S1E93 · Todd Jarratt: The Journey Within

hey team welcome back to the Virtus performance podcast now my guest for today is Todd Jarrett now I first met Todd about four years ago through the motocross world through our our coaching and training at Virtus performance and it's uh it's been a bit of a wild ride for the last four years there's been lots happening both in our world and in Todd's world and he's someone who I respected and looked up to from afar after he moves up to the sunny coast a few years ago and you know someone I've kept in touch with

and we've been we've been lucky enough to keep an eye on each other and still maintain a decent level of friendship and relationship and Toddy's been through a bit of a journey over the last six to twelve months and he's someone that's incredibly driven and you know was incredibly career driven and something that will we dove into pretty quickly into the podcast that things changed a little bit for him health-wise in the last six to twelve months and and it's kind of shifted his worldview and shifted his mission a little bit and rather than me

talking about it now I'll let Todd talk about it for the next hour and a half but before I do that when we walked into my office today Toddy saw the Desiderata poem by Max Ehrman sitting on the wall and and a lot of it is reflective of the journey that he's been on that he's currently on and you know rather than me talk about the podcast I thought I'd read Desiderata for you before we get stuck in so here we go and I apologize if I butcher something because I probably will go placidly amid

the noise and the haste and remember what peace there may be in silence as far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons speak your truth quietly and clearly and listen to others even to the dull and the ignorant they to have their story avoid loud and aggressive persons they are vexatious to the spirit if you compare yourself with others you may become vain or bitter for always there will be a greater and lesser persons than yourself enjoy your achievements as well as your plans keep interested in your own career however humble

it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time exercise caution in your business affairs for the world is full of trickery but let this not blind you to what virtue there is many persons strive for high ideals and everywhere life is for full of heroism be yourself especially do not feign affection need to be cynical about love for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass take kindly the counsel of the years gracefully surrendering the things of youth nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden

misfortune but do not distress yourself with dark imaginings many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness beyond a wholesome discipline be gentle with yourself you're a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars you have a right to be here and whether or not it is clear to you no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should therefore be at peace with God whatever you conceive him to be and whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life keep peace in your soul with all its sham drudgery and broken

dreams it is still a beautiful world be cheerful strive to be happy and here's Todd my personal and business goal is to be just a little bit better every day I believe everyone especially normal people have a story to tell the vertes podcast exists to help us all find small ways of consistent improvement by discussing the journey experiences of each of our guests Todd Jarrett welcome podcast thanks for having me on it's been a long time coming this one oh it certainly has been what's news everything been on a bit of a journey the last

few months you certainly have and we're definitely gonna dive into that but before we do over question for you yes what gets you out of bed in the morning hmm that is a good question I'm gonna preface this question for everyone else by saying it's probably twisted and tweaked a little bit yeah it certainly has if you were to actually give that two points if you were to ask me 12 months ago it would have been a career like I've got to do this to get to my goals in 20 years time so it would

have been career you asked me right now what gets me out of bed in the morning is to enjoy the present moment like it's a complete reversal take me through and this is a this is a deep dive of a question but take me through that transition from a career to point B now so the context of it would be that say 12 months ago just before this time last year I was teaching sports science and ex-fis at the university running our mentorship programs coaching athletes doing online consulting and it was I was living up

in on the sunny coast and everything was focused on my career which is what it had been for the last few years and and then it started to hit me my health I had a big flare-up with the autoimmune condition I've dealt with which is ulcerative colitis which many people would sort of as you start to speak with people it's quite common but the flare-up kind of continued and basically I lived with the symptoms of the condition for over a year straight without any sort of relief from it but the that transition moving to where

I am now really started in I would say like the last six months I've been nailing my nutrition and nailing I'd say like stress management and things like that earlier on last year or earlier on this year I should say yeah but when my health got really rough mid mid 2019 so towards June when I was sort of hospitalized for the first time I started to look at things and go what is this really worth it because basically I lived my whole life up until this point and through a lot of deep reflection in the

last couple of months I now know why but everything was focused towards the career and then pursuit of that what I'm now calling the external journey which is kind of like for anyone else that they're out of purpose or their superficial achievements and I got to that point where I was like is this really going to be sustainable and the more people I spoke to they said you look you're running yourself into the ground like look you'll achieve your goals when you buy at the time you're 30 but you'll probably be dead at 35 is

that really something you want I said no I want to impact the world much greater than that so I want to be here for longer so it got to a sort of that tipping point of I was trying to manage the business by this stage I'd stop consulting with athletes my focus was solely I actually made that decision in September when the first flare-up occurred my first step was okay I'm not yeah so I took that step away from training athletes in the gym I was still consulting online and and still teaching at uni and

doing the programs but my focus became the programs the mentorship our business our my passion and then when the big flare-ups happened when I was in hospital that's when I spoke to a few more people and said look what do you think yeah and then one of my really is a close friend an incredible person Nick Bennett up on the Sunshine Coast oh done yeah so so I actually spoke with family and friends and things like that and it was Nick that asked me that he's always incredible at asking the right questions and and I

said on that day I look who will take the leap of faith I'm gonna put my health first and that was the day I said I'm gonna step away from business altogether so since jeez that might have been July June July yeah that's when I've I haven't technically worked since then yeah and it'll probably I'd say stay like that for at least in another month or two yeah so I'm very fortunate that I set myself up where I could afford to do that but yeah this to where I am in terms of that question enjoying

the present moment when I stepped away from the business which is something I needed to do for myself it was just that as we spoke about earlier this morning chronic stress it wasn't like things kept popping up but it was always just focusing on the future what's the next thing and and that chronic stress built up and yeah so when I decided to step away from the business I was like okay if I'm gonna do this I'm gonna do this properly because I've always believed in plan I doing it all in so I yeah yeah

exactly so I I took I went into two weeks if you'd call it isolation went up to Port Douglas or to a place nearby Airbnb out in the bush my phone no laptop no communication with the outside world just cook food meditated and I didn't even for the I journaled after for the first six days was just that yeah and then after the sixth day I allowed myself to rate first book I read was the Alchemist and then the next book immediately after that was power of now and then I was reading man's search for

meaning so it's it's just been this this deepening journey a lot of like heavy personal development books over the last few years to more like it's personal development there's more introspection those three yes absolutely yeah they and it's funny how I'm a big believer in life happens for us yeah really life just happens life just is and we choose how we perceive it we decide to assign meaning to certain things exactly that interpretation and yeah I was up in Port Douglas and had that time and I was like I've been stewing on the Alchemist for

a while like it an ex-girlfriend of mine had had it years before and I remember she was telling me about it and I sort of thought I echo never went further with it yeah and I read that and it was in in the book while I was up there it spoke about obviously the personal legend and omens and that that's been a big thing that I've held on to I'm living my personal legend on this journey that I'm on right now because it's something that I want to be able to share with more people around

the world that's a big part of like this is it the disease side of things I read it once yep challenge you before like before the end of the year because it's a pretty close timeline but we had it again yes a different book like I try and read it every six to twelve months yeah sorry I think I've read it three or four times but every time that you read it it's a completely different book yeah it freaks me out yeah the book doesn't change but we change yeah how we look at certain aspects

of it the last time I read it was just the the importance of appreciating that the journey and the steps and the process and not worrying about like where you headed is obviously important especially when you have these things you want to achieve but if you're not enjoying the present moment yeah fuck some point that's kind of like been your your transition over the last six months because ever since I've met you you've just been like bullet a guy I want to achieve this I'm going to achieve this and you've ticked all the boxes but

it's uh it's like you say life doesn't have a reason or life just happens and I would assign myself to a similar belief system yeah but it's been pretty cool to see externally and then to catch up with you today and chat to you about how your mindsets kind of shifted with it because that's it yes yeah so it was kind of like that at what cost yeah you can achieve but at what cost and I never realized that and mom's been telling me since I was a kid and I used to refute it like

as hard as I possibly could shout out to mom she's she has been like a rock for me all these years she'd be my best friend that'll make her tear up guaranteed I'm sorry that you're crying right now mom um so she's always been telling me like you need to have balance in life and for me and all of this comes down to personal values that I developed through my childhood through the introspection I told you about in coaching myself in journaling yeah that I used to assign balance with mediocrity and being average and to

me I was against normal because I felt normal was average and to succeed you had to be different yeah so I never wanted to be balanced because for some reason I assigned in my head the fact that balance was having two empty buckets on either side you weren't good at anything yeah whereas this is where I've come to through this journey is like you can be incredible at your career you just need to balance that with being incredible at switching off or taking the mindfulness side of things to importance yeah so I've been at the

same health issues that you've had but I think we've been through similar journeys in completely different way yeah is I reckon if you if you go back 62 I'll probably go back to episode 10 of this podcast or like and we would have talked about balance a bunch of times I'm like fucking hate that word balance like just the idea that you have to slow down yeah but I don't know maybe it's getting older and you know you're saying that your mom was right like I got a theory that we become like we become a

an adult when we realize that our parents were my right about most thing which fucks with you right yeah 15 to 24 or 25 you just like why did they why did they do all those things you start to actually see why yeah realized why because it's it's a part of growing up but that that I guess learning or that moment where you can kind of look at your parents and you kind of like why didn't I listen to this yeah it's a pretty heavy learning experience you didn't want to hear it like you just

want to refute and reject what they're saying because you want to be right or you you want to justify what you're feeling anyway yeah which is a big thing so yeah poor man that time in Port Douglas was deep that really really hectic did you did you set out to like you're pretty structured human being you just set out with here's my intention this is what I'm gonna do this is how I'm gonna set it up or is it just I'm gonna go and do what I need to it was actually yeah was the I

had no plan and structure first time in my life and that was again thanks to Nick because Nick was like take some time and I was like okay so I'll do this yeah this and this and this and he's like you're already setting expectations like you're already putting yourself under pressure to achieve these things what happens if you don't you'll feel like you have you failed at that place and I don't really believe in failure I believe in learning but that same principle applied so I just said okay and sit basically since then when I

went up north at the last few months has me being just I'm just gonna be today and do today and not have that that guideline or have those pressures or expectations even like people haven't known where I'm going what I'm doing but that's how I've wanted it to be because I haven't wanted to have it myself yeah so yeah that was two weeks in that that isolation and I saw I had a friend cat that actually yeah she did some coaching with me and was incredible through that time because I had a lot of a

lot of things that I wanted to dig up on yeah not that I needed to but I'm love introspection and value that awareness so oh yeah yeah that kind of what happened then I went went and visited family down in Vic and that's when the health got really rough yeah couldn't get out of bed couldn't bend over couldn't turn around couldn't pick up my bag couldn't play with my niece and nephew that one was hard emotionally hard called up the specialists in Queensland and I said we need to send you in for a rescue treatment

which for me I thought I was just going in to get heavier medication yeah I went in there and they basically said look we're gonna take you bow out or or you you risk of sepsis at the moment which was they mum was on speaker phone at the time and when they brought up the fact of like he said it pretty bluntly and was the fact that you've got a high chance if this happens that you could die in the next 24 to 48 hours so mum's on speakerphone and I start breaking down and I

was like this is rough and at that point I sort of trying to explain it via social media post his heart but basically I started to even though they may have just been scared scare tactic for me they may have been doing that it worked because for the next 48 hours I was just like if I die this is what happens and that's when I sort of had that big realization of you hear people say like what really matters but I that was one of them the other realization I had was that if this happened

ten weeks ago yeah I wouldn't have been happy to die I wouldn't have been ready before I went to Port Douglas I would have been like in this complete state of shock an absolute mess like I can't I need all of this time in my life I've got all these things to achieve because that's where I was mentally but after Port Douglas and after this time of introspection I was able to go if I die next like in the next 24 hours if I die tomorrow I'm happy and what I know and what I've experienced

that was big what do you think it was about that experience or environment obviously there's gonna be a bunch of factors but that's a sort of 180 because you're on that journey to figure out what a little bit more about yourself and where you're headed and how you feel about the world but what do you think it was about that experience that shifted things so dramatically I'd say the time to really dig because and this we spoke about this with the meditation course that'll probably pop up in the podcast afterwards yeah but we spoke about

this this morning how I said when you're an environment that allows you to truly dig down without external distractions then you can even though we may and this is for everyone out there we want to let's say like journaling we might journal for two hours and we feel like we've gotten to a deeper level when we've still got our phones around us or our laptops or we've still got work on or we're reading a book in and around that we've still got a lot of things coming in and out of the mind so if we've

gotten down to a bit deeper of a level but it was having that for the first six days of nothing that was crazy because it was kind of around about day three and a half day four that I started to really click things off almost like tick tick tick finding these things out so I'd say definitely the ability to truly clear the mind of distractions so not I challenge anyone that's listening that's ever thought about doing it to actually switch your phone off for a week like if you could it's and that's the thing exactly

so what I've done that now for in total I've done that for a month and a half my phone's been off in the last couple of months yeah being away from it because I was yeah I would lived on my phone it's all it was it was comparison to what everyone else doing what we're doing and yeah so in short to that I'd say the isolation and being able to actually dig down deep putting yourself in an environment where you can thrive really yeah just and that solitude teaches you to look after yourself and did

you find is I would have been episode 20 something bow miles one of the guys have had on spoke to me about solitude and that kind of caused me to go and take a two-day trip it was only a really short trip it was just like to spend time with yourself nothing else yes I only did it I went kayaking I said an island what not just hanging out by myself and I found and I would like to do that for a longer period of time and I've been meaning to do it all year but

it just hasn't happened so it's this might be another kick up the bar to do it before things get really crazy yeah but I found that short term the first six twelve hours I got everything just got really simple I need to eat and it's it maybe drink some water I need to have shelter and I need to find somewhere to do my business yeah and that was it and I've kind of like is that peacefulness that came with just having to do those basic things kind of sounds like things 150 years ago yeah it's

just like bottom that bottom you know two parts of Maslow's hierarchy of needs just that was ticked off yeah that was all that mattered yeah did you find that that was kind of the first step when you're important others by yourself and then you kind of started thinking about what's been happening and what the future held and yeah I think the first for me would have been the first yeah day was actually so to speak filtering away oh it's almost like swimming away from everything that was there before which would still be all the questions

that are going on your head going on in your head am I doing the right thing and it's all of that so that's that's really stepping away from it was the first day or so and then yeah from there it's almost like as soon as you get away from all of the distractions all of the noise then you can you can start to feel it more I think I was trying not to in the first few days trying not to to think really it was just do so whatever popped into my head I'll go do

that so I had a really nice very nice place I'm fortunate to to have got out in the bush but it actually like it had a plunge pool and it was on the back of the forest over the front I looked over farming area with with animals and then it had like the bedroom is up the top so I could meditate in the bedroom hop in a plunge pool sit out in the Sun and journal so I was just like whenever it popped up I just did so there I believe I saw it before in

the gym the subtle art of not giving a fuck by Manson it took a lot of complicated principles and made them very simple to follow which I liked the one thing I've taken from it is the do-something principle that's right at the end of the book and because for me that's what's going to change my life yeah in the future it's just follow the do-something principle because I used to be the analytic girls that yeah paralysis by analysis so we are not the same in that aspect so yeah it's an interesting book because I thought

like it kind of I think it could have been like a third of the size getting yeah like some really simple simple but powerful aspects to it and then it kind of took on in one of its own because it's got a swear word in it yeah so many people started reading it yeah that worked me yeah and then I kind of started hating it yeah like even though I read it and it was and I got got a fair bit out of it and I started diving into his his uh his website and some

articles yeah and he's a powerful writer yeah I appreciated him so much more when I started reading into all of these all of these are blogs and these blogs and things yes it's just yeah everyone needs to read it yeah but I think everyone needs to take the next two or three steps and dive into his his actual content yeah his blog posts are nuts just do yeah yeah yeah it's like and I think maybe the look he's done love for clickbait from a clickbait title yeah everyone jumps in on it yeah but I think

it's yeah he's a he's an incredible writer what was the and like I want to stay on that that little trip you had for a minute before we kind of dive into what happened next and coming back into the real world but that I guess you created that and that's you that's the real world for that period of time hmm what shifted from you just doing to you jumping into journaling and then adding some books to the to the mix when I went in I wanted to initially take a book with me yeah and it

was only in the spur of the moment when I was about to head off from Port Douglas actually out to the Airbnb because it wasn't in town yeah that I was like no if I'm gonna do this I'm gonna do it properly and I was like no books gonna go out on a limb and see how I go and so the first couple of days in in that sense that the journaling was the biggest thing for me because I went through two journals in that two weeks do nuts like the amount I went through so

many pens you don't know before here oh yeah I used to but not to the point I was no way not to the point I have been either since journaling is kind of like that secret weapon now but it's not secret like it's exactly I love how much you journal yes I was talking about this today because I've kind of had the probably the best month and a bit of training yeah for pretty couple years yeah like since I was heavy in a footy in yeah stuff like that and I was kind of like trying

to think about why what was the thing what's the thing that's giving me a kick up the ass and like yeah I don't want a dad bond and yeah I want to play better footy next year and like all those things are kind of a superficial thing but yeah I was like what makes me tick and I was like what else have I actually committed to properly and like journaling I think today might be day 400 or something yeah in a row four congratulations 399 400 tomorrow so ring the bell tomorrow but yeah like that

number at the top of the page like just just in something like lots of fire in me yeah it's like if I see 399 can't wait to hit 400 yeah and I see 400 can't wait to get 401 yeah we do the same thing with my training yeah last for the last 30 odd days yeah okay so I've been tracking sessions yeah number of sessions total volume yeah and I'm not a numbers guy like I'm just you know do things the best you can assess it talk about it and then move on yeah but something

about having that number to follow is just like like oh I hit 50 sessions today on train heroic which is yeah yeah when I started tracking I don't know what it is but since that day I've hit 50 sessions yeah I can't fucking wait to get 50 first yeah and like I think that there's something about for me and this is what I've learned about myself with journaling is that if I have the one that number that's the thing that's making me almost it's a dip that's the thing that's keeping me disciplined to keep tipping

into that thing yeah what do you feel as though from your aspect I'm seeing journal before in general after it different yeah what's the thing that brings you back to it to keep tipping into it reflection definitely reflection and the ability to bring up things that you weren't aware of like I love that when you and I call them realizations when I was up at the on the trip I'd be writing and I'd be like two and a half pages in and then something had just pop and I'd asterisk highlight realization and then would continue

writing so one because what I wanted to do was do a summary of all my realizations after the trip and bring them all together so that I could see what it sort of compiled and it's it's definitely that and since I haven't been seeking realizations obviously with the course that I went on I wasn't allowed to meditate for 10 days so that changed things a lot yeah oh yeah well it wasn't allowed to journal yeah yeah you know no journaling that changed things a little bit in that sense change the experience a lot but definitely

the ability to reflect and then become aware of things that I may have been unconscious but you know when you get in that state and you're just writing and you get oh shit okay yeah and generally is something that people because I talk to people about generally and books a fair bit because you know it's something that I try and promote on social media and when I talk to people as something that's incredibly important because it's you know it's impacted me so much hmm people like oh I can't general like you can or like you

know writing comes easy to you and like writing for me is one of the hardest things that I do every day yeah but one I can never write faster than I can think mm-hmm so whatever I'm writing I have to make sure that I'm you know actually thinking about it no you can't just you can't - the journal I don't yeah you got it it's exactly it's a mindful presence task yeah you can get into a space where you just vomiting words yeah but you're very present but I've got like I'm this is my start

of my fifth book my fifth journal yes the first one took ten months to finish and this is like a couple of filled out like ten pages of because I wanted to cultivate this habit but it took me but it took me 18 months to actually get to a daily journal in practice yeah and the second one took three months the third one took four months and it's been four months yeah months since then because there's about 120 pages and I do a page of that yeah and I think that for you guys if you're

listening and you're like I can't journal or I don't have the patience to do it just buy yourself a nice book buy yourself a nice pen and just start writing shit down like everyone's gonna have their process and it took me like I said 18 months to one get the daily process out but to get my process sorted to what I do now like I write one page of just stream of consciousness yeah and on the other side I write a quote or what a learning or something you said from this podcast like just something

that's that I've learned on that day mm-hmm what's your process and how does it look and has it changed it's certainly changed really and again it kind of aligns with the journey at the moment there hasn't been a structure to it and I haven't wanted there to be like there there's days that say the first line of this current journal says where a fresh journal and then it's it's that because I was aligning with the do-something principle rather than structuring it and then what was it it's in this somewhere when I've just finished the meditation

course it's like well here I like here I am so really it's just start and don't think so whatever is in my mind like well a new journal yeah that's what I write and then it just begins and then you pull on a thread yeah and then it's exactly then it unravels and that's what I would say if you are thinking about journaling and you're like where do I start what do I do don't think about it just whatever is in your mind just put it on the paper yeah and then it will do its

own thing like what you are valuing and what you're putting weight towards in your mind will come out on the paper because that's what as we were talking about this morning what's on your mind will show itself like it'll just take over so told us told us through getting back to the real world after that trip in Port Douglas and what was it like just trying to think back there that one was pretty straightforward the the big thing that I would say was that because of the amount of realizations I'd had it was regathering relationships

and coming back to those and being so much more aware of things now than before so speaking to mum speaking to dad speaking to my sisters without them being aware of what I am now aware of was really really interesting the dynamic not from their point and how we and communicated but every word they would say would then trigger in me that awareness and the same with obviously other relationships that awareness was just heightened yeah so that the port one was was pretty straightforward how long after that did you one decide and we'll talk about

why you decided to do it did you dive into the 10-day silent meditation retreat I finished port on nothing like the 18th of August did that for say two weeks so that would have been roughly the start of September then I went away and I I've been looking at a meditation course for those at home it's called of a pass in a course since I was in hospital in June because I wanted to go further down the path of understanding the mind meditation how deep we can go with the mind so I've been thinking about

it since then or if not before then because I'd already written about it on social media and then I went down to visit the family that's when I was really rough and that's when they called me in for the rescue treatment when I went in for the rescue treatment and went into hospital it was like day number four or I think it was like day four in hospital that I made the decision hey I want to do one of these I'd already applied for one on the sunny coast because there is a person of course

that they run about 45 minutes from where we live but they couldn't cater for my food needs which is a big thing with my health at the moment so I said look thanks anyway but I can't and then again like I'm a big big believer and this also came from the alchemist is that when you want something the whole universe will conspire in helping you to achieve it so I had a friend of mine Brodie late Brodie Atherington and he messaged me back in June saying hey I see you you're unwell at the moment this

is the first hospital visit my parents actually built and helped build and run the International Meditation Center in Newcastle if you're ever interested let me know and I basically back then I think there was a lot of messages coming in and I just said thank you very much like I'll look into it because it didn't say like the parsner and then when I realized I couldn't go to these other courses I was like oh Brodie sent me a yeah a while ago and all of the other course dates were closed until like mid next year

anyway like couldn't get into them and you had to look all around the world and to try to get into one and it just so happened that when I was in hospital I found a place Brodie had messaged me about and there was one like two weeks later and I applied and called and and I was supposed to do a few things in between then and when I was in hospital but my health wouldn't allow it but it happened that the dates worked out that I was going to be out of hospital the medication would

have kicked in and be doing its thing and it was still very touch-and-go like two days before we still didn't know if I was going or not but it all aligned that that I got down to Newcastle and was able to start that and that was for someone that is a reader writer that is analytical that learns by writing things down and summarizing the meditation course was so so experiential because you can't do any of that it was a question I asked you this morning but I want you to revisit it again talk us through

the structure of a day okay so the the meditation course is 10 days straight the the background to it is that there's no speaking so it's silence complete silence they call it noble silence from the first day and there's to be no eye contact with students vegetarian diet and you follow basically the what they call that the precepts which is no sexual misconduct no lying or stealing trying to remember them all now obviously the noble silence and things like that that align with them no killing along those lines of morality as they call it yeah

and you meditate for 8 to 10 hours a day the gong goes off and this is a daily outline the gong goes off at 4 a.m. to wake you up by 4 30 you're in your first meditation so you're doing from 4 30 to 5 30 is your first sitting and that's just individual so you're in the hall with everyone else but it's just dead silent you're in your position meditating that's 4 30 to 5 30 from 5 30 to 6 30 we have morning discourse which again we continue meditating but the teacher of the

course will actually sit and read discourses read teachings from the Buddhist background now as a side note to this I'm from my mother's side of the family is very very very Christian involved in churches and stuff like that over the years and I'm I would say that I'm sort of by background yeah Christian but very science kind of person so there's a lot of things that I wouldn't necessarily align with yeah so I went into this very nervous about the whole Buddhism side of things now that I've gotten into it I understand Buddhism for Western

countries and cultures isn't as such a religion it's more a philosophy so the teachings were on Buddhism and so that was from say till 6 30 in the morning then we'd have breakfast 6 30 to 8 again complete silence no eye contact while you're in the in the kitchen in the dining hall then 6 30 to 8 then we'd have 8 till 9 was first group sitting where the teacher would actually lead the meditation but that was like they'd introduce it for a minute they would they would literally introduce the technique for say 30 seconds

to a minute and then it's silence the first couple of days though what we do what they would call is potentially like give you awareness every 15 minutes so they would just every 15 minutes or so on the on the dot for them they would just go okay bringing your attention back to whatever it may be then as the days progress they won't until say for 30 minute mark and then they won't at all so then it just becomes your own meditation so that's another hour and then you have from that group sitting we then

have an hour and a half which has check-ins so that would be from I think it's from 9 30 to 11 so there's a half an hour gap in there where you can go and do your own thing that yeah yeah so I forgot to mention that you're not allowed to read you're not allowed to journal you're not allowed to exercise which even involves stretching so you're not allowed to do like any kind of stretch you know touch anything like that all you can do is go for what they would call a leisurely stroll which

is a really slow walk which is tough from my background like I finally got to a point where I'm feeling healthy and energetic after all these months of and I can't do anything so I like a pent-up rabbit so then during that the interview time you see basically you continue meditating for the hour and a half but every 15 minutes the teacher will call up a couple of students and he'll just ask a couple of questions basically to see if you're on track if you're struggling and where he needs to guide you but it doesn't

give you the answers it's almost like he asked your question and answers with the question and then you need to trust in that process yes oh man when you're sitting there and you're two hours into meditation in a ten hour day and you're struggling in the first couple of days because you can't get your mind to settle and he just answers you with a question you're like I use it was right now what's an example of a question you would have asked within the first couple of days oh I would have made a statement first

I can't get my mind to focus because in the anapana meditation which is very very strict and very tough which I recommend people only ever try to learn by going on a course I don't ever try to or recommend anyone do it through trying to just be explained because it doesn't do it justice so the first thing I would have stated like I can't get my my self to focus and then it would have been something like something simple in the first couple of days like I'm noticing my breath on both nostrils what do I

do because it's supposed to be one pointedness one spot and he's like just one spot and that's it that's all he would say or like or he would say is it called two-pointedness and then that would that would be like that's the kind of response you would get so that they would be the first couple of days as you get deeper into and you can control your mind and control your awareness and attention it becomes like for me it was like I was feeling it across both of my nostrils like down on my lip everywhere

all of these weird sensations the first couple of days I was visualizing my nose like up where my two with people know where the third eye is in the borrowed like I had my eyes closed and I felt like my nose was above my eyes was really weird but because I was trying to manifest it through vision not feeling it so yeah and then yeah as you get deeper like it goes from you feel your whole nose to you can actually get it down to like a pinpoint where the breath is so yeah that's and

then basically the second half of the day is the first half in reverse yeah so you have lunch 11 to 1 the older students donate after 12 and then it's the same thing you have another individual sitting you have another group sitting you have another interview session you have another discourse and you have another group sitting so in total it's it's depending on how much you want to do because you can leave a little bit early or miss a session if you're really tired they're more flexible with the International Meditation Center because they understand it's

about quality not jamming you and kind of smashing you so yeah what was did you sleep well yes so well but in saying that I'd gone from sleeping 12 hours a night when I was sick and still feeling like I needed more sleep to only getting seven to seven and a half during the course because yeah you're up at four go to bed at nine so you meditate through until 830 p.m. and then you got half an hour to do your thing before bed and then it's you're out how many hours sleep was create driven

career driven Todd getting I don't even want to answer it um most nights like maybe four yeah so I but I would as I mentioned to you previous like this morning I would I was like the night owl yeah so in terms of me understanding now the hormones of the body circadian rhythms at a deep level with the autoimmune disease side of things I was the what they call like the light up so at 10 p.m. you had switch on yeah so for I'd work from like 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. at my best two

to three would get a little bit hazy and then I'd be crashing yeah but I then get up at six or seven and that obviously leads into why I got so sick you've got to have all of the factors aligning and sleep was way off for me so but in terms of the course you some people about you sitting and meditating all that like how can you be tired but when the way I explain it and for people at home this will click to everyone imagine you're driving along the freeway at 110 and you've got

the dotted white lines and I say to you see the white line in front of the car I want you to focus on that white dot that white dot that white dot for the next 10 minutes and then do that for an hour and then do that for 10 hours a day for 10 days like your mind is cooked so I'd literally get into bed and pass out because I feel as though and knowing what your answer is gonna be I feel as though that and this is probably more around the way we live our

lives when I do meditate or when I do chill out like one of the first things my body wants to do is sleep because it's probably that's what it needs mm-hmm did you feel as though and did you notice other students in the course would just like conk out in the middle of a meditation session or would they you know have one of their breaks and go in try and sneak naps just to get that extra sleep up yeah so I I personally in the first three days after the breakfast or during breakfast I would

sleep during lunch I would sleep so I'd be trying to get in those half an hour to an hour naps but I was making like I was making a lot of my own food because of my health concerns the other people could be in and out within 15 minutes so they could go and get longer sleep but yes they would be trying to to have naps in between and there were a couple of people that as I mentioned sloth and torpor is what they call their laziness and lethargy which is what they call like a

hindrance to the meditation they would have that where they feel like they would not off and I personally had that when I'd sit in a position where I drop my chin down and kind of round over so I like round over my chest go kyphotic I would want to not off so I made sure that I was always sitting totally erect in like that really tall posture to make sure I was alert and awake and a few people in the back that nodded off here and there and I heard one of the guys start snoring

you but of them that took my awareness pretty oh man it's it's it's crazy where the mind will take you yeah when you've eliminated all distractions when you can't journal you can't read you can't write you can't exercise you can't speak to people you can't even make eye contact you can't be checking social media to compare to anything that's the biggest thing I've struggled with since coming back to reality when I'm meditating now because I'm meditating one to two hours a day still in two split sessions it's not the conversations I've had it's not what

I've done it is the social media posts that are popping up in my head and I didn't realize this before because I'd never experienced it but I'm trying to calm my mind and it's like a post will pop up in that image and then all of the things from it I'll start to compare what are they doing and how are they doing this and have you always been like that to compare yeah have you always compared yourself with what maybe other people your age doing or other people that you've been school I definitely compared compared

a higher level people because I always aspire to be more so in that sense I could probably say yes yeah but it's just now being aware that it actually takes the frame of mind more so than anything else more so than real conversations real communication real experiences that the thing that's popping up in my head is images from my phone I don't know if that's the same for other people but I dare say like if it's one it might be plenty of others and you wonder how much that affects people's mind we know how staggeringly

quickly like the mental health issues are popping up and so many people talking about social media and isolation and when that hit me the other day it was I think was only two or three days ago that I realized what was happening and I just thought to myself I wonder if this has anything to do with that unconscious seeding of the issues that are arising yeah it's yes and it's something that like we spoke about before about creating your own meaning and finding your own reasons for things and it's really it's really interesting with something

like social media that people in those conversations about mental health and about what's going on and it's like the issues are rife we were aware like we're in a stage where we're aware of that we're starting to delve into the wires but I feel as though social media can be tarred with you know a brush that that's the the reason for it all yeah and I think it's it's simply a medium for us to share yeah and to consume information exactly and how like I'm sure you're like this is probably a deep dive you're gonna

jump on in the next couple of months is figure out why that those things keep coming up but I'm sure that there's people that are able to look at social media look at a post for what it is disconnect and carry on with their life yeah so it'll be interesting I'm sure we'll probably do one of these again at some point but are we interesting to see if that changes yeah I dare say like just you bringing that up the fact that I am NOT doing things like career-based right now that it would be potentially

like a guilt or consciousness thing or maybe like an anxiousness going hey they're doing this and I'm not that it's sticking with me that would be an easy and very logical explanation yeah but these explanations are usually not very easy or so we've gone through the day if say you were walking down the street you meet someone and he says oh where have you been for the last ten days that I've just been on a meditation retreat he gives you the amp he asked you the question oh what's meditation hmm what would your answer be

and secondary to that question is it is it a different answer after the ten days to what it would have been before the ten days yeah absolutely I like you know you get those questions where you want to have like a real philosophical answer but I would honestly say now in my experience it meditation is everything you need in the sense of like in the modern day how mindless we are in everything we do we have like if I was to ask someone what do you do of a morning for the first hour of your

day most people are so structured mindlessly that they don't even like they can just it just happens so being able to step away from that's huge in that in the other sense of giving them a real answer of something that they could potentially click on to what I would have said before was that I thought meditation was I used it and thought it was a means to become calm or to de-stress I also used it as a way to build emotion in terms of going through previous experiences and things like that whereas the the meditation

that we did in the vipassana is the most strictest purest form of the Buddhist meditation that the Buddhist monks I should say that in this tradition the Burmese Buddhist monks follow that's an anapana and the vipassana and it's the first five days is solely focused on calming your mind now anyone that's listening if you've done meditation for a 15-minute session or a half an hour session you may feel like that's long now imagine doing that for an hour and then do that ten times so ten hours per day it took me four days so 40

more than 40 hours of meditation to actually get to a state of a calm mind in the anapana and when I realized that that's what a real like a truly calm mind is I was like wow I'm so far off so to me meditation now is a skill for life it's it's not something I just sit and do it's actually a skill I'd explain it as how does a football player get better at football they play the game they go and do the skill the same thing with meditation which I thought was so ridiculous when

I first started like when I went into the course and they say like people they say practice meditation I didn't ever know why they said that I was like meditate or do meditate cuz you never he said yeah people don't say I do meditation I practice meditation yeah so I had that light bulb moment where I was like this is just practice like you can never get to the other end of this you can only ever get better and that I love that and I explained to you this morning without a punter it's it's the

there's 40 types of ways to calm the mind in Buddhist meditation I believe I may be butchering the the exact form but there's 40 in that sense yeah and it's the only form where it actually gets more challenging as you get better yeah because as you get better the breath gets smaller so that that touch point of the breath gets smaller and less prominent and I love that because it meant I could go after something every session and chase it but it also taught me to just be because I was I was still in that

mindset of like oh go harder like and they use the the the terms like being soft or being gentle or doing it with ease you've the right effort on the right mind so you can't kind of force it let's give yeah you've got to take your time in it but when you get to that place of a truly calm mind which that's why you've got to do the ten days and it all makes once you've done the course you know why you can't exercise why you can't journal why can't write because it fills your mind

but when you get to the other end of it and you truly know what a calm mind is in that sense and you've been through the vipassana and you know what's going on inside your body at that level you can't go back like you you can't go back to living the way you were because you've got this this new perception of things and that that calm mind feeling of when you get to that and when you close your eyes you have that kind of black window that's what you have for most of it but yeah

people get different things that pop up and for me I had a lot of lights and I could after a while I could control the lights and make images and things like that with them with the and that was the thing is as I mentioned to you this morning actually and to coop was that yeah there we go that like I don't have to ring that every time I say your name the the goal or the outcome if you know it beforehand becomes your obstacle becomes your barrier because what happens is you become fixated on

the next step you don't actually and meditation in this sense is all about awareness and calming the mind exactly you lose a presence so you lose the awareness so for me it was this really funny game and where I'd be like okay calm the mind focus on the spot on the spot on the spot and my focus would be on the spot and it would stay there five minutes ten minutes ago past and then I'd start to get the calm mind signal which is the lights and I go fuck yes the lights enjoy them and

then I lose the spot and it all disappear my shit now I'm gonna build it all over again so it'd be like another 15 minutes so you know you've done it half an hour and you've seen the lights for like that so I explained that to the teacher and this is what's happening I'm getting the lights and then I lose it he's like because you're being focused on the outcome not the process so I've I've only since finishing the course learned to be able to have the lights but not give them attention and that's in

the in speaking about Buddhism is that everything is suffering everything is craving we always want to attach to something it's like sitting up like thousands of dominoes yeah yeah so he was he basically just said to me that you're clinging on to the enjoyment of the lights but this is a part of the meditation is that you're learning not to cling on to things that are enjoyable because they are impermanent they will all disappear and it's that's the the underlying philosophy you would so to speak of Buddhism is that everything is impermanent suffering yeah exactly

it's all gonna end yeah yeah when when you first hear it punches you in the face especially when you're from a background where things are based on faith that doesn't have that the potentially the justification I found with Buddhism the reason it aligned with me a lot which I find really weird saying because I've still haven't really clicked with it or accepted it I guess yeah yeah absolutely a new kind of identity in that way but everything I heard was aligning with all of the personal development information I've learned about mindset psychology epigenetics nutrigenetics over

the last three to four years and this stuff's been taught for two and a half thousand so it's and it's all got justification like if you look at a condition genesis or dependent origination and you look at the senses and their sense models and things like that how the mind and the senses work to me I was just like wow yep that makes logical sense that clicks that's reasonable that's justifiable yeah and it just blew my mind how it all do you think do you think it's connected with you so much because so much of

bodies of me is experience experiential because it's it's teachings but it's not teachings from a it's like teaching from the ground like from the place where it's all happening yeah where it's happening yes I'll take all the teachers are going through obviously have been through these experiences and they're learning by doing yes so in a really really long-term long-term somewhat systemwise way they've been able to create a philosophy that is centered around taking action yeah like obviously that taking action is there's levels to it yeah the it's that the fact that it is based on

experience is I think the reason that it hit me because in the discourses they're all listed and numbered so morning one more evening one yeah sort of and because I've gone deep dive down this as I do I've now got the discourse books and something that was read out on evening two clicks with me on like morning nine and I got oh my gosh it hit but that's the process that it is it's it's all that you have to experience it and they say that in the in the course and this is a part of

it is do not believe anything you are told yeah do not believe anything anyone tells you only believe what you see for yourself what you experience and when I heard that I was like this isn't someone preaching to me this is someone giving me the opportunity to learn yeah and that's when I started to go through it and experience it and things were clicking and when they're aligning with your values and what you've understood and like determinism discussed against free will or the law of attraction and things like that all sort of coming into subatomic

particles and things like that all discussed in the one teaching you start to go there's some good stuff in here and and I know like from if I heard this before I went into the course I would have been like this sounds like weed yeah but it's one of those things where of the religions I've looked into a few of the people have discussed these things with since that have looked into a number of other religions they've said that Buddhism has the most justifiable reasoning the most logic behind it than anything else in terms of

being based on what is rather than potentially hoping or yeah so I'll be very careful when I go into that area because to me it isn't it's not to me it's not a religion I'm not praising the Buddha as a god it's a way yeah exactly yeah I appreciate that the learning yeah and I think it's like there's probably gonna be like the more you dive into it there's probably gonna be things yes well with me yeah obviously I've not done something as intense short-term like in short-term 10-day thing but you know kind of dove

into the just through books just you know ones like Siddhartha and those those books that you know whether they're a parable or whether it's you know going through that this is what putting Buddhism is it seems as though I'm not saying the best way hmm but the best way I've seen or read or learnt about so far yep you know it's you know you've kind of it's probably something I haven't looked I haven't really dove into with reading or learning over the last six months in terms of Buddhism and the philosophy of Buddhism but it's

something that like talking about an Aztec side of me to kind of dive back into it yeah it's that the book that I mentioned what the Buddha taught me yeah yeah yeah it's a really good way of of having the explanations of of the principles and that's what I would say in what you just said to me it's not a religion it's the principles and exactly what you said there are things that don't align with me this some of the stories and things like that they come down to interpretation it's kind of like some of

the stories align with like the parting of the Red Sea or the the water into one and things like that in the Christian side of things but it's all comes down to interpretation like they might have been trying to get a message across from those words that we've taken the wrong way so it's it's more so yeah that the principles that are the base foundation that I've clicked with but the more we've gone into it and the reason I've was going down this path of the time away at Port Douglas initially and then obviously this

journey in the meditation and everything was my understanding of psychology and obviously over the last few years and in the teaching at uni and running our programs I've gone very deep into the research on in the physiology a lot and the more I got into the physiology the more I was like the body can't be separated from the mind and and I believed that but through personal experience now through that the disease situation my diet could not have like been better to where it was my I took on the the factor of sleep and circadian

rhythms I was doing those I was following the exercise protocols I was doing all the physiological yeah all of the physiological actions I was taking the medication doing those things and I was still getting worse and I was like there's something more to this and the way I look at it now in terms of if you were to make it like a funnel the top in how we treat disease or illness is medication like the pill the pill approach I just take another one you'll get this side effect so we'll give you this pill to

offset that and then we'll give you another one that's why everyone's got 30 different pills so you've got medication at the top the second step is then the physiological so they'll go into the exercise or they'll go into say the diet or I'll go into family environments and things like that the the deepest level I believe and that's where I'm now on this journey it's obviously for me to be able to teach people in the future but also because I've needed it for my own body is psychologically I knew that and I felt it my

at my absolute inner core that my issue and the reason my condition was getting worse despite everything we were doing was the fact that my stress which we know causes cortisol adrenaline inflammation in a nutshell was my inflammation was not going away and nothing could remove it because it was being manifested psychologically that chronic stress from the business and that's where I said I need to step away from this and the the psychological side of things is where the the anapana meditation has been like the biggest gift I could have ever received in my entire

life because it's the ability when your future focus as we spoke about at the start of the podcast and all you're ever thinking about is then the next thing you're never in the now you're never present you actually find out through it through going deep in in the psychology that that is a chronic stress around the body because that puts you in even even if it's not a negative thought just the thought of focusing on the future still puts the body into a constant state or a state of anxiousness and we know that that anxiousness

may not make you feel anxiety and really bad but just the fact that you've got that anxiousness about then not now yeah that chronic stress over time that inflammation is that the precursor to a lot of diseases and realizing those things and then obviously deeper going down the rabbit hole knowing that as I mentioned I've mentioned this to a few people is from what we understand there's only seven diseases in the world that are actually predetermined if you have that genetic sequence or you have that predisposition you will get the disease only seven out of

the hundreds to thousands that we have the rest all come down to multifactorial elements yeah before they they become so I guess if you would say what's Todd Jarrett's journey at the moment or what is it was a beam what's his purpose yeah it's to get to the bottom of autoimmune disease I mean it like and it's true for me now it's working out okay how do I do this in the future for the long term because there are some people that have done really well with it but I feel that there's some people that

almost like leverage off at the amount of people that are affected to run as a business whereas for me I want to go if you speak to almost any doctor in in Western medicine in hospitals or whatnot the specialists in their area we don't know what the cause of autoimmune disease is we look at the physical yeah how where does and you know it's potentially just semantics in terms of our language compared to say like Western language compared to say Eastern language where does spirituality and psychology how do they fit in together like do you

feel the same thing so I would now that like spirituality or spiritual still sits funny with me like that's where and this whole journey you could say this journey I've been on has been a spiritual journey I've been calling it the journey within or the health journey but I call like the mind body or the body mind complex and that is that the psychology and you could say that the spiritual side of it either either or either but it's in a nutshell it's the mind or it's the consciousness and I believe it is the major

the underlying factor of most of these lifestyle base which are autoimmune conditions most doctors most specialists will say that we could even go beyond life's autoimmune diseases and just say lifestyle based diseases we know diabetes obesity all of those things they come down like we speak about nutrition and exercise but the ones that are based around inflammation and stress and the body attacking itself the number one factor for stress is not physical stress it's it is the psychological because that's the constant and when you sort of deep dive down into the neurotransmitters and hormones and

how all of that interrelates and is affected it gets crazy but you just start to see all of these things a line you can't look past it so for me it's it's working out the root cause of this because from what I can understand the number of autoimmune diseases has skyrocketed in the last 30 years and I believe and again this could be a dodgy statistic that I've been fed but it's a fastest-growing class of disease in the world makes no surprise to me in understanding our lifestyle and everything going on yeah and we talked

about where your mindset was out with the comparison and you know that's a quote a quote that's been on the wall but us for the last couple years comparisons the joy yeah we there's an Alan Watts quote that I can't remember off the top of my head but it's basically around the anxiety just comes from looking too far ahead and trying to create that future that isn't the here yeah and it might be I don't know if it's depression but it's around all everything that's happened before us yeah obviously those two both of those two

things are things we can't control yeah the controllables are in the here and now yeah like in my head I can think about okay I know I'm coaching this I know this is what I expect to happen until it actually happens there is and I need to be prepared for those coaching sessions yeah there's there's a bit of this bit of irony with how that thought pattern goes but I need to be able to enjoy right now otherwise I'm kind of going full circle with you enjoying down down the line a quote I did like

this is like an hour ago when we're talking about it but Navar Ravikant have you done any of his stuff no not his books he's incredible he he I don't know if he's written any books but he's got some he did a bit of a tweet storm or like happiness and stuff yeah maybe last year and then he's done a heap of podcast like short ones about it but he's definition of retirement which I feel as though I'm as close to this idea as I've ever been yeah it's when you stop sacrificing today for some

imaginary tomorrow when today is complete in and of itself you're retired I think the ability to enjoy now what we have like the people we get to spend it with you know whether the sun's out whether it's raining you know the things that we've got here are now we if we can appreciate that and actually and live you know and you've talked about the book the power of now which talks about a very similar idea if we can do that then what happens today tonight or tomorrow it doesn't really matter yeah what's happened in the

past doesn't really matter because we can't control it yeah so yeah and I probably shifted a little bit almost too basic of an understanding of this stuff but you know if I can't control it what's the point of fucking worried about it yes like we've just you've been through some hectic stuff lately like we've just sold a house bought another one you know we were waiting on so many things from banks and all this kind of stuff and KP was getting anxious about a lot of it and I almost I found myself getting anxious about

a lot of it yeah it's like I can't control it but I'm getting anxious about it and I found myself kind of starting to dive down that spiral yeah it all got sorted yeah but we know like that ability to live in the now is same as meditation to learn skill yeah and it's something that you need to keep tipping into yeah this happened yeah it's a you know I'm sure that journaling these conversations the you know reading different which listen in podcast those things are the things that help with that living in the here

and now what do you think other on the list guy what do you think the top two or three things that for the people that are struggling to enjoy right now what would you suggest every time you catch yourself thinking about the future of the past just take your attention to your breath but attentively for those that haven't done on a panel like I said I wouldn't even try to explain it just breathe heavily through your nose and then just become aware of every breath in and every breath out for a couple of moments that's

all you need to do to start one of the teachers gave me that as a without knowing as a gift before we left he said when you leave it because a lot of people have massively emotional experiences leaving these courses he just said to me when you drive out of here as you drive out the drive I'd be aware of the breath now every time I catch myself whether I'm in the shower brushing my teeth cooking food driving I catch myself I just go back to the breath and then I'm present again and it's just

like the worries of the world disappear and that's when I know I'm winning because this is what I needed in my life the other thing would be to and I know you'd probably agree with this but you you did say journaling is a big one keep a journal on with you even if you just got your phone notes even if you just audio to texting into your phone notes what you're feeling at that point self-expression is massive because so much of our everyday life is external consumption consumption of other people's stories other people's actions in

comparison taking in information from social media or people that watch the TV the news very little is actually about expressing yourself and expressing yourself in a true form because so many or so many people express what they want others to believe of them not who they really are so they kind of get pent up yeah and I think that's a big part again of that autoimmune side of things the stress and the anxiety of what are people thinking in that comparison Jay Shetty who's actually probably yeah yeah he's a he's a big mentor of mine

in that sense he's probably the person that actually led me down this path most because he's obviously got the background of being the monk and then doing that the mindset side of things and I was like this guy is wise kind of like Robin Sharma in that sense I like what he's putting down I want to pick it so I can thank him for that he has a quote and it's I'm gonna try not to butcher it but it's it might take a few moments to click with people because you really got to think about

it we are what we think other people think we are so we are not what we are we are not what we think we are we are not what other people think we are we are what we think other people think we are so if you have the perception of me that's not who I am my perception is what I think you think I am and that's where it kind of becomes when you really do because I spoke about this with mum because I said it to her and she's like what and then I mum

got her to listen to the episode yeah and when we discussed it I started to case study I was like holy shit it's true everyone like every relationship I had with people was based on what I thought they thought of me and that just blew my mind and again awareness is the most powerful gift you can give any relationship because when you're aware of it you know to expect it so now rather than when I was going on this journey within some people were kind of like well everyone's been supportive but as you know we

sort of spoke about this morning there's been a few other things in addition to my health that have happened the last few months where people have kind of gone on like interesting what you're doing yeah but then I was like if I said that and I felt negative I'd come back to what I think they think I am haha okay and then it take the power out of you know the the the voltage out of it and I'm like that's just what I think yeah they're thinking of me it doesn't really matter so it takes

the sting out so to speak when you become aware of that other people's words don't affect you you're just aware it becomes aware of how you react to things and you're aware of your thought process because obviously a big part of wisdom is well you are not your thoughts you know a big part that like that blew my mind hole a couple years ago when I probably really I want to start journaling and you know started doing these podcasts yeah is that you are not your thoughts because you know I we react to things and

our brain reacts to things and we we go on this thought loop hmm and awareness that allows you to move forward and figure shit out is being aware of that thought loop and how it actually affected you yeah and you know this was late at night late last night I was getting ready for bed and something came up work-wise stuff stuff that was going on this going on nothing negative or anything but I started thinking about it and you know like hair on the back of your neck like fuck like no like it's almost like

the something's going it's not a drone really I kind of had that I was like wait what am I actually worried about here yeah and it was more so excited general about it shortly after was it was more so about the the lack of awareness or the instability that was potentially going to come from that yes that was happening yep but the the instability that could come yeah as a result of that I'm like oh right now that I can do so great sleep last night yeah but it took a 15-20 minute window for me

to work through it yeah some some words in the journal and before I actually went to sleep and had a good sleep yeah yeah if I'd not assessed how I felt what was going on yeah yeah that's the that that unconscious mind that when you when you delve into the the meditation side of things deeper it's again this is where it blew my mind the whole Buddhism philosophy with mindset is that they were so aware of the unconscious and the conscious mind in that the how we say something's on my mind or basically analogies along

that line and as soon as we're referring to the mind when you leave a thought pondering so to speak it stays in that that unconscious it's almost like it gets locked in a little box and that box is always going to be there or it's going to be there for a period of time afterwards and that's why I believe like journaling and things like that when you clear it out you're kind of allowed to fall out of the box an analogy and an analogy that's worked really well for me in the past with that exact

same thing is every thought we have every conversation we have with someone every every interaction we have with other ourself or you know something that's going on in the world it opens up a loop yes and if we leave that loop open it's pretty much like having an extra tab open on you on on Google Chrome and we know that Google Chrome loves a ramp so I've learned but we keep adding tabs adding tabs and eventually something will blow up either the computer will stop working as fast or you know chrome will shut you have

to shut down or yeah it'll suck all the battery out and it's I feel as though those loops are the same with us and how we actually act and deal with things the best way to close out those loops is either to talk about it to write about it to think about it to assess it to become more aware of it if we become more aware of it more loops have been able to be closed yeah and then like that's something that that was just that was a about maybe 18 months ago one of the

mentors I look up to very highly Matt Church introduced to me and just like every time you have a conversation with staff member that doesn't get doesn't get sorted or there's not a full stop at the end open look and eat they'll eat you yeah up until you your brain doesn't work anymore mm-hmm and you know whether meditation whether it's writing close the loops yeah close the loops and yeah that allows you under calm be calm yeah calmness is that the presence the power of now like it's funny speaking to the meditation teacher cuz I

go to use like presence yeah this allows it enables me to be present he's like what do you mean present and he's like you're focusing on the spot or whatever it is so when I was in there a lot of the words I couldn't use that I wanted to but it's absolutely coming down to to being present and it's sounds so stupid but I honestly believe that me saying that I want to get to the to the understanding of the root cause of so many autoimmune conditions yes there's going to be a genetic predisposition we

understand that we know that from so much science we know that factors like food have an effect we understand the gut microbiome has an effect we understand that all of these things have an effect I honestly believe when we get to the deepest level of it the bottom of it it's going to come down to how present people are and how not president most people are how preoccupied people are with things that don't really matter yeah so and and I can say that from a theoretical standpoint like we can't go into all the theory on

a podcast it'll take me hours and hours and hours of what we've sort of come to yeah but also from an experiential standpoint and the people I've spoken to it's funny doctors and this is really really important the doctors and the specialists will say diet doesn't have an effect on let's just say for forward on you say for ulcerative colitis a yeah diet doesn't affect stress doesn't have an effect the only thing that can fix this or sleep doesn't have an effect the only thing that we can really truly fix this is medication and I

said well but if it gets worse when I'm stressed like I flare up and I go yeah yeah it can flare it up but I just you're telling me it can flare up but it can't affect it so it can make it worse but it can't trigger it and then they have nothing to say it's the same thing we die and that's funny because the Australian dietary guidelines that are linked with the autoimmune conditions which is a massive blanket which everyone I believe should be becoming aware of auto immunity because of how big of a

deal it is because it's intergenerational is that it says diet has no effect or the city specific foods have no effect on the condition but then literally the next paragraph over it says these will cause flares these foods should be avoided yeah and it's just mind-boggling and that's a part of what we want to what we want to get past is that limited or band-aid kind of area where it's like I said the first thing is they want to just medicate and the issue is that so many of these practitioners and professionals are specialists in

their area but if you go and speak to someone that's a specialist in one area about another they have no idea about how this a effects be yet the body is one and they all affect one another if you were to say you're speaking to a specialist on the gastroenterology to the colon the GI tract and then they said that the hormones have no effect on GI okay well let's cut out adrenaline and cortisol and testosterone and see what happens yeah things like that like it has an effect on the body it's gonna change our

things like it's just don't know if it we don't we understand such a small percentage of how the body works yeah then even you know come on best friends of doctors and their second year and you know try like we talked about I obviously see from a experiential point of view how beneficial training is and how beneficial but the mindset that comes with training is that obviously impacts things like sleep and stress and and diet and those things and it's not something that is given the weight I think it deserves oh thinking about it it's

probably not a thought process I've had before but you think of the thing that's you know mortality rates child mortality ratio like all-time low worldwide like they've drastically improved over the last hundred years obviously earlier on the Western world and towards like in the underdeveloped countries they're starting amazing things are happening yeah it's almost like because that's gone so well and most of that's happened because of vaccines and medication and things like that so much because they're going so well we're gonna here's how we fix everything but our next evolution as a as a society

from a medical standpoint and you know obviously diving into gut biome and the psychology of medicine hmm I think the next progression or big jump or understanding shift that we're gonna have is okay well we know the medications play a part but here's how you know here's how the the thinking and and the way we approach all this is going to affect it all yeah okay so you know maybe the these are these monks in Burma that have been teaching for two and a half thousand years maybe they they were on something yeah and it's

gonna be a an exercise I guess it's exciting that you're diving into this journey and I guess you know as a way to like wrap this up because we'll talk forever a previous version of me you might have said okay what does the future look like for Todd Jarrett but current more enlightened version of me he's gonna ask you how are you feeling at this moment excited yeah I'm excited I think I've been very fortunate to be surrounded by some very very smart specialists in groundbreaking areas like the fecal microbial transplant with my gastroenterologist and

oh okay okay yeah so basically some people will get a little bit wolf by me like it's normal talk now because I've been dealing with this stuff for so long fecal feces so poo yeah okay bowel movements microbiome is the good and bad bacteria mix in your gut which they're now finding is basically they believe it's like a second brain but it actually sends 80% of the communication to the brain and the brain only sends 10 to 20% to the gut so it's almost in a reverse order basically they're finding that you can take someone's

stool someone's fecal microbiome and transplant it into another person and completely rid them of autoimmune conditions the the research behind this stuff is mind-boggling they've in in animal studies they've taken mice that are obese and given the microbiome to lean mice the lean mice becomes obese they've reversed it taken obese mice and made them lean they've done that with humans now they've done the same thing with autism where they've taken the microbiome of someone without autism given it to someone with autism and the autism is suspended and they've done this with numerous numerous people they've

done this with countless diseases as well autism is just the first one that pops to mind they've done it with cry ulcerative colitis as well which is obviously the area that my backgrounds been in but they're also finding I believe there's been a study done and it had effects psychologically with people so there's potential looking into there for things like depression and along those lines again because the they're finding out so much about the microbiome but so yeah for me that would be the opportunity to get my gut sorted where it can then basically take

over the the ecosystem inside the the GI tract and 80% of your immune system is on your GI tract just on the outside wall so it's why it's a really big deal so that's that's one area and that's my gastroenterologist who's doing some groundbreaking research in that area and it just so happened that he was based on the sunny coast which I know has happened for a reason in my journey and then my integrative doctor my my integrative doc he's been incredible he did a lot of working metabolic medicine which is all like hormones and

and all of that side of things so bringing their knowledge together and them teaching me and then me being able to have my own experiences and do all of the what I'm experiencing bringing it all together makes me really excited for what we can do for the world in the sense of empowering people to take control of their health and their disease because that's all it comes down to is disease so I want to see people that are potentially going down a rough path that I've been down avoid that and I want to see people

be empowered and be knowledgeable in the situation where they can take control for themselves so my direction certainly changed a lot but I know that I always felt like that the sports science side for me I knew it was there for a reason now I know it was there to teach me physiology a really good level and to get me down this path but I feel like this is more of that path so yeah it's very exciting and there's a lot more of it to come that's for sure people will follow you follow your journey

keep tabs on what's happening at coach Jared on Instagram and Facebook at the moment I dare say in the near future we'll have a website up we had all of these things in the works when before I got on well and made this decision so I've been pretty absent from all forms of socials for the last while but when things do pop up and they're of importance so yeah thank you so much for having me on I appreciate it and to everyone that's listened through this I appreciate you guys and I hope you've enjoyed and

taken something from it