EPISODE OVERVIEW

Duration: Approximately 45 minutes

Best For: Trapped entrepreneurs who feel constantly stressed, struggle to switch off, and know their health is suffering because of it

Key Outcome: Discover how to shift from chronic stress to calm resilience using practical techniques you can implement today, without adding more complexity to your already overwhelming schedule

He ran a software company for nearly 40 years. He travels the world serving clients across six different industries. And he starts every single day in meditation.

THE BOTTOM LINE

You built your business to create freedom. Now you cannot sleep properly, your shoulders are permanently tight, and you have not taken a real holiday in years. The thing is, that alarm system in your brain, the one designed to protect you from lions and tigers, it does not know the difference between a predator and a difficult email from a client. So it keeps firing. Day after day. Week after week. Until the stress becomes so normal you forget what calm actually feels like. Allen Imbarrato has spent 50 years mastering the art of stress transformation, from his early days in an ashram to building a software company with 15 team members. In this conversation, he reveals the exact process for turning chronic stress into resilience, why your body is storing decades of suppressed emotion, and how combining human wisdom with AI can finally give you the clarity to lead without burning out. This is not about adding another thing to your to-do list. This is about accessing the energy that is already there, waiting for you to stop long enough to notice it.

WHY THIS EPISODE MATTERS TO YOU

Your chronic stress is not just uncomfortable, it is destroying your ability to make the strategic decisions your business needs from you as CEO

That brain fog you experience after difficult conversations is your higher brain being hijacked, and there is a simple way to reclaim it within seconds

Every suppressed emotion from the last 20 years of building your business is stored in your body, creating energy blocks that keep you exhausted no matter how much you sleep

The CDC says 90% of doctor visits are stress-related, and if you keep operating this way, the cost will be far greater than a missed quarter

KEY INSIGHTS YOU CAN IMPLEMENT TODAY

Your amygdala cannot distinguish between a physical threat and a stressful email. Once you understand this, you can stop beating yourself up for overreacting and start using specific techniques to return to calm. The transformation happens when you realise your reactions are not weakness, they are outdated programming.

Nose breathing activates your parasympathetic nervous system. Mouth breathing activates your sympathetic. Simply shifting to slow, belly-focused nose breathing during or after stressful moments can interrupt the cortisol cascade before it hijacks your whole afternoon.

You do not need to meditate for hours. Allen confirms that even three conscious breaths between meetings can revive you and reconnect you to clarity. The trapped entrepreneur who waits for the perfect 30-minute window will never start. The one who takes three breaths after every phone call will transform.

Most people think meditation fails because thoughts keep coming. The thing is, thoughts are not the problem. Getting grabbed by the thought is. Every time you notice a thought and return to your breath, you are exercising a muscle. Within weeks, you will sit quietly for three minutes when you previously could not manage two.

As a CEO, your job is not to be the doer. Your job is to hold the vision and make good decisions. That requires reflection time, good data, and a clear mind. When you are constantly stressed, you are operating from your reptilian brain, not your executive brain.

GOLDEN QUOTES WORTH REMEMBERING

"What's normal is really abnormal. And what feels abnormal is really normal." - Allen Imbarrato

"A company is an energy field. Software is the invisible force that connects all the energy in a company." - Allen Imbarrato

"Emotion just means energy in motion. The problem is all those emotions got stuck in our body." - Allen Imbarrato

"It's not AI that's going to take your job. It's the companies that are using AI that'll take your job, or the people that are efficient at it." - Allen Imbarrato

"World peace can only come from yourself. You have to be peaceful in yourself." - Allen Imbarrato

QUICK NAVIGATION FOR BUSY LEADERS

00:00 - Introduction: Meet Allen Imbarrato and his 40-year entrepreneurial journey

03:45 - The Dawn of Personal Computing: How Allen stayed on the learning curve across multiple technology eras

07:20 - Meditation as Foundation: Why Allen centres every day in meditation before facing business challenges

12:30 - The Amygdala Problem: Understanding why your stress response is stuck in prehistoric mode

18:15 - KeyBiz Software: How unified data platforms eliminate disconnected systems and manual workarounds

24:40 - AI Integration: Practical use cases including AI avatars and instant report generation

30:10 - The Key Flow App: A tool for transforming stress into resilience using mindfulness principles

36:45 - Survival Strategies: How approval-seeking and control patterns create chronic anxiety and worry

40:20 - The Practice of Letting Go: Why suppressed emotions create energy blocks and how to release them

44:00 - Closing Wisdom: Developing a daily practice and finding tools that resonate with you

GUEST SPOTLIGHT

Name: Allen Imbarrato

Bio: Allen has been running his own company since 1986, nearly 40 years of entrepreneurial experience. He began as a meditation teacher after spending 10 years in an ashram, then transitioned to software development. Today he leads KeyBiz, a company with 15 team members serving clients across six verticals including point of sale, manufacturing, distribution, and professional services. His latest creation is Key Flow, a stress resilience app with over 30,000 downloads.

Connect with Allen:

Website: kiflow.app

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/allen-imbarrato-0942a24/

YOUR NEXT ACTIONS

This Week: Start a three-breath practice. After every phone call or meeting, take three slow breaths through your nose into your belly. Notice what shifts when you do this consistently for seven days.

This Month: Identify your primary survival strategy. Are you seeking approval, avoiding disapproval, seeking control, or avoiding being controlled? Understanding your pattern is the first step to interrupting it.

This Quarter: Establish a daily reflection practice of at least five minutes. Whether meditation, breathwork, or simply sitting in silence, commit to this as non-negotiable. Your strategic clarity depends on it.

EPISODE RESOURCES

Key Flow App - Available on Apple App Store and Google Play Store, seven day free trial

KeyBiz Software - Custom ERP CRM solutions at kibizsystems.com

Joe Dispenza meditations - Referenced as an effective meditation approach

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READY TO ESCAPE THE TRAP?

Take the Freedom Score Quiz: https://scoreapp.atpbos.com/

Discover how trapped you are in your business and get your personalised roadmap to freedom in under 5 minutes.

Book a Free Strategy Session: https://www.atpbos.com/contact

Let's discuss how to build a business that works WITHOUT you.

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CONNECT WITH YOUR HOST, ROY CASTLEMAN

Roy is the founder of All The Power Limited and creator of Elevate360, a business coaching system for entrepreneurs ready to scale without burnout. As a certified Wim Hof Method Instructor and the UK's first certified BOS UP coach, Roy combines AI automation, wellness practices, and business operating systems to help trapped entrepreneurs reclaim their freedom.

Website: www.atpbos.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roycastleman/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@allthepowerltd

Hey, power movers, how are we doing today? I welcome

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Ellen. Ellen, welcome to the podcast. Lovely to have you

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here. Thanks for inviting me. I'm really looking forward to

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this. Yeah, yeah. Ellen will tell us a little bit

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about what he does, his journey through AI and business

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and entrepreneurship. And it's an interesting story, but why don't

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you give us a small initial taste of what you've

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come through on entrepreneurship and will lead into there and

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stuff a little bit later. I'm been having my own

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company now since 1986, so that's almost 40 years. But

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I started off as a personal growth and transformational seminar

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company. I traveled all over the North America delivering a

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seminar called Winning at Work and at Life. And it

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was all about how to create a work life that

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was more aligned to your passion for rather than just

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survival. And most people would win at work, but they

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would lose at life. So I had been a meditation

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teacher before that and really wanted to integrate that experience

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of meditation into a work environment in a work life.

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So I developed this seminar and I ended up doing

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an infomercial on TV in the 90s that went all

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over the country. And part of my passion as I

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developed it, I was one of the first people to

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get a Mac. And I started using that and got

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very excited about it and wanting to get into software,

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creating software. So I ended up creating a software company

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and I've been doing that. I'm going to pause you

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there because. Yeah, so many of our younger listeners can't

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even have a concept of that. We're talking about the

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times when. Yeah, back in the late 80s and early

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90s, I was in my last years of school. We

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never even had PCs in school, let alone phones or

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anything. It was a different time, wasn't it? I went

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through the 60s, that was a really interesting time. And

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then the 70s, but now we're talking about the 80s.

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But the 80s was the dawn of the Macintosh and

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then the 90s was the dawn of the Internet and

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that changed everything. And now we're in the age of

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AI. So it been a lot of different transitions to

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keep on the learning curve. Yeah. How do you keep

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up with that? We'll come back to the meditation piece

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and. Because I think that's important to touch on. But

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yeah, how do you keep up with the change of

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continuously learning new things is that I believe that's such

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an entrepreneurial thing to do is to keep on learning.

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I'm going to come back to the meditation piece right

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away because that's the center in which I approach every

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day. I start from a place of meditation and that

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opens me up to receive more energy and open up

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to higher realms of consciousness that keep me in a

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learning space and opening to continue to grow and expand

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my own energy field so that I can allow myself

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to face all the challenges of day to day work

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life. Software, always, you never can rest on your laurels.

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There's always a new trend or a new language or

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a new technique or tool to have to learn. And

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Now I have 15 people on my team that work

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for me and I can't go down all the learning

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curves. So I need to just know enough to keep

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everyone actively applying these technologies to, to serve

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our clients. Amazing that. Yeah. What a challenge that is.

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And you've seen such a growth of different things and

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languages coming and languages going. And now we're in the

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age of no more languages per se or very few

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languages. We just talk in and things get built. Yeah.

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That whole staying on top of that game. Yeah. Congratulations.

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Hats off to you. That's amazing. So, yeah, it keeps

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me alive, keeps me on purpose and keeps me going.

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Obviously since I was around the 60s, I'm a little

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up there in the age at this point, but I

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keep growing and my work is still very exciting to

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me. So most people think I should be retired and

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I could retire, but I feel too much joy and

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enjoy my work. What I'm doing that I just look

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forward to every day and what I'm creating with my

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clients and creating these products that I'm putting out into

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the world. Very good. So let's go back in time

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a little bit and talk, talk, talk to me about

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the meditation. One of the, one of the things I've

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only learned in the last couple of years and I'm

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53 now. I've only learned meditation in the last three

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years. And I just wish that I'd been able to

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do the breath work, the meditation. And really you spoke

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about energy and I love that being able to do

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these things gives me energy I can use today. Yeah.

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And I don't give my energy away to yesterday or

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to the, to tomorrow. I actually managed to. Yeah. Rally

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it up for today. And I only do that because

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I get up and I do breath work, I meditate,

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I do my pt, I do my sauna, I do

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my ice bath and that's the system that I use,

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you know. How did you get into meditation? First, let's

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go back and take us through some of that journey.

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What's the power to you? I Was working in the

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peace movement, trying to stop the war in Vietnam. And

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I was working Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden. Tom Hayden

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was a member of the Chicago 7. He introduced me

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to this other member of the Chicago 7, Rennie Davis.

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And Rennie and I became close and he, Rennie introduced

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me to this guru from India who was only 16

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at the time and now he's like in his 60s.

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But I ended up being initiated into this meditation when

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I was in my 20s, early 20s, and I ended

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up joining an ashram and I spent 10 years in

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an ashram. I eventually became one of the guru's meditation

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teachers and I traveled all over North America. But I

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would like meditate two, three hours a day, have amazing

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experiences. There's an infinite source of energy that we can

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tap into that we're connected to as human being that

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we get disconnected to because we spend so much time

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in our minds thinking and having an idea that all

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we are is our thoughts and our, our emotions and

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our body. But really there's a whole other dimension to

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us. And that's the perspective of meditation, of understanding what

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is reality and what is an illusion. And having the

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grounding in reality gives you a much stronger foundation than

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to then participate in the illusion in a full out

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way. Amazing. And how one of the things that was

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a real struggle for me was before I did the

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breath work, before I actually I used the breath work

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as a shortcut to slow my mind down enough that

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meditation worked for me. What tips and tricks could you

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give business owners who are such busy minded people to

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start thinking about meditation? It's not a trend, it's not

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something that just comes and goes. And mindfulness is like

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the latest thing. Mindfulness is now been supported by science

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and neuroscience and validated. But it's really a practice

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of being a human being where we spend so much

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time in doing this that we don't really give ourselves

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permission to just be. And if you look at any

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executive sports team and analytics, most sports teams spend more

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time on the practice field than they do in the

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real game. Like a football team in America plays one

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game a week, but then they practice and look at

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film or basketball teams do the same. Or analytics are

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really big in baseball. But in business we spend most

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of our time just doing and very little time reflecting.

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As a CEO, my job is to be the visionary,

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as the leader and not necessarily be the doer, but

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to have a clear vision and to lead my team.

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And that vision comes from doing deep reflection and having

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an ability to really hold the vision and the energy

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for the whole company. Because a company is an energy

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field, okay? And that's part of what our software does.

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It's called keybiz. Key means energy. And software is the

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invisible force that connects all the energy in a company.

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But most people have disconnected energy and they have like

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tons of programs that don't talk to each other, data

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silos. And then they don't connect to the web or

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they don't connect to a mobile platform. So having a

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unified platform that connects all the data. Because as an

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executive, your main job is to make good decisions and

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you need good data to inform those decisions. And particularly

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now with AI, AI can give you insights if you

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have good data, but if you have bad data, you're

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not going to get good insights. So the combination of

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human brilliance and human intelligence through meditation, combining

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that with artificial intelligence is going to make you a

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better leader and help you achieve more of your goals

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more rapidly. Amazing. So talk to me a little bit

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more about your software and how. Give me a practical

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use case of if somebody calls you up and says,

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alan, I need you to help me with my software

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stack, what do you ask them? What are you able

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to help them with? Well, we do a needs analysis

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and understand what their pain points are. And most people

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have certain pain points that we address, like disconnected data

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is one of them. Lack of automation. Most people are

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doing too much manual work. They're not letting the software

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work for them. And most people are trying to fit

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their business into standard programs. What we do is

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we have an ERP CRM program that runs every aspect

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of a business, but we say it's only 80 or

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90%, and then we customize it and automate it as

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much as possible. By working really closely, we become like

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a partner to collaborate and see what the vision is

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of the company. And rather than them having to figure

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out how to get their vision into six different programs,

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we create a unified platform for them to really execute

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their vision the way they want it and create the

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workflows, redesign the workflows, create a much solid, more solid

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infrastructure. So we'll explore how would you put up with

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this for 20 years? You fit into one of these

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old programs, these legacy programs, like this one client had

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a Sage program they've used for 20 years, and they

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came to us and they wanted to modernize it. And

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we work with them now for three years and we

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met with them twice a week, and they've actually gone

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over every aspect of their business and told us exactly

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how they want it and we've created it for them

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and they're just like thrilled that they're having the software

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actually accelerate and create higher and higher efficiencies

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to produce the results they want. So usually it's all

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about efficiency and where the blocks to efficiency are and

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how to use your software to more effectively connect everything

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together so that you don't have double data entry or

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workarounds or all sorts of manipulations to try to get

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it the way you want. And typically, what types of

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companies do you work with? What size are they? What

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values are they? Is it a range or. We have

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six different verticals. We have a point of sale that

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we do worldwide, 70 stores from China, Japan, Korea,

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all throughout Canada, North America. We run their whole point

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of sale operation. We've created a very customized version of

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their point of sale. It's almost like they've white labeled

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it, they've renamed it, and we started with them, they

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had 10 stores and now they have 70 stores. We've

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worked with MIT, built an event management to keep track

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of all the classes and all the audio resources. We

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dealt with distributors, how to automate all their distribution systems

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and deal with wholesalers, We've dealt with manufacturers. We have

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a lot of manufacturing clients where we understand their whole

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production process and we get very specific and granular

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in all the details of the manufacturing. And we work

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with plastic surgeons and other professional services to automate procedures

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within the offices. So we have a lot of different

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industries that we have done custom software solutions for, but

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that is quite a range. So a plastic surgeon might

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have three or four people in the office and the

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others sound like they're quite big, so quite a range

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of people. Yeah. Now we're doing a really exciting thing.

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We've created an AI avatar of the plastic surgeon where

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his patients can talk with him and ask him any

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question about any surgery or any treatment. And they. It's

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in his voice and his style. And we've taken all

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his materials from YouTube videos and all his things on

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his website and we've combined it into an AI that

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can talk in various levels. A beginner level, intermediate level,

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advanced level, and then it can set an appointment to

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actually talk with a consultant. That's the kind of example

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of an automation that we're doing with AI. Are you

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seeing much of the. Replacing the receptionist and that type

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of thing as well? Are you doing much of that?

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We look at it as like everyone needs to upskill

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themselves. Yeah. Not to replace people, but people need to

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embrace AI and use it as a tool to make

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them their job more effective rather than resisting and fearing

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and going into a survival mode. Most post most people

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who are embracing AI, they'll be the ones to succeed.

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The ones that are resisting it or fighting it I

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think are going to get left out. Yeah. It's not

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AI that's going to take your job. It's the companies

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that are using AI that'll take your job or the

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people that are efficient at it. And how you've been

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doing this pretty much since the outset, coming in and

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probably before many other people. How are you seeing the

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momentum of it increase over the last six months? 12

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months, 18 months. I belong to this group of 500

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CEOs and we have an AI workshop and it's amazing

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to hear all the different use cases that people are

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applying AI to that as people get more familiar. Chatting

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with it is one thing, but creating an AI agent

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or AI assistant gentic AI is a whole different ball

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game where you really take a whole workflow and you

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can use different AIs at different points in the workflow

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that are specialized. Different AI specialize in different things and

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it takes it to a whole new level. And now

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OpenAI just came out with a new release where they're

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really making it easy to do agentic AI. I use

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four different AIs myself. And it's amazing how different AIs

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can answer the same question with the same prompt in

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different ways. It's like phenomenal. But I see it as

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like a companion, a buddy now a friend and we

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work really closely together. It's gotten to know me and

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knows everything about my company and my app that I'm

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doing and we just create a lot of synergy now.

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It's really amazing how I just love working with AI.

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Yeah. Yeah. Now myself and I do the same. I

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work with a Florida and Chat and Gemini and yeah.

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Put the same prompt in each one. Yeah. And some

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of them are spot on. I think there's a real

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skill set now that's coming out which is yeah, use

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the right AI tool for the right thing. Yeah. How

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do know? I know if I'm doing a certain element

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of things, I'll do that and if I'm doing something

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else, I'll do that. And just trying to get those.

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That clarity in your mind what to use. Where is

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a good. A good starting point. What are you using?

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So you use four tools at the moment. What are

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you using, if you don't mind me asking? ChatGPT is

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my go to in OpenAI but lately I've been really

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getting into Claude and Perplexity and a little

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bit of others here and there. But I found Claude

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to be particularly. Good, you know, recently, much more empathetic

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and creative. ChatGPT is more structured and bullet pointish and.

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But like in doing this app, it's like I've been

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combining and doing the prompt and I run a chat

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with Claude and I run a chat with ChatGPT and

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then I have them analyze each other's chats and then

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chat is like really critical of ChatGPT's version. And then

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so I asked Claude how to. I asked ChatGPT how

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to make integrate all the points that Claude has. It's

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like a blending or a hybrid version of the system

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prompt. But that is the main skill I think as

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a leader is prompt engineering. And we've created this product

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called Key B AI, which is. Takes any data set

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and you can create a chat with it and just

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create me a report just spontaneously to say, give me

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all the sales in this region by this and break

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it out by salesperson and all the products. And then

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within a second or two, it creates the report and

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then it creates charts, bar chart, line chart, pie chart,

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donut chart, instantaneously. So these are the kind

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of innovative tools that you can do with AI that

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we've been doing straight database and having to program. Every

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time a customer ask us for a new report, we'll

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say, oh, it take two or three hours at least,

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and that'll be like 700, $800 or whatever. Now we

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can just give them this tool and they just create

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the report themselves. And talk a bit about. You've

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mentioned your app a couple of times. Talk a bit

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more about that. This app I first developed in 2011

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in the app Store when the App Store was new,

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called Stress Shifter. And the intention of it is to

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give people a tool to transform their stress into resilience.

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Basically the problem is that we have this thing called

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an amygdala in our brain that keeps track of every

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single pain that we've ever had and sets up an

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alarm. It's like a smoke alarm that was designed to

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go off when there's a fire. But instead it's like

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it goes off if there's a thing with the toaster

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or toast is on fire. It doesn't know the difference

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between the toaster going on fire and a real fire.

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And the same thing. The amygdala is like our alarm

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system. And it was originally designed for physical threats like

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lions and tigers and Bears or in a physical environment

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and then it would rise and, and send all your

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blood to your extremities, give you extra adrenaline hit for

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physical strength to handle that. But now we live in

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a modern day world that it's like an old DOS

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operating system that wasn't equipped to handle the challenges we're

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having on a social. All the social threats and particularly

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in the United States right now, it's gotten very scary

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and very unsafe with particularly I live in Los Angeles,

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all the deployment of nature, National Guard and ICE going

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in our neighborhoods and just taking people off the streets

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that. But it doesn't. You can be in a corporation

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or an office or get an email or anything can

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set you off of not feeling safe. But the problem

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is we don't know how to turn off that smoke

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alarm. We don't know how to go back to the

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calm. Like we have the sympathetic nervous system which is

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designed for fight, flight and freeze to meet a threat.

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But these social threats like getting a bad email from

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your boss or getting having a big bill or having

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a deadline, anything can set that off. But it becomes

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chronic. We don't know how to turn it off. So

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the purpose of this app is to teach you how

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to turn it off, how to become resilient. There's some

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trigger that made you feel unsafe that if you can

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understand and read your body sensations and use mindfulness as

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a way of tracing from your body sensation to your

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emotion to your thought to uncover what the core underlying

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fear was that made you feel unsafe. And then once

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you identify the fear, then the app prods you or

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encourages you or supports you to understand that there's a

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limiting core belief underneath that. So if you have a

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belief that people don't like me or I'm not good

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enough or I'm not confident or anything can like trigger

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them. There goes my dog. The cleaners are coming in

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and he has to protect me, but he'll calm down.

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Okay, but we don't calm down, okay? And the opportunity

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is for you us to learn how to reprogram our

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old belief system. But the thing is that we've been

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pre programmed with these what I call survival strategies that

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were developed over millions of years to survive socially with

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approval and control. So there's four main survival strategies that

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we talk about that we identify in terms of navigating.

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How do people seek control or avoid disapproval. And that

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creates anxiety when you're afraid of not getting approved of.

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Or there's the control access where you try to control

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your environment or try to control people or you try

373

to avoid being controlled by people or being abused or

374

blamed. So that creates a lot of worry that you

375

can't control everything. So worry and anxiety keep getting recycled

376

as part of our stress response system. And that keeps

377

sending all the cortisol in the adrenaline that causes all

378

sorts of inflammation in our system, which eventually causes chronic

379

disease, which eventually kills you. Okay, I don't want to

380

be too dark here, but the fact is most people

381

are dying from cancer or heart disease which start off

382

as stress related instances like in the CDC says 90%

383

of doctors visits are stress related. So the app is

384

designed as a tool that you can use every day

385

in practice. You tell your story, you say whatever it

386

is that you're stressed about and it just takes you.

387

It's called key flow. Ki's energy into. Back into the

388

flow state. Back into that calm, centered and creative state.

389

I don't know. That was a lot. I don't know.

390

Do you have it? No. But yeah, so much of

391

it resonated because that's a lot of the work I

392

do as well. I don't do it the basis of

393

an app. I do it in base of breathwork and

394

other elements. And I'm working with people and just getting

395

them. I use the breath work very much as a

396

tool on a daily basis to relieve that. And then

397

I use ice baths myself and for some of my

398

clients to teach them how to go into sympathetic and

399

out of sympathetic into parasympathetic. Because you go into my

400

sports and you straight into sympathetic and then you come

401

out and you actually come out. It retrains you how

402

to come out of sympathetic, which is more important. Exactly.

403

That's it. You got it. Yeah, we're doing the same

404

work. It's just I'm doing it in my way. You're

405

doing it in your way? Yeah, for sure. And yeah,

406

I think for me coming to that work and coming

407

to understanding that for myself, I was a very stressed

408

individual for most of my business career and didn't realize

409

it until I had the opportunity to not be stressed.

410

I've have, I've had so many people. Even today I

411

was teaching breath work to, to high performing individuals and

412

one of them said, I didn't actually realize that I

413

was that stressed until I'm not stressed. Exactly. We get

414

so stuck in this thing going all the time. They

415

were like, okay, geez, that's what it feels like to

416

be out of stress. You know, the way I say

417

that is what's normal is really abnormal. And what feels

418

abnormal is really normal. It's or natural. It's like our

419

natural being stated seems strange when you're constantly. Your shoulders

420

are tight or your stomach is tight or your head

421

aching. That seems like the norm. And then you got

422

to take a drink or take a drug or go

423

for a run or do something to try to change

424

your body sensation. But when you do this breath work

425

and you do body start to notice your body sensations

426

in a mindfulness way, you start to unlock that real

427

true natural state. You don't have to do anything that's

428

already there. It's already full of good energy. It's just

429

we're disconnected from it. And so by using the breath,

430

your breath, breath means spirit. And when you breathe in

431

what you know in Indian culture they call prana, you

432

bring in that. That prana energy. It activates your spirit

433

and that centers you into who you really are. And

434

who you really are is not your mind and your

435

ego. Okay. One hundred and yeah. That. I

436

love that connection. Your breath. Yeah. The biggest. Yeah.

437

Single thing that. That people fail with is breathing properly

438

all the time in terms of being connected to themselves

439

and our conscious connected breathing and all these other breath

440

works. They talk about it a lot. Yeah. But we

441

all end up breathing very shallow. We don't breathe diaphragmatically.

442

We just don't get the energy flowing coming in. So

443

we just get more and more stressed and we just

444

layer on all these chemicals which are the emotions. Right.

445

You have a thought. The thought. Your brain creates a

446

chemical. The chemical goes into the body, whether that's cortisol

447

or adrenaline or whatever it is, or even the other

448

side, dopamine, whatever else it is you think you create,

449

chemical goes into your system. And then because these chemicals

450

end up layering on top of each other, because we

451

don't breathe and we don't refresh and we don't release

452

the whole chemical ecosystem, we just get worse and worse

453

and stay in sympathetic. Yeah. I love that and I

454

love what you're doing with the app. I think that's

455

a really. Yeah. Notable approach and thing to. To. Yeah.

456

What a legacy to leave people. Yeah. So one of

457

the things I just want to follow up is you

458

know that when you do mouth breathing breathing, you're activating

459

your sympathetic and when you do nose breathing into your

460

belly, you're activating the parasympathetic. It takes a certain

461

slowing down to move from one to the other. But

462

that's why we need to have a daily practice of

463

even if you Just do it for five minutes. Or

464

even if you just do three breaths, like during the

465

day, when I'm dealing with clients or dealing with work,

466

if I just stop after a phone call or after

467

a meeting and just do some breathing in between, it

468

helps revive me and connect me back into that place.

469

So it's, it's something you just have to develop as

470

a practice. And having a tool like an app that

471

you can go to any time of day, it's not

472

necessarily to replace therapy. You can't always go to your

473

therapist immediately when you have a stressful reaction in your

474

body, because those reactions just go subconsciously. You just get

475

triggered and you don't know what triggered you. And all

476

of a sudden you start losing your upper brain, gets

477

hijacked your higher brain, and you go into your lower

478

brain, your reptilian and mammalian brain, and you aren't

479

as present anymore. You're not aware. You start feeling a

480

brain fog. Okay? So if you had a tool which

481

interacts with you and starts asking you a few questions

482

and you feel safe, it's completely anonymous in this app.

483

No one's going to know that you're stressed. People are

484

concerned, oh, my God, someone's going to find out I'm

485

stressed. It doesn't matter because everyone's stressed. But the thing

486

is to learn the skill of stress shifting and stress

487

resilience. That's what's going to set you apart and keep

488

you growing and achieving more and more in performance. Athletes.

489

I know Phil Jackson was really big on teaching meditation

490

to his basketball teams that won championships, that he would

491

just have all the players sit around before they went

492

out on the court and do meditation. It's, it's, it's

493

something that is now really integrated and accepted as a

494

very valid thing to do. But a lot of people

495

think, oh, my God, I can't stop my thoughts. Oh

496

my God, my mind just goes, go. It's like a

497

radio station that you can't turn off. Okay, but that's

498

not meant that that's not the thing to be concerned

499

about. It's like there's something. Just notice the thoughts and

500

just let the thoughts. The thing is getting grabbed by

501

the thought versus just noticing the thought, that's what's going

502

to get you back into meditation. Just, yes, I have

503

thoughts, but I'm not going to resist the thoughts. I'm

504

not going to go off in a trance or as

505

soon as you do see yourself going off, you just

506

bring yourself back to your breath and then go back

507

into the experience. Of meditation, but it's a skill. But,

508

you know, it's like kids are learning mindfulness in school

509

these days. It's amazing. They're very open. I was. I

510

went to a high school recently and taught kids this

511

process of stress resilience. And they're under a lot of

512

stress. Social media, it's like all the abuse and the

513

things that go on with way kids abuse each other.

514

It's. Oh, my God, if I had that when I

515

went to school, it was bad enough, but to come

516

home and go on Facebook and just hear what kids

517

are saying or. So everyone needs to know how to

518

meditate. It's very important. I like that concept of. And

519

the one I use as well. The. The people think

520

that the thoughts coming in the problem, but the thoughts

521

coming in. This is an opportunity to exercise the muscle

522

of the brain. And every time the thought comes in

523

and you see the thought and you let it go,

524

that's just an exercise piece. And the more of that

525

you do, the more you are able to quiet the

526

mind, the more you are able to go out of

527

that. Yeah. The crocodile mind just going. The monkey mind

528

chasing you around and you just. Okay, yes, that's the

529

thought. Come back to my breathing. Yes, that's the thought.

530

Come back to my breathing. And the more you exercise

531

the muscle, the stronger the muscle gets. And the more

532

you do that, the more. The less you have those

533

painful words coming through. So it is just as you

534

say. It sounds easy, but it's an. It's a. It's

535

an exercise and it's practice. And you have to commit

536

to it and do it consistently for a long time.

537

Yeah. Not a huge amount of time, but. And every

538

time you do it, you get a little better. You

539

get a little bit better. Yeah, yeah. Within weeks, you.

540

You suddenly are. Oh, yeah. I used to not be

541

able to sit quietly for two minutes. Now I can

542

sit quietly for three minutes. Yeah. And then it's for.

543

Yeah. And slowly but surely, every little window is such

544

a big win. As someone who's meditated for 50 years,

545

there's more than just doing that. Okay. That's. That's just

546

the first stage. Yeah, for sure. There's a whole world

547

in there of incredible experience, of infinite energy

548

that you can tap into. All the scriptures, all the

549

saints, all the spiritual leaders talk about this place of

550

universal consciousness that you can tap into. It's a journey,

551

and you have to start wherever you are. But mindfulness

552

just means noticing there's no judgment involved. Oh,

553

that's a bad Thought, oh, I don't like that thought.

554

Or that's a bad feeling. I don't like that feeling.

555

You just have to embrace all of it, all the

556

emotion, no matter what it is. Emotion just means energy

557

in motion. But the problem is all those emotions got

558

stuck in our body. All that anger, all that hate,

559

all that fear, all the sadness. We weren't allowed

560

to feel it. We weren't taught how to feel it.

561

So it all got stuffed in our body, suppressed, and

562

it gunks up our energy field. It creates all sorts

563

of energy blocks. So meditation is a process of just

564

drilling down, and all of a sudden, all that stuff

565

just comes up, but all you have to do is

566

let go of it. It's just like big, huge bubbles

567

underneath the water. You don't have to do anything other

568

than just let them rise to the surface. They pop,

569

and they just dissipate and disappear. But all those emotions

570

feel so real when you keep pushing them down. So

571

meditation is a process of just owning every single feature,

572

feeling, and just increasing your capacity to feel who

573

you are. Okay. Feel your. Your emotions. Embrace your thoughts.

574

Embrace the wisdom that's already in your body. Yeah. And

575

we've had. Yeah, we've had one of the things that

576

I do, Joe, dispensary meditations. So, yeah, that's where I

577

learn to meditate. And I love what he says about

578

taking things from your emotional state and putting it into

579

your wisdom. Because once you can unlock the emotional state

580

and accept, as you're saying, bubbles to the surface, that

581

becomes part of your wisdom. It really becomes. Oh, yes.

582

What meditation is this? Did you say Joe Dispenza? Oh,

583

Joe Dispenza. Yes. Yeah, he's very good at this. This

584

is. That's exact. Good example. Exactly. Yes. Yeah, yeah. It's

585

just whatever tools work for you, whether. Whichever one it

586

is, it works for you. Yeah. But there's a lot

587

of options, so. You just have to be open. That's

588

the start. Just like one of the strategies that we

589

talk about in our app is called being. It's like

590

being right was like surviving. If you were wrong, you.

591

You would be shamed or people would look down upon

592

you. So we have to, like, pretend like we're right.

593

But the problem is, like, particularly United States, we're so

594

polarized now. Everyone's holding on and clinging to being right

595

about their view of the world, and it's getting more

596

and more divided because people have to think that their

597

survival depends on defending their particular point of view. But

598

when you meditate, you Begin to soften a little bit

599

and see more blending and see more hybrid and see

600

the grain of truth in different points of view, and

601

you're more able to find a more compromised solution to

602

problems rather than ending up in violent conflict like this

603

going on in the streets. Now, I think that's such

604

a valid point. And, you know, just trying to be

605

more peaceful. It's easy to say it. Yeah. And I

606

can understand for people why I don't watch the news,

607

I don't watch. Yeah. I take. I've taken myself away

608

from my social media feeds or things that I enjoy

609

seeing, and I don't have any new things coming up

610

and. Yeah, but it's taken a long time not to

611

be drawn into that. Not to be pulled into it.

612

Not to be. And if you are pulled into it,

613

to actually realize that this is just one point of

614

view, like you say. Yeah. And then, you know, there's

615

always three sides to the story. Right. His side of

616

the story, her side of the story, and the right

617

side of the story. It's somewhere in between, isn't it?

618

Yeah. Peace is within. If you. If we could have

619

more people understand that calm, natural peace, then

620

we would find more and more ways to bring that

621

peace into the world. But if you're inside your head

622

and you're full of hate, you're full of anger, then

623

that's what comes out into the world. So to me,

624

I used, as I said, I started off as a

625

political revolutionary type thing in the 60s and the 70s,

626

and that's how I got down this path of seeing

627

the ultimate solution is we have to transform people, we

628

have to transform consciousness. That ultimately is going to be

629

the answer. And it's a shame that all these last

630

50 years, people have done all this work on consciousness

631

in finding this peace, and yet the world just seems

632

more chaotic and at war than ever these days. And

633

so it's. We need to get very committed to bringing

634

this piece into the world. That's the only way. And

635

that's why the mission for this app is, is much

636

bigger than just relieving stress. It's transforming people's lives and

637

transforming consciousness so that people have an awareness of what

638

the true reality is from their inner experience. And then

639

we can bring this piece into the world. Amazing. Amazing.

640

And. Yeah, where can people get a hold of the

641

app? You said you've had quite a large number of

642

downloads already, haven't you? Yeah, so far, just a few

643

months, 30,000 downloads. But we're just beginning. It's in the

644

App Store, Apple App Store, the Google Play Store. It's

645

seven day free trial. Just try it out. You can

646

just see how it can work and then decide whether

647

you want to keep it or not. But it's free

648

to start with and it's readily available worldwide. People have

649

downloaded from many countries. And it's an opportunity for you

650

to get stronger, mentally, develop, as you were saying, mental

651

toughness, to really exercise your higher brain capabilities

652

and not be driven by the lower brain, which is

653

basically fear driven activity versus higher wisdom

654

activity, like you were saying. Thank you very much, Adam,

655

for coming on. I think it's been amazing talking to

656

you and yeah, really inspiring. So many different angles, but

657

they're coming back to this, this piece of peace. World

658

peace. Yeah. And it's just bringing this into yourself. World

659

peace can only come from yourself. You have to be

660

peaceful in yourself. And have you got any last words

661

for people before we close off? Thank you, Roy, for

662

creating this podcast. I really enjoy what you're doing and

663

what your mission is. And everyone just needs to develop

664

a daily practice, whether it's just sitting alone for five

665

minutes by yourself, just feeling what you're feeling and just

666

noticing your experience. You don't have to become a great

667

meditator or whatever. Just get in touch with yourself, take

668

care of yourself and find the tools that you need

669

that help you, that, that resonate with you. And if

670

my app is one of them, fine. If it's not,

671

find something else that works for you. Thanks very much

672

for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thank you.