Greg Voisen
Hey, welcome back to Inside Personal Growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of Inside Personal Growth. And joining us from Salt Lake City, Utah or a little town outside, you're not quite in Salt Lake, are you, Bob?

Bob Gardner
No, near the cows.

Greg Voisen
Okay, he's in a town an hour South. And Bob came to me by way of basically his PR company. But his book is called Built for Freedom. And the subtitle is Adventures through Stress, Anxiety, Depression, Addiction, Trauma Pain, and Our Body's Innate Ability to Leave Them All Behind. I think the last words of that subtitle are really the key. How do we leave them all behind, right? So welcome to Inside personal growth, Bob. And I'm gonna let my listeners know a tad bit about you. He has a website called the Freedom specialist.com, you can go to the freedom specialist.com. To learn more. He's the founder of that it is a body based approach to happiness, health, and well-being. He's also the author of the book that I just held up and the host of a podcast called alive and free, you can go there and check that out, you can get that through his site, and all the other major channels and networks, Spotify and iTunes. And so far, as a transformational specialist, he aims to share his unique tools with the world to help him find happiness, health and well-being on autopilot. That's the key. Our subconscious mind has a lot of challenges in that area for us. He went through 18 years of being trapped in addictive patterns. And he was on the brink of divorce suicide. And sometimes in Bob inside Bob told him, he was not quite time yet. So against the prevailing wisdom that said, these problems are permanent, Bob chose to create a way to permanently eliminate him from his life. His body based no nonsense approach to freedom has helped 1000s of people leave their struggles behind and find real freedom and happiness. In addition, Bob intends his intense power packed in person retreats, which we're going to talk about transformational coaching and online resources have supported people struggling with everything from chronic pain, anxiety, depression, PTSD, childhood wounds, addictions, OCD, and a host of other physical and mental problems. He's been doing this for the last 15 years. He's married and has children. And as I said, lives in Utah. And you know, the, the whole pain body thing is an interesting element. And I'm working with a doctor right now on adverse childhood experiences, you know, and that's Dr. Brian Ullman. And he's creating an app right now, because a lot of people don't know about it, but you do. You know, where all this pain comes from your book really built for freedom. Give the listeners kind of a brief overview of what you mean by freedom. In the context of your work, because you do breath work, you get involved in all kinds of ways that you can help people release these pains that they have. Yeah, at

Bob Gardner
First, I think I thought like everybody else that freedom was to have all my problems go away, which is a pretty common way of looking at it. So a lot of the people that I talked with it first, are sitting there looking at it going, hey, I've struggled with an addiction, or I've been struggling with depression for X amount of time, or I have this PTSD, and I want to be free of it, which means, hey, I want the life that I have all the good parts. I just don't want the bad parts. And what I found was that wasn't a possibility. That the way I was living my life also produced all the negativity that would that came out of that life. So I had to kind of reassess what freedom was. And that made me have to go back in and challenge a lot of the prevailing wisdom around what I was actually dealing with, because I didn't know I just had accepted the label of addict. I had accepted the label of depression. I had accepted some of these other things. My wife seriously considered me bipolar. For a period of time.

Greg Voisen
where do you where do you think those emanated from? I know we had a deep discussion because I do pre interviews for all these interviews, but in childhood or in your spiritual practice, at one point you were Mormon. I'm not. And I'm not saying they created it. I'm not going against it I, I was listening to a podcast show called something Street, which is really interested about Mormonism and what's happening in the church and all the young people today and how it's practiced. And it's really kind of morphed. It's starting tomorrow for eight. Do you believe that some of these issues you had? Obviously, you pick them up, or they were part of childhood upbringing, and they were adverse childhood experiences, the addiction in particular things to try and relieve pain? What is the story there?

Bob Gardner
So that's I mean, that's, I think that's a great question. I think everybody can say that everybody has been handed their childhood experiences, we can, we can observe that some people take very similar childhood experiences and turn them into something profound, and others take them and turn them into something that's really negative. My father was in the military, we moved around a lot. My father and mother posted the best that they knew how and they gave me what they considered teachings and help with the best way that they knew how to live. And to this day, they're still living as faithful as they know how to that that type of doctrine and that type of teaching. And then, and my sisters as well. So there was nothing in in the teaching necessarily, that inherently said, oh, you're going to somehow end up down this road where you're manically depressed sometimes, and you're up and down. There are a lot of members of the Mormon faith that do experience these things, there are a lot that don't experience these things. So it was confusing to me, because I thought, when I was reading people like Gabor Ma Tei, and some of these others like that, I had to have some childhood trauma, but I couldn't pinpoint one. And I'd say probably 40% of the people that come to me, can't pinpoint a trauma either. What I can say is this, moving around so much, meant I was constantly on the outside and felt like I didn't belong and had to be the guy that had to measure up or fit in with the friends. And that sort of drive to have to be this chameleon made me sort of on unfaithful to my own self, right, I didn't have some sense of identity that was that wasn't malleable to whatever the outside situation was. So I didn't really have some stable sense of who I was, and what commonly felt like there was something wrong with me, I was defective. And I didn't belong, I wouldn't say that the face itself. What I made of what I was taught, and I think that needs to be an important distinction. Every kid makes what they make out of what's handed to them. What I made of it was it, I needed to be perfect. And not just be in most Christian faiths, it's sort of a pass fail kind of system, you know, there's, you go to heaven, or you don't know, in the Mormon faith, there is like, several tiers of heaven, and only the top tier of the top tier, sort of the honor roll gets to kind of go back and live with God. And so I think I sort of internalized that as this need to be not perfect, not just perfect, but the best of the best at everything I did. And anytime I failed at that. It felt like I had transgressed some kind of commandments. So I think I had a heightened sense of morality that made me really poor on the guilt and shame at every mistake. So

Greg Voisen
did you did you question the rituals in which you did every religion, and I'm going to say religion, or faith has some type of ritual. You're right. And I don't think there's anything wrong with rituals. I remember when I was a kid. Now I lay me down to sleep for my soul, soul to keep, you know, and I'm sitting here, as you're speaking, saying, hey, I kneeled at my bed with my hands like this, and said this prayer, but I never knew why I was sick. I never knew the why behind it. It was just my parents said, Say your prayers. Here's your prayer. I did it. And it was like, okay, well, what am I doing this? Well? What am I doing? He was born. And so I look at the ritual in all these faiths in the spiritual. You know, we're sitting here right now with this, you know, new war between Israel and Palestine, and it's just crazy, right? And you look at the ritual. So what did you get from the ritual with inside the church that you think either made you feel safe, or maybe you questioned?

Bob Gardner
I honestly, it made me feel safe for a long time. So yeah, we did. I did prayer. I did scripture study. I was a missionary for that faith in Brazil for a couple years. I think that's what really cemented the sort of moralistic view was spending two years preaching only that to a bunch of different people. And so for me, it felt like it was 100% of nothing but I remember being in Brazil and the church buildings felt like this sanctuary, they felt like this place that I was no longer going to be like, confronted by people that didn't agree with my faith or didn't, this or didn't that. And so members of the Church became this, like, oh, those are the only allies I can have. And then the rest of the world is going to try and take away my faith away and change out to get me and so I, unconsciously, there was this deep celebration of this faith is the one, it is the only one. And then there was also this sort of weariness of outside ideas, like a worry of contamination. And the funny thing about that is that that creates the very kind of tension, the very kind of pain, the very kind of stuff that I finally figured out how to dissolve for.

Greg Voisen
It's almost that conundrum, isn't it, Bob, when you look at it, it's like, oh, I feel safe here. But this is really what's creating many of my psychological issues and dilemmas that I have. And you know, your work is at the intersection of psychology and spirituality. And in a big degree, let's face it, when you start dealing with addictions and chronic pain, and OCD, and all these kinds of things. They're emanating from someplace, how do these two domains come together to help people break free, you're saying breaking free from limitations and achieve their desired outcomes, because it's like you've you're building a new world for them, you know, you're opening their eyes to see the light of what's available. And sometimes when you do that, people like that area where they feel safe and comfortable over here. And it's very hard, it takes them a long time to say, we I really want to break free from this.

Bob Gardner
Yeah, I think part of that is the way that it's communicated. So in the beginning, psychology, spirituality, this sort of like intersecting place that made sense to me. But the more I looked at it, for me, freedom is no longer some set of circumstances. And it isn't in the way, if you look at a normal person, when they feel free, it doesn't really have much to do with their circumstances, but the way that they feel inside their body. Alright, so when I go, okay, cool. It's a state of being a measurable state of being how I feel is a measurable state of being. And there are certain things that get me there, which is why I say sometimes freedom is a skill, not a pill, it's this sort of muscle memory that I create, created in my system to default to that state, on its own, as rapidly as possible in any kind of adverse situations. So in the beginning, when I was talking about it, I had to challenge a lot of my sort of the narratives that I had made up, and I'll own that, that I made those up about that faith. Like, I won't say that they're inherent in that faith. I don't, I don't know what the originators meant. They're not around, I don't, I don't talk to them on the regular. So. So I'll say that I made that up about them. And so I had to challenge my inner interpretation of that faith and my narrative about that faith, because he was producing a lot of pain. On top of my narrative just about myself, which was a bigger source of pain.

Greg Voisen
What was the biggest? What was one of the I know, people are gonna be very inquisitive about what's in this book. And I think, you know, you talk about breath work, you talk about martial arts, you talk about all these things that you've done, you've done, you're not telling everybody else they have to do that. You're saying there's a body of work out there that you can do to help you release? Now, I do know that breath work in particular, has a tremendous benefit for people. And I know it is it is it one of your focuses that you help people work with, to get real deep. Yeah, and

Bob Gardner
one of the first things we work with people is giving them a way of creating that state of it's like an effervescence, you know, you feel it in the body. It's its sun, anything esoteric. It's not anything out of the out of the box, or ordinary. It's a state. And so how do we create this state breathing is the fastest way outside of thoughts, thoughts can change your chemistry all over the place. They do it all the time, but they're a little bit like squirrels and hard to get. So breathing, if you do a consistent breathing practice, even for 510 15 minutes, you'd be surprised how long the after effect of that goes. Because you've done more than just introduced a thought you've introduced a certain balance of chemistry into the system that it needs to cope with. But the result of your body coping with these type of breathing practices, is that you end up lowering your blood pH way faster than all of the people talking about alkalizing your food and alkalizing your water. This thing really will lower your blood leakage and it'll stay there for a period of time. And sometimes hours at a stretch just if you do it really well. So we teach them breathing. That's Some of it is rooted in Wim Hof style stuff.

Greg Voisen
Do you do cold plunges too?

Bob Gardner
Uh huh. We do some cold plunges as well.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. No, I just was asking you're doing cold plunges as well.

Bob Gardner
Yeah, yeah and but then other forms of breathing that have been shown to regulate heart and cardiac rhythms, other forms of breathing that have been shown to increase production of BDNF and endocannabinoids and stuff like that. So the stuff that I choose to share with people, I've tried a whole bunch of stuff, but I always wanted to come back to the sort of practical, what's just happening in the body, so that whether they're religious or not religious, whether they have one faith or another faith they can come back to, however, I

Bob Gardner
believe the human body showed up. This is my gift for this life. This Well, I

Greg Voisen
think one of the things you talked about was your own addiction. But I think that we all have different addictions, right? Or can have, I'm not saying we all have, but many of us do. And I know for me, personally speaking, I had anxiety attacks for years, until I started meditating and did biofeedback. And then did hypnosis. Right. And so, you know, but I couldn't tell you. I think I had an idea of how those emanated, meaning the anxiety attacks are. Because your heart starts to race, you feel like you're having a heart attack, you feel like you're in a closed room, you're I mean, you deal with people all the time that have anxiety. That's one of the things that you work with. But we live in an always on pretty fast paced world these days. With the kind of stuff that's around us, the instantaneous news, the social media, the whatever, when somebody comes to one of your workshops, what's it like, what are you know, they're saying, Hey, man, I got anxiety, I want this guy to help me. And I would assure the community is one of the best opportunities because you're speaking with other like minded people that have anxiety do tell our listeners what that's all about. Because you have these retreats, you do one on one coaching, you've got this website with the podcast speak about that a little bit.

Bob Gardner
Sure. So the approach here is, my aim is to give them this deep experiences that bypass the mind, and force their body to learn a new trick, the new trick of freedom on autopilot or happiness on autopilot. And so my aim is to take them through these experiences where they're, we gotta, we gotta address the mind a little bit, but the mind is built on the body. So they come, we take away their phones so that they're not in this house, fast paced society. So we give them a few days break on that one. That way, they can be there in focus. And then I'm putting them through physical exercises like the first day, not anything Olympic, but will challenge them with a pushup or two will challenge them. And then, as they're doing it, I'm having to pay attention to what thoughts start to arise when their body tenses in certain ways. And then if we get it to be just a little bit difficult, what other thoughts start to arise, they start to see within the first day, just how much all their thoughts and emotions are not separate things out there that are attacking them. But actually things that are created within from within, based on the state of their body, how much air they're breathing, how much tension they have, and all these other things. So they're starting to get on the first day, their own real data stream, where they're looking at it going, oh, my gosh, when I did this, these thoughts showed up this, I started comparing myself to other people, I started this, that and the other. And then after that, we start breaking it down and going, okay, we're going to take you through some experiences, some physical processes, like vocalizations, like different types of breathing,

Greg Voisen
you do tapping work to what was that? Tapping? Do you do that as well?

Bob Gardner
I have done teaching in the past, I have found that. I mean, we do some other things to ground people. I have found some other ways that are a little bit more if I could do everything I've ever done. It would be a longer

Greg Voisen
it would be a longer drain is right. Yeah. Well, I think the point is you're giving them tools in a toolbox that they can draw upon and when they leave, they can utilize these tools. You know, whether it's the breathing work, whether it's called plunges, whether it's movement work, it's meditation. It's all these things that we have at our fingertips, but many of us choose not to use but you're exposing them to it.

Bob Gardner
Right. Yeah. And I'm exposing it to them to it in a way that stacks them one On upon the next so that the cumulative effect is that their body gets cleaned up of years of what I call in the book on gustavia. On gustavia is a Latin term that I borrowed to try and get rid of all the baggage of all the mental health terms and everything else. It refers to a tight space, you know, it can be referred to something in the landscape that's like a narrow passage, it is the root of that word is the same as the root for angina that like you would get in the heart like or, or angst or anxiety, anything of that sort all come from that same root. And as I was looking at, I was like, this is really what we're dealing with your chemistry changes, when you put it under pressure, just the weight of a dime is enough to start to rapidly increase the multiplication of cells inside of the skin and other areas and stuff. And that's spread out over a lot of cells. So it's very little pressure that it takes to change your internal chemistry.

Greg Voisen
But that contraction mentality, that contraction mentality, and I can speak with this is sometimes inherent with what you saw from your parents. Sure, okay. I grew up in a household where my mother would contract and my father would expand. So when a problem came along, you're talking about that? And, and so whose set of reality did you bring forward? Right? I know when people deal in tough times, whether they're having financial difficulties, whether it be dealing with their marriage, where they're having dealings with kids, many of them want to contract, they want to start putting restrictions around things are changing things or whatever. And not expansion speak about that, because I love the term that you use to kind of pull it all together.

Bob Gardner
Yeah. So this contraction, if you look at any reaction, like I'm moving my hand right now, it takes contraction of muscles. Not all contractions are negative inherently, but if they become a habit, like a habitual way of responding to an outside environment, they start to produce, your body doesn't want to have to create a new brain pathway every time so it'll create shortcuts. And pretty soon they produce it, a habitual way of going through the world. And built on top of that, all that data about how the body is contracted, goes to the brain, and it produces an experience. And there's your thoughts, and there's your emotions coming from that.

Greg Voisen
And there's your anxiety, and their dreams.

Bob Gardner
I was, I was like, look, everything on the outside world is coming to me through all of these external senses, my vision, my smell, my sight, my sound, and all that stuff. And it's coming through the filter of my own body. So if my body is in a state, that is suboptimal, it doesn't matter how beautiful the day is, I will experience that through the filter of my own eggs, my own Mangusta. And in that place, I will produce an experience of negativity. So I was like, what if I could train my body to have an instinct to be in a really beautiful space, so that no matter what happens on the outside, it comes through the filter of this beautiful sensation, this beautiful feeling. And then I can operate at my peak, since most of the science is going to indicate that the happier the happier you are, the stronger physically you'll be, the more stamina you'll have, the more creativity, the more connection to the outside world, all that stuff will happen. So when I'm taking them through this stuff, at retreats, I'm putting them through, I'm having them move in ways they're not used to moving now, because those ways are better than otherwise, but because they're different. And because the movement is different. And the tension is different, their brain is now going this is new information, I thought the world was one way and suddenly, I'm being given this option over here, then I take them through some deep breathwork experiences that forced them to you to be in a state that is very different than normal when they're thinking about their past. So I'm taking them through the psychological clearing techniques, but using a totally different body state, to the point where their brain can't produce the same experience out of it.

Greg Voisen
So question is, isn't Bob sustainable? Because, you know, there's practices of meditation, there's practices of breath work, there's PRAK practice means people are constantly doing it. And you I know you don't come to a retreat and go to one retreat and change. You have to have the desire internally to change. And inside the subconscious, you've had a program that's kind of been stuck in there. Right. And that's not to mean you're trying to reprogram it. It means you're trying to use body work, to get people to get to a new state of being meaning, who they are and who they see themselves as to kind of live in harmony with that. And that brings me to this Question around, you know, the struggle, the self sabotage the limiting beliefs, there our mental state, our psychological state. What are some of the practical strategies or exercises people can take from the book where the listeners might get from you to identify and overcome? What they are seeing is a roadblock. It's a mental roadblock. I know people know that. They don't always know how to overcome it. I believe your work with bodywork is probably the best way to actually make a shift. But then my I go back to my question. I know I've done this myself, because this shows been on the air for 17 years interviewing people like yourself, it's not always sustainable. How do you help people create sustainability of this? Yeah,

Bob Gardner
That was my question. I wanted sustainability for myself. I didn't want the kind of freedom that I needed to uphold it and maintain with me with meetings my whole life, I felt like I had something inside me as a possibility that I wanted to explore for this life. And I didn't want to have most of my energy sitting there going like, okay, control, maintain all the other stuff. So the question really was, can I produce something sustainable? And the answer has come, yes, something sustainable, that doesn't require so much mental focus at all to maintain, if you think about what I'm trying to produce is this sort of like cellular realization that the way that I used to think about life isn't real. And the minute my body catches, that is the moment that it, it just gives up its loyalty to that way of being. And there might be some residual things, definitely, people need to live in a way that produces what they want. But if you think about, like, if you've lost your keys ever lost your keys, you're running around the house, maybe blaming the wife, and kids, because somebody took your case, and then all of a sudden, you realize, oh, they're in your pocket, but they just kind of had slid around the side of your legs. So you didn't feel him when you were patting. That moment, you were all worked up. And then all of a sudden, you use something in your perception, something physical and tangible and real showed up in your life, and gave you irrefutable evidence that the way you saw the world was wrong. And that moment, all of the anxiety, or you might have been embarrassed a little bit, but all the other stuff went away. All that old feeling, no matter how worked up you got and how long you were chasing the keys, it all evaporated instantly. In the same vein, I spent years as the kid believing in Jesus, I mean, I mean, Santa Claus, okay. And I, I wrote letters to Santa Claus, I was worried about whether I was going to be seen as a good kid from Santa Claus, that all this kind of stuff happened. And then the minute that I realized there, that Santa Claus was rarely mom and dad, I was a little disappointed. But I'm not in danger of ever going back to writing Santa Claus letters there that it would take a lot to get into that space. Again. The way that people see themselves is also a fib. It's a myth. It is an incomplete view of themselves based on a few myopically filtered out events in their life. And when I can get them to see and realize, holy cow, that is not actually who I am, there isn't a threat of them going back ever. It literally goes away for a long time. Then the skill, the maintenance, all of the upkeep and sustainability isn't about, Oh, I gotta make sure that I keep doing affirmations and reminding myself that I'm not that because they've already seen through the lie, the skill and the maintenance is, Who am I like, what, how do I want to live? And what can I entertain myself, that just starts to produce that naturally. So it's about creation. It's about shifting the focus from fighting something off to living in such a way that there's simply the other things won't show up anymore. And you're just

Greg Voisen
so you're creating a huge awareness for these people, many of them for the first time. Yeah, about how they're living their lives and how they can live their life differently. Without the pain without the anxiety without the OCD without the addiction, you know, and I guess maybe that goes back to the basic, simplest premise, which is around, we're 100% responsible for ourselves. No one else is going to make us happy as we make ourselves happy. And you can't expect that. How can these individuals take this ownership of their lives and start building that freedom around that premise?

Bob Gardner
As a great question, it's not easy. It's not easy to draw to take full ownership of, of who you are and, and, and what you what you've done because it's really easy it was for me really easy to blame other people to blame my parents to blame the religion to blame my wife for wanting. And it almost is like, well, of course they're the reason that I'm this way for me to step back and go, no, they current contributed to my circumstances. But if I were unconscious when that happened, I wouldn't have, I would have just been lying there asleep, I wouldn't have had any of these emotions or any of these feelings. Something about my consciousness, something about what I made of that was the thing that did. And that's a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people, because they don't want to say, well, I'm the one that has turned like in the book, I refer to the story of Quincy, if you remember she was as a young girl, she was raped by somebody. And she became this sort of like Target. And had, she had grown up with her parents, like with some sort of like perfectionist demands, she had believed that her mom's state of being was always her fault. So she was constantly trying to, to, like live up to that and make sure her mom was happy. That was her job on the planet. And then all of a sudden, she, she thought like she was asleep in her. In her friend's bedroom, they were at a sleepover in her friend's older brother walks in the room in the middle of the night, sort of shakes her awake, does the deed. And in her mind, she thought, oh, I did that. Like I said, yes, I didn't fight back, you know, a 14 year old girl like in the middle of the night, or 12 and not able to fight back not even aware of what's going on. But she blamed herself for it. And for the next 20 years of her life, struggled so much develop massive anxieties, huge gut pains, a massive negative view of herself so much that she actually forgot who she was, and had blotted out 20 years of her life memories until she showed up at a retreat, and we're taking her through all of this stuff. And then this comes up, we're doing deep body work deep tissue work to open up these, like contractive states, it releases some of this chemistry, she starts having these flood of memories. And then she does some of the things we teach her about how to handle these memories. And all of a sudden, within like 1015 minutes, she's like laughing on the ground hysterically realizing, yes, the guy raped her. That is true. But everything she made of that is everything she made of that. And I once saw a meme that was like, did you have a bad day? Or did you have a bad five minutes that you milked for a whole day? And that's I lived that way. And to realize that, that I was responsible for what I made of that I might not have been responsible for everything else that happened. Yeah, I mean, that was a hard pill.

Greg Voisen
So far, I think that's a great success story. Because you were able to in a few days, move this person from this deep state of, hey, I did it. Right to releasing themselves from that. And then we speak about MSU making stuff up, they've been getting to believe what we made up. And I remember by Byron Katie always saying, Is it true? Is it really true? Right? In other words, so. So what you're doing and these retreats, you're getting people to really ask that story. Is it true? No. Is it really true? It's the stuff I made up, you know, and then and now I was believing it, it became a very strong belief. So for you, for some people, like in the spiritual realm or religions, it becomes a knowing, you know, I don't say that people in any kind of spirituality get brainwashed. I say they allow themselves to go down a path. And not always because of weakness, but because they were comforted. And that's what they wanted. That's what they needed. Right? You know, and so you're working with a diverse range of clients from all over the place and students, that success story that you just told out of the book, and for my listeners, here's a book put a link to Amazon, go and get this book. What do you have another success story that our listeners could relate to? Just one really quick one? Yeah. A simple one, maybe one not as challenging as that one. That one was

Bob Gardner
I mean, we've had a lot of people come from all kinds of different all kinds of different places and, and spots in life. But I mean, I can think of two off the top of my head what The one is Lee Lee's in the book. First reason for chapter one is a guy from this last retreat last week that I just ran. Lee was born into a family who, you know, lots of promiscuity by the mom. And he was abused sexually, physically, emotionally for her, by her for 16 years, before he got kicked out of the house, she would quote Scripture at him in case he ever resisted saying, You need to honor your father and your mother that your days may be long upon the earth and all of that other stuff. So she really was like, using every tool in the in the book, he went through 40 years of counseling after that, trying to kind of process this thing. He certified in trauma relief, he certified and certified suicide prevention, narrative theory, all of these other things, was helping people working in Christian ministries to help people out and ended up speaking at a national level, to 1000s and 1000s of people about child sexual abuse and what it does to a person and whatnot. And nowhere in those 40 years was there, given any sense that this is something that you can get over. Everybody just sort of like rallied around each other as survivors. For me, I had listened to this kind of talk for a long time, and I was fed up with it, I was like you are more than a survivor, you are a, you are a huge human possibility on this planet. And for you to identify as a survivor. And for that to be the most positive way that you see yourself feels like such a downgrade to what you really are. And so that's why we started running retreats for women as well, because there were so many women that are survivors, and I wanted to give them more leaking shows up. The first few days of the retreat were its stuff was coming up stuff that he suppressed stuff that he talked himself off of. It's all this stuff is coming up. And then in the middle of it like second of the second or third day he comes up and he's just angry, angry about his past angry about everything he went through angry that I'm sitting here telling him this stuff can be gone and like a day or two. And he's like, 40 years. And none of us like to be like wrong like that I'd spent 40 years you mean, I wasted my time? No, I think your viewpoint is really good. They chose to go down a path. So I took them outside. You'll read it in the book. I mean, he's throwing stumps, I'm having him do things. And then in the middle of that I physically put him into a position that matches what he's been going through. And all of a sudden, he's like, not getting it, I'm like, you realize you're doing the same thing with this stump that you're doing in your life. And he's like, What, and I was like, Look, you just put it down. That's what you're doing. And then he's just actually taking actions in physical life with this stupid exercise that he was doing his whole life. And something about that started to jar him loose of like, you mean, I can just put it down. Within two days from that. Everything's gone. He goes home. And his blood pressure normalized, he drops 30 pounds within the first few months without changing anything in his life, his diet changes, all his all these other factors. It's been like three years now, three years now since he's gone. He's no longer had, he no longer has sleep apnea. Like, he's gotten his eyesight has changed his mentality, no depressive swings coming up in the middle of the night, all these things that used to happen on the regular changed, because we just gave him that one little kick, to let go of all the tension that he was holding, where he was waiting for people to disappoint him his whole life. And all of a sudden, he shows up realizing like, life is so much bigger than waiting for people to disappoint me. And he hears birds sounds in a totally different way. All of this stuff happens within a few days time. Because we addressed the root of what he his brain makes his experience out of which is His body state. And when you challenge that and push it open and help it to like release years and years of pent up tension, it does not take long for the thing to change. I've watched it over and over and over again.

Greg Voisen
Well, they say body, mind and spirit, you know, and the reality is I think frequently people are ignoring that one element, we know that people along the trajectory of their life come in with, you know, certain ailments or challenges or whatever it might be. And what you're just saying, that was a great example. The guy lost 30 pounds. He released his depression, right? He's living a life and you did it through a physical exercise that made him aware of what he was doing to himself that he didn't realize and wouldn't maybe have realized if he had tried to do it in a way he wasn't gonna get it through psychologist. Right. So that's, that's really that's really the key is that, you know, he had this opportunity to like have you take him out and make go through a physical exercise, and all of a sudden his body was triggering what it was in needed to be released. I was like, man, dude, I can just let go of this. Yeah, he just let go of it. And I think that's where, you know, this kind of work is so important. And I think if you were gonna leave the listeners with, you know, like, two or three pieces of wisdom from all this work that you've done, Bob, I mean, over the years, you've seen 1000s of people through this course, you've conducted the course, you've seen all kinds of stories, you've heard it all, from childhood sexual abuse, to people being raped to, you know, people probably, you know, with guns and weapons and drugs, and you name it, it's, it's been there. I mean, I don't think you could be somebody's there. What would you say that these people have taught you? About how freedom as work not only in your own life, but how it can work in their life as well?

Bob Gardner
Yes, I love the way that you put that question. Because the reality is, I didn't know what I knew when I realized when I was able to kind of find freedom from it. And it was in the process of having to share with these other people that I kept having to challenge myself and go, what is it that I'm actually sharing? I'd say the first thing, this whole freedom is a skill, not a pill, if you can train yourself to be miserable on autopilot, and that means there's nothing wrong with you. That means that your brain and body can create a skill that powerful, which means you we just got to go to a different dojo, the dojo of delight, instead of the mats of misery or

Greg Voisen
whatever you want to call, like your terminology.

Bob Gardner
Yeah, and so if you can be this miserable on autopilot, or, or in this much pain, like chronic pain, some of the stuff we worked with, then you can also be that happy on autopilot. It's the same machinery, you just got to train it in a different way. That's the first thing. So many people look at their mental and emotional struggles, as there's something wrong with him, when they're actually evidence that there is something very right with them. I think that that's really, really profound, there's nothing wrong with you never has been nothing to fix just an experience to change if you want to change it.

Greg Voisen
And I think most people, Bob will say, you know, when you're moving into this state, you know, it's like, don't be reactive. Like if somebody triggers you take a deep breath. We've heard this a zillion times, right. But you may have heard it a zillion times. The question is, are you actually practicing it? And I think as a reminder to everybody, if you look at all those small events in your life every day, that can lead up to a huge amount of stress. How do you deal with those events each day using your breath, using body movement, using something to make you aware of the state you're transferring into from? Right? Because you literally are transferring your body, I noticed it myself the other day, I was like, I was getting angry at almost everything was like nothing was going right. If you ever had one of those days, like, man, what's wrong here? What's wrong there with, you know, the CANS not opening, it didn't matter what it was, you know, the break on the bike wasn't right. I had to fix that, you know, all this kind of things. But those are signs and symbols for people to be aware. And I think you get them all the time. And those signs and symbols are all around us if you're awake to them to get you to wake up to how you're actually treating yourself and others in your life. Right. Yeah,

Bob Gardner
yeah. Right. Yeah. So everything can be just everything, if you look at everything is like just an indication of like, Hey, this is what's going on with you. Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, then. I don't like that one. Let me change that one.

Greg Voisen
Yeah. Well, you have a great program. And I'd like you to kind of as we wrap up here, as I said, these people, your students, the people that have come through your program have taught you a lot. Yeah. And I always say that people say, why do you keep doing this podcast show? 17 years, because it's my university. I learned more from the people out there than the people learn there. And so to my listeners, so that's why I keep doing it, you know, over 1000 episodes now hitting almost 1100. It's like, hey, I do it because it's educational, and it's informing others at the same time. But even if there was no listeners, and I was the only one interviewing, I'm learning more than I could ever learn from other people.

Bob Gardner
Yeah. It is a real gift to be able to have the honor to watch somebody show up without pretense without trying to hide anymore because they've gotten to a place where they realized if I keep hiding, I'll stay the way I am. To have them. It's it. I mean, I almost want to call it safe. It's some of the most beautiful work I've ever been able to be witness to. And the fact that I get to be in this proximity with people and work with them one on one, there is something beautiful about every human being, and I don't see anything wrong with anybody that shows up, I look at them. And if anything, it's every time as a confirmation that every person on the planet has this possibility. If they just are willing to challenge what they think is possible for them. And

Bob Gardner
for the people listening, you know,

Bob Gardner
that that's where I would start, challenge what you believe about what's possible. And then like Greg mentioned, in the middle of the day, if you want it, you don't even have to take a deep breath, just take a different breath. So if you're like, and that's your breath, and you want to go and change it to your nose, instead of your mouth changing, it changes what your brain has to make of it. And if you're doing it consciously, or maybe a deep breath is useful. It does. There's a lot of research on a deep breath. But if it's a goofy breath, you'll also get goofiness in the middle of it, and that's something change your posture, change your change the saying, you know, dude, if you change your body, you change your mind.

Greg Voisen
Well, you know, there used to be a meditation practice and Tai Chi, I think it was before Tai Chi meditation. There's where they would laugh. And I will say to people, you know, we don't see a lot of laughter. But you know, when you hear the Dalai Lama speak, and I've been a couple of times to hear him speak. Well, yeah. There isn't one time when you hear that man speak, did he isn't giggling afterwards, or he's giggling. He's just constantly giggling. And I say to people, you know, what, we need to lighten up a bit about ourselves and who we are. Don't take it so seriously. Life doesn't need to be that serious. And I think, you know, I've been a bit serious my life as well. But I am learning as I've gotten older, that it's more important to laugh. Yeah, laugh and laugh at anything you can mean, I found you very entertaining this morning. So that's the best thing and if I'm if my listeners are listening, you know, if you're not going to breathe in Laugh, laugh at it, you know, find something funny about there's, there's a lot of things out there that are

Bob Gardner
Yeah, it the laughter and play, your brain actually learns faster in play than it does in your normal, serious focused kind of like I got to do this takes like two repetitions to build a solid state and apps that way. But in a state of play, it's like 10, to 20. So if you want to stack the deck in favor of you learning a new way of living really quickly, and keeping all the wisdom from the past, but now having a new chapter open up.

Greg Voisen
Play more because well, here's the blog, Bob Gardner, thank you for being on built for freedom. Namaste, to you, my friend, thank you. This is this is a book that can open up your mind and allow you to let go of many of the things that you've done. It's practical, by the way. But it's really great wisdom from Bob and all the years he's been doing, what he's been doing. And then I wanted to read you all to we'll put a link in there to the freedomspecialists.com. There you can find the blog, you can also find the podcast, you can find many of the things that Bob teaches his retreats. He also has your one time monthly donation, you can make a donation, because got part of this. It's a nonprofit that he's running as well called built for Freedom Foundation. And I want to encourage you to take a look that also took a look at the freedom guides and the stick work practitioner, Amber, and Daniel's videos, those I think you'll find interesting. Those are at the website as well. So Bob, it was a pleasure having you on this morning on insight, personal growth, sharing your experiences personally. And then the experiences that you've had by others that have taught you as well to re release these addictive patterns that we've created in our life and many of them are big addictive patterns. And we don't even realize because it's like subconscious is just we're just running on autopilot and you say well, why not run on autopilot being free versus running on autopilot feeling like you're trapped? And this is a man that can help you get on trapped and be free. Thanks, Bob.

Bob Gardner
knows my pleasure, guys. Have a wonderful day. Thanks.