Ep 83: Overcoming Chronic Stress for Health and Performance with Former Navy SEAL Christopher Maher
On today’s show, we dive deep into the topic of stress and its connection to emotion, physiology, and physical pain and trauma. We explore the concept of Strauma, and how it affects your well-being. We also discuss the difference between stress management and stress resolution and explore the effectiveness of stress management tools so you can transition from a state of struggle and strife to one of ease and grace.
My guest today is Christopher Lee Maher, an author, inventor, entrepreneur, speaker, coach, and innovator in the fields of health, wellness, and longevity, and he is going to share his perspective on these topics and more as we get into our conversation.
Christopher was a Navy SEAL with 1.8% body fat at 22. He had no idea how stress would impact his physical, mental, energy, and emotional health.
He didn't realize he was sick. Eventually, he had joint pain and impaired vision. Christopher discovered that Strauma, or accumulated stress, becomes trauma and causes serious harm. In his mission to alleviate his discomfort, Christopher developed True Body Intelligence technology, a comprehensive system of total healing and integration.
With his help, Christopher’s clients have succeeded at the highest levels in sports, entertainment, business, medicine, and international politics.
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Book a FREE 30-minute call with Philip here.
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Today you’ll learn all about:
[2:59] The pivotal moments that shaped who Christopher is today
[13:01] Using stress as a motivator
[20:16] Voluntary hardship and transition to ease and growth
[28:01] Identifying the psychological root cause based on the physiological symptoms, and the concept of traditional Chinese medicine
[30:44] Carol is grateful to Philip for helping her be consistent with nutrition and understand the importance of taking rest days
[37:59] Body mapping for achieving Results
[45:15] How to improve your health and learn "bestersize"
[51:34] What training does Christopher recommend
[56:31] What he wanted Philip to ask him about
[58:58] Where you can learn more about Christopher
[1:00:27] Outro
Episode resources:
Christopher’s website: truebodyintelligence.com
His book: Free for Life: A Navy SEAL's Path to Inner Freedom and Outer Peace
FREE 30-minute results breakthrough session with Philip ⬇️
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Transcript
Christopher Maher 00:00
Do you mean whatever's in my body is in my life. Whatever is not working in my life, I can point to and find a place where I have an excessive relative and reflective amount of tension and stress stored in that particular part of my body.
Philip Pape 00:18
Welcome to the Wits & Weights podcast. I'm your host, Philip pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self mastery by getting stronger. Optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition will uncover science backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in. Welcome to another episode of Wits & Weights. On today's show, we dive deep into the topic of stress and its connection to emotion physiology, physical pain and trauma. We explore the concept of Strama and how it affects your well being. We also discussed the difference between stress management and stress resolution, and explore the effectiveness of stress management tools. So you can transition from a state of struggle and strive to want to ease and grace. My guest today is Christopher Lee matter, an author, inventor, entrepreneur, speaker, coach and innovator in the fields of health, wellness and longevity. And he's going to share his perspective on those topics and more as we get into our conversation. At 22. Christopher was a Navy SEAL in his prime, with a sleek one point a percent body fat and one of the fittest people on the planet. He was also completely unaware of the full impact that stress would eventually have on his physical, mental, energetic and emotional well being. His internal health was compromised and he didn't even know it. He suffered from pain in every joint his hearing was shot and his vision was poor. Christopher realized that piled up stress, which he calls Strama, transforms into trauma over time and causes severe damage. Christopher devoted his energy, time and resources seeking answers to alleviate his discomfort, and eventually developed true body intelligence technology, a comprehensive system of total physical, mental, emotional, spiritual healing and integration. With his help Christopher's clients have succeeded at the highest levels in sports, entertainment, business, medicine and international politics. Christopher, I'm delighted to have you on and your unique perspective on the show today.
Christopher Maher 02:24
Thank you, dude, that was the best intro I've had so far. And I've done a bunch of podcast.
Philip Pape 02:30
That's what I strive for, man. It's all about, you know, showing you
Christopher Maher 02:33
your homework cool or detailed. Cool. Yeah, no,
Philip Pape 02:37
I appreciate it, man. No, it's well deserved. People need to know who you are, and want to set up for the conversation. So we know we're getting into. And yeah, so your background is very eclectic. I would say you're a Navy SEAL. You have experience with Chinese medicine, you have an approach to stress management that that sounds very unique. So of all of your life experiences, what were the pivotal moments that you think shaped who you are today.
Christopher Maher 03:06
I mean, there's a lot, right, but there's one that sticks out the most for me. And I was driving from my girlfriend's place to teach a class on a Wednesday night in July. And this is some years ago. So this would be what 1999 or 2000. So either 1999 or 2000. And I'm driving this green light, moving through the green light slowly and out of nowhere, a car comes through the intersection and slams into my car. Since a car round car hits a light pole so hard, then it spins back the other way. I go to hospital. And the next day when I wake up, pain has now shifted from outside of my hip to the middle of my hip. And now I can no longer override things with my will. Right? You can imagine you go through SEAL training your navy seal, it would be assumed that the person has an intense, indomitable will. And I definitely had one of those. And then I had an ice pick in my hip throbbing every two to three seconds. And when you have that kind of unrelenting discomfort, you're eventually going to break your strategies and my strategy at the time was emotional self reliance. So if I was in pain, you would know about it. Because guess what I was indoctrinated to never bitch moan, complain or whine. I'll go to boarding school for 10 years. That was involuntary too. So everybody knows I was I didn't want to go to boarding school, my grandmother sent me. And then I volunteered for the military and to go to SEAL training being a SEAL team. So now that was voluntary discipline. So when you're signing up for something there is, and you know that you're the one who signed up. There is some ownership in that, right? So I took responsibility for my pain psychologically, mentally, like, well, you put yourself through all that. Don't complain anyone? You did it, you should have investigated, like, why didn't you get to Coronado, meet a bunch of guys that used to be in the SEAL teams and ask them, how's your body working? Because if you did, you thought to yourself? Yeah, do I want to feel like hell at 40 at 4445 35 years old? No, I don't know, maybe I would have made a different decision. So I didn't do my homework. And I ended up with a body full of intense amounts of stress. And look, their job is to stress you out, right? Because they need to know something. Does this guy make good decisions when he's cold, wet and miserable? Think about that. Does this guy make good solid decisions? When he's cold, wet and miserable. Anybody can make a good decision on a bright, sunny, warm day. Okay. So I, I understand the process. But what I didn't account for is all the childhood stress that I dealt with in the childhood trauma. I had a mother who committed suicide when she was 29. What does that let us know? She was mentally and emotionally unwell. Okay. Our father died of cirrhosis of the liver. What does that let us know? He was mentally and emotionally unwell. Okay, now I'm the next generation. And by the time I'm my mother's age, 29 years old, I have a body riddled full of pain. What should that have told me. He's mentally and emotionally unwell. I didn't put that together. Right, because I associated all the discomfort that I was in with my desire and passion to be fit, right and to prove myself. And my goal at the time was to qualify for the Olympic trials, it was never going to happen. I had the will. I didn't have the body. I had the will. I didn't have the mind. I had the will. I didn't have the emotion. Okay, because I had fragmented and overstressed myself so much that I was stuck in the state of trauma. And if I say Strama, what I mean is stress plus time, right? So you take unresolved stress, plus time equals strong was that mean? If I'm driving down the road, and I fall asleep at the wheel, and I run into a telephone pole, that's blunt force trauma, right? happens in the moment. But Strama is what all humans are dealing with that are in their 30s or 40s, in their 50s. And what it is, is it's stress that is unresolved in a 24 hour period that gets piled into the next day. So Monday's stress ends up in Friday. And then Friday ends up in next Friday. And then January ends up in March and then March ends up in August. And you know, do that for two or three decades consistently. And eventually, you're going to bend down to tie your shoe. Okay. And you're gonna go to get up and your back's gonna go, pop. And you're gonna go Oh, my God. Suzie honey, called the doc. I can't move. What are you talking about? Bill? My back. I can't move. Well, you look normal. Can you just call 911? I need to get someone here. Honey, I can't move. Now is are you supposed to get injured when you bend over to tie your shoe? No, of course you're not. But if you have an intense amount of unresolved stress, Strama tension and distortion, it's eventually going to happen. So anyone who's listening, trust me. If you do not deal with or let's say not a different way, if you continue to avoid removing, and diminishing your lifetime accumulated stress load and the Strama that's in your system, the daily accumulated stress that got piled on day after day. Eventually, one day you're gonna wake up and you're gonna have some kind of pain, and whether that's an unrelenting toothache, you're starting to lose your vision. You're turning into an insomniac. It's impossible for you to fall asleep. It's difficult for you to stay asleep. You're getting up and urinating five or six times a night. You've got these intense menstrual cramps. You're having involuntary abortions, okay. You know, the miscarriages are now creating a lot of emotional stress for you. You know, you're super talented. You're super smart, but they the amount of money that you're being paid for the work that you're doing is unfair and inequitable. Like there's 100 ways in which trauma affects you, right? You got unrelenting headaches. And guess what? They start out very small, right? Like, oh, I got this little weird pain in my head. It lasted for an hour, decade later. It lasts a whole day, two decades later. Now you haven't twice a week, three decades later. Now. They're full blown migraines that last three or four days, right?
Philip Pape 10:58
So this is, yeah, yeah, no, go ahead.
Christopher Maher 11:01
So so when you have this type of stress, and everyone has that, like, let's be clear, anyone who's listening right now is full of a massive amount of stress, tension, distortion and Strama. It's, I've done 100,000 hours of research, right? So they tell you, in order to master any one thing, it takes 10,000 hours, right? I've done 100,000, it's 10 of those. So I wouldn't be a master of something, I would be a grandmaster, right. So when it comes to this field of study, and in information that I've given you, it has been tested, and tried again, and again, and again, and again. And whether someone's seven, or they're 77, you know, what, they have the same amount of stress and tension in their body, in their, in the health of their tissues.
Philip Pape 11:52
Yeah, this this concept is, I wouldn't have believed it when I was younger. And having gone through some of the experiences I have, and having dealt with back pain and and then when that happened, talk to other people, some of who were able to deal with those issues. by resolving some emotional stress, and dealing with that side of it without any other interventions. It's it totally makes sense for me. And the way you describe that whole process of accumulated stress. And I've heard the, you know, accumulative load makes us realize that the accumulation is part of the part of the relevance here, right? We're talking years and years. It's not just something you can fix overnight, necessarily. It's also not a fit just a physical thing. Like I think a lot of people think, Well, I'm unhealthy. So I get all my lifestyle practices in order from a physical perspective, which I help clients do. But that's not all of it, right? And even the stress piece of it, I don't think a lot of people give it as much attention or depth as you're, I think, already starting to dive into here, which then should lead to that understanding should lead to what can we potentially do about it? People can gain from this. So he talked about the Navy SEALs, just real quick on that. I have heard how like, you know, Navy SEALs use stress as a motivator, they turn stress from a negative into a positive. Is that some Is that some sort of rationalization going on there? Or is that true thing for a certain subset of, of those guys that maybe don't already have the previous stress? I mean, help me understand that.
Christopher Maher 13:22
Yeah, I mean, eventually there will be, eventually the law of diminishing returns, will turn on. Okay. The body can only potentially hold so much tension and stress and distortion. And we use stress in the beginning to strengthen the mind, right? And then the mind gets really strong. But when the mind becomes so strong, that it ignores the physical needs, the emotional needs, and the psychological needs of the body, and of the person's life, eventually, you will turn a win into a loss. Okay, so that mindset is great. Take that mindset, go through things that are difficult. So you can build your will to achieve the things that you want to experience. Once you've experienced the things that you want to experience, and you need to keep having those experiences to validate who you are. Now you're in trouble. Because at some point, you're going to go over the edge of what your body can recover from. And if you do more than what your body can, can recover from, you're now creating damage. And why would anyone show up and knowingly put damage in their body? The only reason why they would continue to do that is if their identity was attached to their achievement. Hmm Okay. And that's what I mean by you now you take a win, and you turn it into a loss, right. And so the thing about it is humans are in this very unique place, where now we get to test everything right? We can go into a sauna, and being there for 30 minutes, come out for 10 minutes and go cold water, go back in for 30 minutes, right. And then we can take, we can withdraw some blood, send it to the lab and see that we've increased our human growth hormone by 36%. Right? So we can test and and we can evaluate if you're someone who's into fitness and wellness, and you want to push the edge, because you want to learn about what's the healthy functional state of being wonderful. But when you go too far, and now you have excruciating joint pain, okay, to attempt to prove your philosophy. And what it's doing is it's reducing your body's ability to heal, because you're lowering your restore repair recovery, right? So the purpose of elevating your ego. Now, instead of having a win loss, you now have a loss loss. Sure. And so the question is, for me, for the listener is, do you want to do things that are rational or irrational, in the beginning, the things that you're going to be doing, you're irrational because your body's never done them before. But then, any good thing that you do, like vitamin C is great. If you, if you have too much, it becomes a problem. Juicing is wonderful. If you use too much, it's a problem. Steak is great. If you eat too much, it's a problem. Sleep is wonderful. But if you sleep too much, it's a problem. Sex is awesome. But if you have too much, it becomes a problem. And so the thing is knowing your threshold, right? And we're at this place in time where we get to decide how we want to grow. I want to be more emotionally present Great, there's a course somewhere on the internet, okay? I want to have a more loving relationship with my wife and be a better communicator, there's a course somewhere on the internet, right? There's people out there like you, there's people out there like me, that are coming together having powerful conversations so that people like the listeners can tune in, and they can learn something valuable that they can implement, right, they can extract it and put it into their life, test it out, take it to its edge, see what the result is. If the result is dysfunction, then your choice is dysfunctional. Right? Never ignore the data, always collect the data. So I think that's the guilty mindset is wonderful, to a point. Okay, I'm not going to put 50 pounds of sand in my rucksack in my backpack and run down the beach. Because I know for 50 miles because I know at some point, I'm wearing away at the joints in my low back. Right. And so Hey, maybe I throw 50 pounds on and I run for a mile. And I do that once a week, once every two weeks, you got to know your body. And you've got to pay attention to the signals. And pain is always the last indicator that something is wrong. So when you have a little pain in your shoulder, it's not a little pain. It's a big problem. And this is the thing that most people don't understand that I understand too well, because I was someone that continued to keep pushing the edge. And so now I know to listen to the signposts on the side of the road that says slow down. Okay, curb, go 15 miles an hour. When I was 19, I might go 60. Right. Sure. For sure. Okay. All right, now that I'm moving towards 60, maybe go 30? Because that's who I am. Right? I'm always going to want to push the edge a little bit.
Philip Pape 19:28
Right. Yeah. And pushing that edge a little, as he alluded to, it's it's a form of I think the term is for Mises, right. It's like that acute stress that is beneficial as humans, you mentioned the sauna and other things like that, where there's a short term stressor that leads to some some benefits down the road unless you do it too much or too hard. And I was thinking of the stress recovery adaptation model of lifting as well as how you can accumulate too much fatigue and continue to push yourself and never give yourself that chance to recover. And you also mentioned the shoulder pain which I've had And I totally can empathize with the idea of, hey, it's just a little pain, push through it. And now all of a sudden pop and you make it worse. You should have just, and the pain, like you said, isn't even the first signal. There's there's other things before that, that that you that your body's telling you. Okay, so this, this is great stuff. What about? So you mentioned voluntary hardship. And the transition from a state of struggle to one of ease and grace, I want to understand that that phrase, and that thought, right. People want to be stoic. We talked about this, this whole concept you said with the Navy SEALs, kind of taking it to the extreme of just sucking it up, and it's gonna make you a better person. But don't. You're saying don't keep doing that forever. So when life is constantly pushing back on you, how can someone do that? How can they transition to a life of ease as you call it?
Christopher Maher 20:55
Okay, I mean, one, they need to understand the model, right? Like, how do we get stress first? I mean, we have to have a rudimentary base understanding of how we get to pain. And so anytime someone has a symptom, right? Most people in the fitness and wellness so they're running along. And no, this is better. They're playing tennis, right? With their girlfriends. Then they're going to go out in the afternoon and lay in the sun. And they're whacking balls back and forth. They're doing backhand forehand. And then the girl wakes up the next day and her backs like incredibly stiff. She can be stoic, okay, and she can pretend like, I'm okay, I just need a few days, and the swelling will go down. The truth is yeah, the the swelling will go down, and the discomfort will disappear. But what she's not thinking about is this, you should be able to go and play tennis. And if you wake up the next day and your back hurts, it means that there's something wrong with your back. You should be able to knock balls for an hour or two. Across the net, have a nice time wailing away at these balls. If you wake up and you've got excessive swelling and a stiff low back the next day, you need to go huh? Would a healthy structural person be having this discomfort? And the moment you ask that question and you in and you include healthy, what you're going to get is absolutely not. The healthy person should be able to knock balls around for an hour or two and wake up the next day and be totally fine. The challenge is this. People have symptoms and they don't know where the symptoms come from. So you alluded to this idea earlier, that people have physical pain, stiffness in their low back that are connected to emotional, unresolved challenges from their childhoods when their minds were in a pre cognitive state of function. What does it mean when we say a mind is in a pre cognitive state of function? What we mean listeners is, this person doesn't understand context. Children don't understand context. Okay? They understand. Oh, this lollipop. It's sweet. I liked the taste. They don't know who made the lollipop. They don't know how it's made. They don't even understand that mom had to go to the grocery store to get it. They don't know that dad had to earn money to buy it. They have no clue all they know is this thing in my mouth tastes sweet. I like it. My mom didn't give it to me. Now I'm upset. Okay, now here's the thing. When a woman or man is playing tennis, knocking balls back and forth across the net for our to wakes up the next day and they have pain in their low back. It always always I can say that 100 times, always is related back to something that's unresolved emotionally. And if you know what emotions go through the middle of the legs, right? All circumduction in the body is controlled by the function of your liver and the function of your gallbladder. And if you know that the function of the liver, its high function is freedom, helpfulness and the seed of emotion. And you know, the gallbladder is the Center for decisiveness and devotion. Well, if I have pain in my back after playing tennis, which requires an intense amount of circumduction whom What's the opposite Feeling free? Oh, repression. What's the opposite to being decisive, indecisive. And now I look back over my life and go, Wow, that's so funny. When all my friends sit down for lunch, I'm always the last one to be able to figure out what to order. Because I'm indecisive, right? Whenever I go out with my friends, and they start having these conversations about things that I'm uncomfortable with, I never say anything, because I want people to like me. So then I closed off my throat, and I repress my real feelings. Okay, so the way that someone's functioning emotionally and psychologically, is what leads to the physiological and structural pain and discomfort. And if you know what each part of the body is related to emotionally, energetically, psychologically, and instinctually, you now have a game plan. So now that girl, she knows someone who knows me, and I go, Hey, look, you need to go have a conversation with Christopher, let, you need to go have a conversation versa. Okay. She gets my number, she sends me texts. Hey, listen, I was playing tennis. It happens every time that I do this. How do I resolve this? I just asked a simple a couple simple question. How indecisive Are you? When you sit down to order food? Always. They always give them the same answer. What I mean by that is whatever is in your body is in your life. If something is distorted in your body, there's something distorted in terms of your behavior in your life. Well, what's the only thing that can distort behavior, excess excessive unresolved stress and tension. So if I removed the tension, then I removed the stress. Instead of being indecisive, decisive. Instead of feeling repressed and suppressed, I feel free to communicate my ideas and like feelings or emotions to those around me. And now that I'm decisive, and free, want to go back when I go to play tennis, the next time I wake up in the morning, guess what? No back pain. Hmm, that's curious. Oh, so you mean whatever is in my body is in my life. Whatever is not working in my life, I can point to and find a place where I have an excessive relative and reflective amount of tension and stress stored in that particular part of my body.
Philip Pape 27:43
Okay, so what I spotted this morning, I'm sure the listeners thinking okay, how do you how do you do that? Well, I mean, so my skepticism here is always get up with everything. It's just how I it's great. And that's cool. And actually, I wanted to explore like the the Chinese medicine and Eastern versus, versus not versus but complementarity with Western principles. But the let's take that one example, the woman playing tennis with the low back pain is, I mean, a lot of people get low back pain. Are we saying they're all indecisive? Or is it the way that they describe that pain to you gives you that indication of what to ask? Yeah, what
Christopher Maher 28:17
we're saying is because I know her activity, and she was playing tennis, and that means that she was rotating, she was twisting. I know that the pain is coming from the inability to circum ducked correctly. Okay,
Philip Pape 28:33
right. Okay. Yeah. And then what? And then what would happen next, when you said okay, well, you're, you're not indecisive people who are indecisive and I know some in my own life. Like, how do I, how do I become decisive?
Christopher Maher 28:44
How do you become decisive, you become decisive by removing the stress out of that channel. So you brought up, which was perfect timing, the concept of traditional Chinese medicine. So the Chinese have mapped out the body in terms of lines of energy that move through the body. They're called meridians or channels, right? So you have 12 primary channels, you have four extraordinary channels, every one of these channels moves through the belly of a muscle, literally, right through the belly of the muscle. The Chinese, they studied energy, they didn't study anatomy, right? That's not how they came up with traditional Chinese medicine. They studied the energy in the body. Well, here's what happened. Guess what else is right above below that Meridian nerve. So the body's been mapped out, right? It has very specific ways in which it functions. And when you know those ways that it function, it allows you to then see the roadmap and then reverse engineer the problem. Once you can reverse engineer the problem, and then I take it a step further, I teach the person how to do it. So they're not relying on me. Why? Because I'm allergic to codependent relationships. Sure. Yeah. I can you understand yourself empowered man, you know that if you have someone who you're imparting wisdom and knowledge into their life, and you're showing them how to do it on their own, eventually, one day you want them to disappear. Right?
Philip Pape 30:31
Right. So then the fireman is a coach. I put it sometimes Yeah, yeah,
Christopher Maher 30:35
like, come on. Look, I hope you're only here for three months. So then you can go away and the next person can come in. Right.
30:44
Before my coaching session with Philip, I was really struggling with staying consistent with my nutrition, Phillip really showed me the importance of being consistent day to day, he also helped me see that it's not a bad thing to take a rest day, he really helps me get in that more positive headspace of a rest day being something really good for me. I've been doing this for a month now. And I'm finally starting to see some progress and my numbers. And I'm really excited about that. And I just appreciate so much the help that Philip has given me. He's always willing to answer questions to offer resources that are totally free, and very, very helpful. So I just want to say how much I appreciate that. Thanks, Phil.
Christopher Maher 31:30
For all the listeners on the call. Now, in order to empower yourself, you need to understand some very, very simple basic things in the body. You need to understand fascia, fascia works, you need to understand how your muscles work the names of those muscles, you need to understand the organs that are connected to those muscles. Because see, when the nerves leave your spinal cord, they go into an organ and then they leave in Oregon and where do they go? They go into a muscle. So whatever's going into my muscles is going on in my organs. Whatever's going on in my organs is going on in my nervous system. Whatever's going on my nervous system is going on in my brain. Whatever's going on in my brain is going on in the soles of my feet. That's the map. Once you understand that map, you're like, oh, wow, I'm having some digestive issues. Oh, you are this is interesting. Okay, now I know which Meridian goes through which muscle? This? Oh, I'm stealing with a lot of bloating. Okay, I got you covered. Let's push around a little bit. Oh, sure that there's pain right where it should be? Do we remove the discomfort come in the next week as your bloating Oh, not bloated, at all? Easy. Without understanding and knowing the map see before the only map I had was fitness going hard all day, every day, all the time, I accumulated so much stress in my structural body, it started to affect the way that my systemic organs were working. Every one of your organs is connected to a sense organs. So every one of your organs like your liver, your lungs, your large intestine, your spleen, your stomach, your pancreas, your kidneys, your bladder, your brain, your sexual organs, every one of them is connected to a sense organ. So when my systemic organs are being stressed out by my structural tissues, because they're so tight and toxic, now my sense organs suffer. That's what I start losing, I start losing my vision, I start losing my hearing, I start losing my smell, I start losing my taste. Okay, so when they say everything is connected, they literally mean everything is connected. So whatever is going on, on the soles of my feet is an indication of how well my organs communicate together. If my organs have really good communication, my body's relaxed. But if my body is stressed in a reflective and relative manner, so are my organs in my organs, and my structural tissues are stressed. Now my sense organs are stressed. And once they're stressed, and you start losing vision, you start losing hearing, you start getting very stressed, because you're not picking up the information and data that you need in order to be successful. When you get in your car, and you want to go to the grocery store, you want to get from A to B. Okay, you don't want to get halfway down the hill, and then suddenly, half your vision drops out of one eye. Because you're severely overstressed. So, unresolved stress manifests this tension tension creates structural distortion and structural distortion. transforms into physical, mental, emotional and spiritual pain. What is spiritual pain? It means I have an ineffectual amount of energy to do the things that I desire, and I'm unable to be ethical, moral principles and be Integris. That means I'm spiritually sick. Okay? Then there's emotional pain was emotional pain, anxiety, okay, I'm depressed, I'm feeling hopeless. I'm feeling repression and suppression. I'm finding it difficult to connect with others. Now, I know I'm emotionally in pain. Well, when you're in physical pain, that's the easiest one. The easiest of them all. If you go in and you solve your physical pains, you solve your emotional, spiritual and psychological pain simultaneously. So yeah, you can be fit and healthy, or you can be fit, and unhealthy. And most people are fit but they're unhealthy. So
Philip Pape 36:09
it's funny because the human body is is very complicated, very complex. And I think we have, we have a hubris, and I see it, the older I get in the medical community, I have less love for doctors than I used to, you know, certain things, especially when I see things like women's health and other areas that seem highly misunderstood or neglected or even worse. And you just put for me, I guess, in the first time that I've either been willing to listen or, you know, hear it, what to me is actually a very logical set of relationships here in the body. Because we still don't understand the brain as much as we could or that our nervous system. And when you when you first talked about meridians, I was thinking, okay, that that's the analogy for our nervous system and how it all connects. And you you kind of said as much connected to the organs and in the sense organs and everything else. And then even talking about spiritual pain again, I'm like, Okay, here we go, you know, spiritual, what do we mean by that? And you're kind of grounded in in those things that, that people can relate to, of having that emotional and energetic deficiency, right, and not enough to give not enough to give to others. They haven't even taken care of themselves. And then finally said, Look, if we can solve the physical pain, I think what you mean is the root of the pain, right? Not just the symptom itself, that it's this whole chain of events between that emotional, spiritual, so hopefully, somewhat paraphrase what you just said, Yeah. In the layman's term that I understand it right now. And I'm open minded to this stuff. So I really want to understand, especially if someone can say, this information now empowers me to try something that maybe never tried before. That's still grounded in understanding my own body and listening to it. So this is very powerful stuff, Christopher so far. Yeah.
Christopher Maher 37:56
Here's the thing for me. Thank you for that. I can't live in fantasy. But I'm in my mid 50s, heading towards 60. I can't live in fantasy man. Yeah, like other people, you can live fantasy, all you want, I have to be in reality. What does that mean? That means people show up at my door on Monday, and they knock on my door. And I opened the door. They come in, and they sit down and the seat that I give my sit across from them and say, Hey, why are you here? And they go, Well, that, then I have to go? Why are you really here? What's your intention? And when they say that intention, I have to produce that result. So I don't have the ability to live in woowoo. It's just me, I have to live in science. And what I mean is, I have to produce a verifiable, repeatable, predictable outcome for them. And if I don't produce that, come Friday, they're going to be unhappy. And they're going to feel like I wasted their time. I wasted their energy, and I wasted their resources. So I can't fuck around in fantasy. So I had to figure this shit out quickly. And it had to be applicable to every single human on the planet. And so I dove in for 100,000 hours to produce something that does what it says it says what it does, because I can't afford to live in fantasy. Why? Because people are relying on me to give them good quality information, but also to produce a result that's beyond what they could have ever imagined. So every week, I gotta pull a rabbit out of my ass. Okay, yeah, everybody Come under that pressure. And so, you know, I'm in Montana right now working with a lovely woman who put a knife through her hand. And she is suffering from some lack of movement and energy. And she wants things to work correctly. So I have to use everything that I know. And I've got to be willing to trust my instinct, okay? Be in alignment with her intent. And not Yes, I can help you and then get the job done. The benefit of being in the SEAL teams is this for me, when I walked across the stage, and they gave me my diploma, I knew I was my own man, I'd been through a rite of passage. What I learned to understand more about that experiences, it gave me the confidence to know I can get the job done. So no matter what you bring to my table, I'm gonna figure it out. Right? The body is simple. It's very, very, very, very, very simple. And if you do these very specific things, you are guaranteed to get this specific result why? Because this is how the body functions. And if you understand the math, you can reverse and you can reverse engineer, any state of dis ease. If you understand the map, and I went in to study the map, that's why I went to medical school. Okay, I went in there to study the map, I need to know the map. Once I understood the map, and I started to create and produce systems that were reflective of the information in the map, I started to produce verifiable, repeatable results that were predictable. And so I am impassioned, because people want to feel freedom, they want to feel happy, they want to feel joyful, they want to have their energy back. Okay, because no one understood the map before, when I was a kid, nobody understood the map is somebody understood the map, my mom would still be alive. If somebody understood the map, my grandfather might still be alive. Okay. But they didn't understand the map in the 60s. Right. And when I went into going into the SEAL teams and training for the Olympic trials and wanting to make my goal, I didn't know anything about the body. I just got up and I used it like a skateboard. Hey, take me over here. Hey, take me over there, I didn't realize that we were endowed with the Starship Enterprise. I thought we got to skateboard. So once I investigated into all of these different systems, and I started to see these correlations, and then I started to implement strategies to neutralize the expressions of these different levels of dysfunction. It became really, really easy. And so I think what I want the listener to understand, it's very easy once you understand the math, right now, most people have a map on how to get fit, how to get some more testosterone in their body, how to get a better night's sleep, what better what are the better foods to eat? How can they employ fasting to maintain a high state of alert, but also to reduce their body fat, you know, they can learn all that stuff, right? And that stuff is great. But none of that will get you to understand the true map that you have. This body is so much more complex. Okay. And it can achieve so much more than what we've been told. Then what we know I'm letting the listener know, I figured out the math. I got it. Alright, so how
Philip Pape 44:13
I think we're talking about your true body intelligence technology and maybe yeah, in general, while the principles behind that the festival is behind the idea that someone can have agency is definitely appealing to everyone listening right because we've gotten to a state especially with the medical industry where it's, let's let's just fix whatever happened or try our best to fix it with pharmacology with some sort of, you know, band aid after the fact it's not. Not only is it not preventative which I know that we're trying to change that just minimally in the industry. It's not the full empowered control and knowledge of your body to change it and I think people are definitely open to the idea of I've had all these issues have gone all these doctors I've gone to these special was whatever still not working? There's gotta be something else there. Right? If we don't if we don't know it in that scope of knowledge, the knowledge has to be somewhere. And maybe we don't know it at all. I know you're saying we know some of this, but regardless, people would like to the power over their, their body and their results. So what's a specific example? you've alluded to kind of the front end of this process, but how would somebody then do something here? What action will they take to improve their health and their outcomes using this approach?
Christopher Maher 45:28
Well, I mean, the first thing you'd have to learn as best are sighs Okay, that would ostracize. That's the best or sighs me Easterseals s. T. S. Exercise, right? Why we call it Bester? sighs because it's the best form of exercise. Why? Because it includes concentric isometric and eccentric contractions at maximal force. Okay, sounds okay.
Philip Pape 45:52
Sounds like back squats.
Christopher Maher 45:53
Okay. And, you know, in tons of different dynamic positions, okay. Why? Why? Why? Why would we want to use pesticides? Why? Because when you get into each one of these positions, each one of them affects the different organs. It affects the different sense organ, it affects a different muscle. Okay, it affects a different quality of energy, it gives you access to higher forms of intelligence. Why? Because the concentric contraction does what it strengthens, we need strength. Okay, if you have to go to the bar, you need enough strength to pick up your beer. Okay? Right. If you're going to drive to the grocery store, you have to have enough strength to hold your keys. Sounds ridiculous, I know. But let's say you want to do something profound, right? Like you want to use your body to complete a marathon or a 10k never done anything like that it needs strength in order to do it. But in order to have maximize strength, you need to be able to recruit tissue. So now in order to recruit new tissue, new tissue tissue that's been turned off, you have to use isometric contractions, because isometric contractions force you, in order to stay in that position another second longer, you need to recruit more tissue in order to be able to do it. And then that new tissue that you recruit, it needs to be what it needs to be lengthened. So I got to strengthen, recruit a new fiber. Now lengthen that new fiber, now strengthen that new fiber. Now recruit another fiber, right, you can see the cycle. As you keep doing that, guess what happens you're going to turn on the entire belly of the muscle, all the way out to the edge of where it connects into attended. Okay, now I've got the whole thing fired up. Now that all that all that intensity in that intent, all that energy in there, you know where it goes, it goes into the feeds my Oregon, which Oregon does it feed, it feeds the Oregon connected to the channel that goes right directly through the belly of that muscle, muscle belly, Chinese medicine, they call them tendo muscular channels. Okay. Now, wool, I've lit that up. And now the Oregon's being fed. And when I wake up the next day, I'm looking around for something to eat. I've got five choices in front of me, I picked the one eggs, I picked the one that my body needs the most. You want to know why? Because now my Oregon is communicating to my brain and it's saying, Hey, we got five choices here, we usually choose number three, actually, let's, let's choose number one. Why? Because I have more intelligence inside of my body. So what they're discovering in science right now, which I've known for at least three decades, is that we're surrounded by magnetic energy constantly. Here's the interesting thing about Bester sites. When you're in a position and you're performing concentric, then holding an isometric and then maximal force for the eccentric when you open that channel. Now that universal magnetic energy gets sucked into your body. And now it starts filling up your organs with more energy, when they have more energy. So do your sense organs. Now I can see better I can hear better, I can smell better. Now because I have more information, I can make a better decision. Okay, now I make a better decision. I have a better life. So whatever's in my body is in my life. Whatever's missing in my body is also in my life. So when I'm low function, okay, I'm not attracted to high function. When I'm high function, I'm allergic to low function. So what do you want to do you want to use best or sighs so that you can turn on all those high functions inside of you. And you can make amazing choices because your whole life is based on your decisions. Hmm, should I invest in real estate? Or should I invest in crypto to invest in real estate investing in crypto? Where should I take this money invested in my business, invested in my business invested in crypto invested in real estate? I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to work on the muscles associated with decision making. I'm going to get into my gallbladder channel. I'm going to open that up. And now I'm gonna pose that question again. And immediately, you're gonna go, Oh, I'm gonna invest in my business.
Philip Pape 50:47
It's interesting. I'm letting you talk here. Because you know, some of this stuff is is blowing my mind. But I there are definitely parallels of some of this, how I and others might describe them differently. Like the example of choosing the food for you is so true, because I see the mindlessness of of many people when it comes to food on a regular basis. And, yeah, oftentimes, there's additional movement and training and just physical interaction with the world that you've never had before. All of a sudden turn something on, where now you can hear your body, you can hear what it's telling you to, you know, to eat, how much do you what types of things? You know, no, I don't want to eat that, quote, unquote, junk food or candy or whatever it is they used to eat, because just my body's not telling me I want it. I can see that. So but Bester sighs that's an interesting term. Would that would you categorize? I mean, are you basically talking about strength training and all its forms? Or is there a specific one that you recommend the most?
Christopher Maher 51:44
No, that it's, it's getting into a position. So here's the great thing about the SEAL teams SEAL team, they teach you how to master your body through calisthenics. Okay, so they had the right idea, right. But they have limited position. And they left out the other two contractions. Right? So they learned the isometric contraction, and they left out the eccentric contraction, wisdom, most important. Why? Because it's 30 to 50% stronger. For every 100 pounds, you can lift, you can lower 30 to 50%. More weight, you
Philip Pape 52:22
can always get down on my squat mat can always come up. Yep, yes.
Christopher Maher 52:25
Right. Yeah. So so if you if you put that to the test, and you thought about every single muscle group in the body, then you did the same thing. Isometric concentric eccentric contraction, so you sent your contractions at maximal force, right? Now you're going to open your body, and when you open your cavity, your ribcage and your shoulders, structurally, everything starts dropping into the right place. Why? Because now your bones are rotated in the correct position. When my bones are rotated in the correct positions, my heart has to spend less energy, pushing blood around my body. Now, instead of having to go buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, but it can go boom, boom, boom. Or other people, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Why? Because they have this excessive amount of structural tension, stress and distortion. I'm not talking about yoga. Okay, if you're into yoga, I'm not going to dog yoga. This is this is not what we're talking about. Okay. I'm not talking about length ability. I'm talking about flexibility. When they say flexibility. What's the first part of that word? Flex. Okay, what does flex mean? That means for muscle to shorten it, does it mean for it to lengthen? Hmm, that's curious. I thought flexibility meant length ability. No, no, no, no, no, I'll talk about flexibility, right? Getting the muscle to contract at maximal force. Because when I do that, guess what? It becomes 20 to 30% longer. Yep, counterintuitive, right? So Bester sighs really means bio energetic, self transformational sequences. Okay. And I've, I've spent the last 22 years I learned a few from someone and then I took it and I created hundreds of those. And once you implement those, now, the whole system functions in a way that you can't even imagine because your hearing gets better. Like me if I close my eyes right now. I can hear my heart beating football. Football. 25 years ago, I couldn't hear my heart beating unless I just got done sprinting right 800 meters as fast as I could. Okay, so I can hear my heart beating. My hearing. Excellent. My sense of people my ability to read their emotional state what they need my ability to meet them in their style of communication, my ability to be out frantically self expressed and regardless of the environment that I'm in, all these levels of intelligence keep rising inside of you, they get higher, the more you open your body, there's so much inherent intelligence inside the human race that's gone undiscovered. Okay, because we haven't been willing to acknowledge how important the body is, and we've isolated the mind as our major form of intelligence. The brain is only one organ, there's 15 other ones? Well, each one of those organs has as much intelligence as the brain. But it's a different form of intelligence. Here's the wonderful thing. We have a God that created a bodies. Okay? If a human created the body, we'd be stuck with just one form of intelligence, right? But you have a God that created the body, do you think that someone would send you to earth a God, a God would send you to Earth without being equipped with what you need already inside of you.
Philip Pape 56:14
It's a beautiful concept, right? That there's this, this unleashed or not unleashed potential that we need to unleash. So I think the listeners are gonna have to probably listen to this one a couple times to absorb everything we've talked about here. I know, we're short on time, we could keep going on forever, probably. But I'd like to ask guests, Christopher, what, if there's anything that I you wish I would have asked you that we didn't cover? And if so, what would be your answer?
Christopher Maher 56:44
What's the most important thing to understand? When you're talking about human development?
Philip Pape 56:52
Okay. Please answer the question. I'd like to know.
Christopher Maher 56:56
Yeah, yeah, the most important thing to understand is intent. And that intent is the driver. For anything that happens, like whenever you're looking around the world, and you see a result, that result was created by someone's intent, whether it's harmful, or it's helpful. Okay, so knowing that, well, if someone else can create an intent, that would create harm, that means I can create an intent that would create health, ease and grace. So I think the most important thing for anyone who's in health and wellness is take five minutes, pull the chair up to a mirror, look inside of your own eyes, and ask yourself, Why am I here? What do you need? And how can I help you? And connect to your soul to get your answers rather than your negatively conditioned personality? Connect to the inside of you, and ask those deeper questions. And then once you have those answers, start setting clear intents around what it is you want to experience in relationship to the answers that came back from your soul. And if you're willing to spend five minutes, and I spent two hours 27 years ago, I spent two hours in front of a mirror. And I got the help that I really needed. Okay, because I was willing to ask myself those questions. And now I have a life while I'm in service continuously. And every moment is magical.
Philip Pape 58:44
Look at yourself in the mirror and ask Why am I here? What do you what do you need? And how can I help you? Yeah. And then use intent to
Christopher Maher 58:53
bring it to drive those answers. Right. Exactly. Right. Love that. Yeah, well, let's
Philip Pape 58:57
let's leave it at that. I do want to ask you, Christopher, where people can learn about you and learn about your
Christopher Maher 59:03
work. You can go to true body intelligence.com We're redoing the website case you have some comments, withhold those and read the book I wrote. I mean, it's simple. I'm actually I'll read the book, listen to the book that I wrote. It's called Free for life, the US Navy SEALs unique path to inner freedom and outer peace. And then if you want to get in contact with me, you always have to read the book first. Then you email my assistant at support at true body intelligence.com. And then she will set you up for a phone call. And if you decide like you'd like to learn from me as a student, or you'd like me to work with you privately, then I'm open to that conversation.
Philip Pape 59:53
Excellent. And you suggested for your book free for life to get the audio book. Is it by you? Yes, it's
Christopher Maher 59:59
narrated by me
Philip Pape 1:00:00
yeah well nine Apple know your voice now and yeah, hopefully the trust in that like, oh yeah, this will be a relaxing experience and the lightning one as well. So all right well I will definitely include those in the show notes and give you all the love and you know the attention that's that comes out of this episode of of sharing with the world and hopefully people have taken a lot from this I know I have you've given me things to think about. And even the the exercise at the end to go into the mirror and just do that is very helpful. So thank you. It's truly an honor and pleasure to have you on the show, Christopher.
Christopher Maher 1:00:30
Oh, dude, it was a pleasure to be here, man. You're very talented at what you do. And you're obviously passionate about helping people and you care. And I could that came across from me the whole time. Appreciate that. So really, thanks to you for advice. Share with your peeps.
Philip Pape 1:00:50
Thank you. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits & Weights. If you found value in today's episode, and know someone else who's looking to level up their Wits & Weights. Please take a moment to share this episode with them. And make sure to hit the Follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.
