q Williams, and Geoff Haskell, who produce this podcast and bring guests like DJ to you every week. Ratings and reviews do help. So if you haven’t rated it, or reviewed it, consider doing so at Apple or wherever you do listen to this show that helps other people find it and keeps us up at the top of the rankings. The world is changing fast. And I think the next 10 years is as DJ and I talked about are going to require us to really step into our warrior archetypes. It’s going to be a hero’s journey. And we need to set forth on our own Hero’s Journey to uncover our strength to be more courageous and to be more whole. That’s why SEALFIT has launched a series of quests on a year long hero’s journey. And these quests help you to be SEALFIT to be Unbeatable, to search for your inner warrior, and to get Sheepdog strong. Learn more about these quests and to join us next year in 2023. On your own hero’s journey, go to SEALFIT.com/show. Until next time, this is your host Mark Divine Hooyah!

 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai