You can never eliminate the imposter syndrome.

It's always going to be there.

It's just a manageable thing.

I think it's human to always think like, man, I could be doing better.

Athletes will actually fear doing that work because it's like, well, you're going to get rid of the chip on my shoulder.

Or the person may say, what the fuck am I doing?

I had always thought like, yep, I want to work for a professional sports team full time and that's going to be my thing.

And then I started to realize maybe that's not quite what I want to do.

I'm literally just helping them cut through all of the self talk for their story.

And the results are, I mean, the results are amazing.

If you don't do something that you love, no matter what that is, I don't care if it's an accounting or owning a spa, you will burn out of.

The people around you will usually suffer first.

Alright.

Welcome to the evolving potential podcast.

This is episode number 18.

Today I have on the show Matt Meyer.

Matt is the owner of Revive performance and health in New York where he works with professional lacrosse team the Buffalo Bandits, as well as the NFL's Buffalo Bills and many more athletes.

As a sports therapist, he applies many different tools to help people move and perform better, as well as bring them back to a holistically healthy place.

Matt has so many letters behind his name that it can't fit on his business, Cardinal.

So I'm going to let him discuss some of those, like corrective exercise, massage, neuromuscular therapy and more.

He also has a bachelor's in health sciences and has studied at the Czech Institute under the renowned holistic health expert Paul Cech.

His current practice brings in referrals from top medical practitioners, the NFL, NHL, MLB and more.

And on the side, he hosts the Curious Buffalo podcast where he loves to talk about performance, health, philosophy, spirituality, and perhaps even some psychedelics.

So welcome, Matt.

How you doing?

That's a great intro, Todd.

Thank you.

Absolutely, man.

It's my pleasure.

That's one of my favorite parts about doing this whole thing.

No, it's a.

It's a pleasure to meet with you.

And, you know, we got connected from our good buddy Mark, who is always a trip and one of my mentors.

So I.

All of his connections are always spot on.

Yeah, it's been really cool.

It's been really cool.

Mark gave me, I think, three or four guests to interview and I think you're the last one of the four that he gave me.

And they've all just been, you guys have all just been amazing, and, like, the whole enlisted method is really cool, but it's cool to see how you guys all use that enlifted method or the story work in different lines of work.

So it's kind of cool to have these different conversations.

So I'm curious, first of all, you can go ahead if you have something to say.

Oh, no, go ahead.

Go ahead.

So I'm curious, first of all, where.

What is sports, a sports therapist, like, if you can explain that in your own words, because I know you kind of created that thing yourself.

Yeah.

So it's interesting.

So, in the United States, there is no designation as sports therapist.

There's physical therapists, there's athletic trainers.

There's all these different designations.

So when I had started down the path of getting into this field, I was already a little bit later into my twenties, and I had previously was living a life of.

I was studying philosophy and running nightclub security at different nightclubs and bars.

So it was an interesting path, although I always had this, like, feel as a martial artist for the healing arts.

So by the time I kind of figured out what I really wanted to do with my life, I was already late twenties, and I had moved from Florida back to New York, and I started really researching ways that I could start working.

At the time, really with athletes was my goal.

And I had some really great mentors, and I was thinking about chiropractic school, and I was thinking about physical therapy school and all these things.

And I had one of my mentors at the time living in Buffalo.

We're about two and a half hours away from Toronto, so Toronto is a mecca of really everything.

But there was a workshop up there, and one of my mentors said, I was just enrolled in massage therapy school to try to start my path somehow.

And he said to me, you need to go up there to Toronto and do this seminar.

I want you to see how they do it up there.

And at the time, really what that meant was it was a very progressive field in Canada, and in Toronto, especially, the strength coaches, the physical therapists, the doctors, nutritionists, they all worked really well together.

And that's something that I noticed in Buffalo, which is kind of a little.

A little big town.

There was all this separation, and it was like the pts, the Cairos and this and the personal trainers, like, they weren't coordinating.

So when I went up to Toronto, I just had this huge epiphany, and it was like all of these programs working together, and that's when I got to see Paul Chuck speak, and I came back with just, you know, the light bulbs going off, and I kind of figured, I said, what if I piece together the things that I think are really important for working with humans or athletes?

So the ability to do hands on manual therapy.

So checking that box.

Massage therapy.

Right.

That the license to touch, and then it's like the movement piece of it.

And that was an interesting, that's an interesting part because there's really no regulations and licenses based on strength coaches and personal trainers.

And even at the time.

This is 2000.

This is 2001.

I mean, there was so much out there now it's even tenfold.

So seeing Paul, check and see how he worked, which is combining assessment and all these different movement, these movement practices along with hands on therapy, I kind of used it as my template.

So I enrolled in a bunch of different.

I maxed out all my student loans, and I just started taking all of these CE courses because I had also realized that traditional school is important, but you're really.

It's like graduating from kindergarten, right?

I realized where all the learning was really taking place was, number one, mentorship, finding a mentor, and then two was in the world of continuing education, because that's where you really got to the crux of these specialized therapies.

So I just went on a massive tour of taking in, consuming all the courses I could take with my goal being, all right, how can I open up a practice?

And I can, you know, I can be licensed, I can be educated.

And I started doing some research on how they did some of the sports therapy in Europe, and they have a sports therapy designation in Europe, actually.

So I actually kind of used that as a template to build my own practice in a way.

So sports therapy in the US, there's really no designation, but that's what I call myself because of all the other letters and things after my name just said, which is kind of a funny joke.

And so that's where I started.

There was a lot of friction at first, and I had sought out some great mentors in the field.

What I ended up doing was helping almost bridge the gap, bridging the gap of, you know, my practice was also.

I really lived by this creed of, if you come in to see me and I can't help you, my number one objective as a therapist, as a human, is to find somebody that can.

So I started building a really large rolodex of other therapists, practitioners, physical therapist, anybody.

I could get acupuncturists.

So I was referring a lot of people to these other practitioners, and the downstream effect of that is they would refer patients to me.

And very often it would be like, Matt, we're not even sure what you do, but it works.

So here.

And so I built my practice really, really clawing and scratching.

I opened up a practice in a big health club.

So I had a treatment room, and I had access to the gym.

And then I started, you know, literally sending in letters to local professional sports teams.

Sending in letters.

One time I pretended to be a vendor on the phone so I could get somebody in touch with a professional team to actually.

Because it's almost impossible if you.

If you were like, hey, you know, I'd like to call up the.

Anybody, the equipment manager for the, you know, for the professional hockey team.

You'll never get them.

It's almost impossible.

You probably get to call the president easier.

They're very, like, secured out.

So I pretended to be a vendor and ended up getting somebody on the phone and ended up being a big no.

But I was like, all right, I'm making progress.

Yeah.

For a few years, I've gotten in with a professional lacrosse team by literally chance.

I was standing in line at a coffee shop, and I saw the athletic trainer with their shirt on doing notes in training camp.

And I just introduced myself and, you know, and said, hey, this is what I do.

And, you know, that kind of started a nice career.

So it's been about 15 years I've been working with professional athletes.

I also have a private studio.

So in my private studio where I'm at now, I work with all different kinds of people, and I've almost gotten out of the, you know, I work with athletes because I work with humans.

You know, I have kids that I work with that are seven and eight.

I've had 88 year olds that I can apply these principles to.

And the principles are really, you know, assess how people are moving, take a look at what injuries or traumas they have, and then use all different types of hands on inputs, movement inputs that could be mobility, that could be strength conditioning, it could be stretching and to help them get better.

The last piece of that, which I knew I needed to integrate somehow, but I wasn't sure, was this the mindset piece, right.

And I had done meditation, all these different things, and a few years back, I had ran into one of Mark Englund's podcast, who's one of the co founders of the enlifted method.

And as soon as I heard that in what the enlifted method is, I was like, that checks the box.

That's a way that I can start to integrate the mindset piece in to what I do to be, I think, what's really, truly, you know, holistic.

The word gets thrown a lot around a lot, but that's really what it is.

Being able to give people tools to say, you know, we need to work on your breathing.

We need to work on your, you know, your flexion, your spine flexion.

We need to clear, you know, adhesions in your back.

It doesn't really matter what it is.

Now I have these tools that I can help apply for anybody that I see, athlete or not athlete.

So were you seeing mindset issues in your.

In your clients, if you will, or, you know, maybe opportunities where you could.

Yeah.

Give someone a enhanced mindset towards their recovery or whatever?

Yeah.

And it was.

It was actually a lot.

It was.

It was a lot simpler, but more actually complex.

The.

The first place I really noticed it was with dealing with people that had pain.

I had also, actually, through experience, was, um, my wife, who's my girlfriend at the time, we were up in Canada, and we were in a car accident, and she developed this basically, like, a really nasty whiplash.

So going through the process of helping her with that and finding some other practitioners, I got connected to neurosurgery practice here in town, the biggest one.

And I started working with some of their doctors, and what I realized, so I would send mostly people that were in car accidents, and a lot of times, especially if they're acute, you can't.

There's not a lot of work you can do.

It's very minimal.

And I was seeing over and over these loops of chronic pain that had a lot to do with mindset.

I'm injured.

I'm in pain.

I've had trauma.

And I started thinking to myself, there's a connection, and there's a lot of really other.

There's a lot of cool programs out there.

There's things like explain pain.

Some physiotherapists from New Zealand, so they were talking about this, but some of it was complex and a story that actually really made me take responsibility for my words.

And this is where the enlifted method came in.

I was in a facility, and I was working with a football player who had had a low back injury.

And I was out in the hallway talking with a couple other people, and the young man walked by, and I turned and said, hey, how's your back pain?

And I saw him go from walking like this to he was like, oh, well, it's okay.

And immediately, I was like, did I just trigger his back pain?

Because I said pain.

And that's when I really was like, okay.

If I want to really take on the role of holistic therapist, I need to personally to make sure that I'm using the correct words.

When people come in, and I started paying attention to myself.

And if I had somebody that came in that was in.

That was in, you know, pain.

I was saying the words a dozen times or more.

How's your pain?

What's your pain like?

Oh, here's a pain scale.

Rate your pain.

And I'm thinking to myself, what if I started just changing the language?

So first I started just really being conscious of my words and trying not to keep using those triggering words, and it made a difference.

And then the enlifted method came in, and I really realized how important words were and how they trigger emotions.

And even in the training with Paul Chuck that we did, there's these six modifiable factors, which has been kind of the groundwork of my work.

It's the things that you can modify that's like low hanging fruit, right?

Sleep, hydration, movement, food, thoughts and words.

So you think about, if you're driving down the street and you go past your favorite restaurant and you smell the food cooking, it triggers a physiological response, right?

Thoughts.

Do you know, nostalgia is our thoughts, good and bad?

So that was so eye opening to me, realizing that if I can change my words in language and then I can teach my client.

I don't like to use the word patients anymore, because if client is a relationship we're building together, we're doing work.

I'm not doing something to you as a patient.

I thought, this is invaluable, and this is powerful.

The first thing I switch was when a person would come in and they would say, oh, you know, I'm injured.

I would say, all right, you're no longer injured.

And I'd have them write this down, because writing the word down is very important.

I'm currently healing.

Nice, right?

Currently healing.

Just little changes, little.

Little tweaks.

So that kind of brought me to really doing this work, which is really important to me.

So now, wrapping it all into sessions and doing some of the work on its own has been very important.

So when you're trying to sell yourself to, you know, any of these professional teams back in the day.

Yeah, what.

I guess, what gap were you trying to fit into?

Or what role would they kind of, like, code you as if you will?

You know what I mean?

Like, are you an athletic trainer, sports medicine, massage therapist, like, I guess.

How are you feeling that a little.

Bit of all those, really what my goal was is how can I support the staff?

And, you know, in the world of professional sports, they have the athletic trainers really run the show, and they are some of the hardest working people I've ever worked with, but they're also bogged down by doing so many things.

So really what my goal was like, how can I just plug in and help if a player needed hands on work, if they needed to do some mobility work, if they needed things like that?

I just really wanted to kind of fit that gap.

I specifically took a job at a very renowned sports medicine clinic in the area, so I could really understand the lingo in the work dealing with acute care, knee replacements, sports injuries.

And the goal was really there so I could speak the language.

So there was a value added that they would be able to trust me if they said, hey, I have this person and they have this, the work that I do would fit in well because it's always for, you know, is do no harm first.

Do no harm, ask lots of questions.

That's my, you know, that's really important and it's appreciated.

So as you're doing this work, then, how are you able to tell what's within your wheelhouse and what's nothing?

That's because you said you were willing to refer out.

So with such a wider range of skills, how do you know what's in your wheelhouse and what I'm now going to go ahead and refer away?

Typically, it's results driven to, and unless there's a very, like, severe case of something where somebody needs to get, like, a specific referral to, you know, a surgeon or something, which happens very.

Doesn't happen frequently, but it does.

It's really like, I'll usually tell people, look, let's work together for four sessions.

So the other thing that's, that I do is I don't participate in any insurance.

Everything that I do is quote unquote cash base.

Nice.

So when I'm with my, and I have no other people, it's me that's the only person that's here.

So when I spend an hour with somebody, I've already broken out of the typical medical mile.

You know, when you go to a typical, like our insurance based physical therapist, chiropractor, things like that, they've unfortunately been kind of funneled into almost the way allopathic medicine is now, where if you go to your GP, you know, they're seeing seven patients now, you know, it's about an average of six minutes you'll see your physician for, and some of that could be even a PA or a nurse practitioner.

So I'm spending, I'm listening.

I'm doing a lot of listening, asking a lot of questions and really taking my time with folks.

And what I'll usually say is, let's do four sessions together.

Let's work for four weeks.

I'm going to give you this homework.

It's very important because that's the other factor is sometimes people just like to come in to go to therapy two or three times a week, you know, have therapy done to them instead of participating in it.

And I'm very upfront.

I said, listen, if you do these few exercises, you should have improvement by next week when we see.

So if they don't hit that mark where after three or four sessions they're improving, or of course, if they're, if they're, if they're going backwards, that's when I refer out.

And I'll, you know, I'll call also, too.

I'm, I'm very grateful because I have, you know, personal relationships with these doctors and therapists, and I can call and say, hey, I want you to see so and so, you know, I did this.

They're coming with that.

Let's get them in.

Let's get your eyes on it.

And sometimes they'll kick him back to me after, you know, a few weeks and say, hey, everything's on, everything looks good.

Do what you're doing.

Or sometimes I don't see him again, but they do get better because I always try to check in with people in my, you know, and I'll say, I'll say this jokingly with some of my clients.

I say, if I never see you again, that's a good thing.

I said, that means that you're, you're better, you know, and then hopefully I'll grocery store at the park or something and, you know, we can see that, which maybe isn't the best business model, but it works, right?

I love, I love that idea.

I love, there's, I heard something about the doctors in the east, how they would only get paid when their clients were healthy.

It was a reverse model.

And I was like, that's so funny.

You stop getting paid when your client gets sick.

That model has been, unfortunately, we're in a sick care model.

Yeah.

We're in a state and it's disease based, it's pharmacology based.

And there's a need for that sometimes.

But typically, if you go to your physician or surgeon, there's two options.

There's surgery or meds.

And for some people that works.

For some people it doesn't.

And I'm seeing a shift towards people getting very frustrated with the medical model.

Even practitioners that I know that have been in the insurance model, amazing therapists, physical therapists, chiropractors, all these things, they're starting to kind of deport into private practice now for that reason, because they're getting strangled by the insurance companies.

They're spending less and less time with their patients.

I really think that conventional medicine, insurance model is stripping the art of medicine.

And if you're a physician, if you're a therapist, there's a certain art that you have become proficient in.

And the less time we can spend with patients, the more paperwork that comes with it, we start to lose some of that art.

The hands on feel, the questions, asking the right questions, listening time doesn't allow for those things.

And I think that's a, I know that's a big issue.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's huge.

And then, like, along the lines of, like, surgery or meds, and it kind of ties into your work is like, I used to do corrective exercise as well when I was a personal trainer.

And I know that, like, rotator cuff injuries and knee injuries, you know, common.

And then you're going to understand like, the kinetic chain.

And so it's like if you have weakness in your glutes, if you have, you know, lack of mobility in your ankle, like, there's going to lead to these, these things happening.

And then I've talked to people that have had, like, rotator cuff surgeries and they've never heard any of this stuff.

They have no idea about, like, oh, I could have done this corrective exercise and, oh, because I'm like, moving forward, you know, my shoulders constantly as I continue to go throughout life, like, I'm putting my shoulder in a disadvantage.

And that's why my rotator cuff is all messed up.

Like, they literally don't know.

And it blows my mind.

And same thing with, like, guys and knee replacements.

People are getting knee replacements, hip replacements, shoulder replacements, shoulder surgeries, rotator cuff repairs, and they don't know what they could be doing to prevent this.

So if you could talk about that, that'd be amazing.

Yeah.

I mean, at one time, and I don't know if this is current, but in, you know, so I'm in western New York, Buffalo specifically, we had the most spine surgeries per capita in the United States.

What?

And not, like, again, not saying that there isn't a need.

I've had to refer some people because they had, they needed surgery, and the surgery helped.

However, teaching movement and lifestyle things and posture, those things have become very rare in that field.

And a lot of the ailments that are coming on today with overuse could be alleviated just from moving, better moving at all, you know, going up, you know, getting up and walking.

It's shocking to see.

I'll have people that, you know, had a surgery.

And very often I kind of work in this, like, post rehab zone, wherever people will have, you know, either surgery or a consult with the surgeon.

They go to therapy.

They go to physical therapy.

They finish their eight sessions, because we know eight sessions of physical therapy fixes everything.

Insurance runs out, and they'll send them to me.

And a lot of times I'm reeducating them.

I'm teaching them how to move, and I'm teaching them to lift, to lift weights.

And that's something they don't get in a lot of therapy, you know, in a lot of physical therapy clinics, not all, but, you know, the.

The weights go up to, like, 30 pounds.

It's kind of like a joke.

And life dictates they need more, especially if the person's a landscaper or an athlete or, you know, a mom that has three kids and has got to carry grocery bags and a cart and two kids.

And so my goal is really, is that, is that functional piece, like, what do you do for, what do you do for your exercise?

What do you do in your daily life?

Like, are you up and down a lot?

Like, are you carrying things?

And then I can really tailor something to specifically for them to help that.

And that also makes a big difference.

I had had a woman who was a researcher, and she was a researcher.

She was 80 years old.

She'd never, she basically spent her time for 40 years teaching and looking at a microscope, and she'd come to me and said, I'm retired.

I want to travel the world.

I want to see my grandkids.

And I worked with her for about five years, and she was traveling, and she texted me from somewhere.

She was out in the west coast seeing her daughter.

And she said that she was able to take her carry on bag and put it up in the overhead bed, which would have been, she said, when she was 60, would have been almost impossible.

So those, to me, are those real, like, functional carryovers that are a huge win.

And like I said, in traditional medicine, in conventional medicine, allopathic medicine, there's some of that is lost in translation.

And if it can't be fixed via surgery, if it can't be fixed, you know, with pharmaceutical interventions, a lot of times they just, they don't, they kind of leave them hanging, and that's, that's a struggle.

But it also is a, you know, it's an opportunity for me to help.

And that's, you know, that's really my life.

That's what I do is help people, help humans, help humans be better humans.

You know, that's, that's simple but really important.

That's a perfect segue, because I'm curious about a couple of the different therapies that you do provide.

Like, you know, something that people might not know of, a neuromuscular therapy or like the craniosacral therapy.

And so I'm curious, you know, if you could just, in your own words, lay out some of those things that you do as well as how your work is kind of missing in the mainstream.

Like, what, what are you doing?

That's kind of the fill in the gap of what's missing.

Yeah.

So how have you found it to be missing even in the world of therapy?

You know, just like the, there's hundreds of different types of exercise modalities.

The spine, for instance, there's the McKenzie method.

There's all these different ways to strengthen the spine, and they all have some benefit.

It just depends on the person.

When it comes to the hands on therapies, I started off learning very aggressive soft tissue therapies because I thought, all right, I'm going to be working with these athletes.

So they need a intense tissue therapy.

So things like active release technique and grasping, which these are all manual therapy techniques, and they are important.

But what I also realized is that the body can be very sensitive at times, and the nervous system is sensitive.

And there's craniosacral therapy, which was developed by an osteopath doctor, appalachia.

It's very, very light touch, like 5 grams, which is the weight of a nickel.

And what Doctor upleischer realized is that the body has three pulses.

The body has a respiratory pulse.

It has a pulmonary pulse.

So, you know, your breathing, your cardiac pulse, but there's also a pulse of the cerebral spinal fluid that pulses the ventricles in the brain, runs down the spine.

So his program, which was first really talked to, like, osteopaths and then kind of spilled out and be able to work with therapists and body workers.

So cranial sacral therapy is very deep work with very light touch, which is wonderful.

It has really great interventions for whiplash things where people are, you know, very splinted and tonic.

I can do some cranial sacral therapy inputs that get the nervous system to relax.

It also worked great for concussions.

And so in the field of sports, tons of concussions.

So it's a great segue into working with athletes, with some of the other therapies that they're getting, different types of stretching techniques.

I mean, are wonderful mobilizations.

It's really about getting the body to go back to its natural movement, which we lose.

And if you have an injury or if maybe you've worked at a desk job for ten years, we get stuck in these patterns.

So what I find personally is before I teach somebody how to move and maybe how to work on their hip rotation, if I can physically manually work on them while they're focused on their breathing and relaxing, they can start to feel how their body's supposed to move.

So, you know, typically my sessions, after I do an assessment of, see how they're moving, I'll do some hands on work and I'll work with them and I'll say, all right, this is how your hips are supposed to move.

And it's easy because they're on the table, they're relaxed.

And then I'll take them out and I'll say, all right, now we're going to do this as more of an energized exercise.

You're going to try to get the same range of motion in your hips, and this is going to be part of your own work.

So it's teaching.

It's letting them feel the movement and then letting them do it on their own.

So that's, to me, where a lot of the manual therapy comes in, is letting their bodies feel how it should move, moving their neck in a way that should move.

And if someone has been in a car accident and they're really splinted, a lot of times I can get them into positions gently that they wouldn't be able to do, or their brain was saying, don't do that.

They're, you know, quote unquote afraid to do.

So it's all part of the process of getting the body to come back to normal.

And whether it be a hands on technique, whether it be a breathing technique, whether it be a mobility technique, that's kind of the hierarchy.

And then at the end to me is the strength training part.

It's like we want to create as much healthy tissue as we can.

So different types of soft tissue therapies.

Cranial sacral stretching, then mobility, and then the strength piece, that component, the last piece.

And that's kind of the, that's kind of the finishing piece of it.

That's crazy.

So this, I'm super curious about this craniosacral therapy now, because I've heard of network chiropractic.

Is that, is that similar?

Have you heard of this from Donny Epstein?

The name sounds familiar.

It could be.

And the other thing that happens in, in this world a lot is which, there's, the nomenclature is not transferred over.

So what I might be doing and calling it a, another practitioner might be doing the same thing, but calling it something else.

Yeah.

Well, seems, it seems to me like it's like a level below, above.

I'm not really sure how to explain it, I guess, but it's like they don't touch you at all.

They're like, right above you.

They're like touching on these planes around you, if you will.

And it seems like, woo woo is all hell, I promise you.

I was so confused by it.

And there's a guy named Donnie Epstein explains, like, the science of it and stuff.

And it's, it's actually really crazy, the things that these people go through.

And it sounded similar to, like, this craniosacral therapy where it's like you're able to somehow get in there deep with these really light touches.

And so are you going for, like, trigger points, energetic trigger points, or nervous system trigger points, or.

How do you, how do you know where to touch?

You know, most, most of my work is a, is a hands on approach.

Now, studying martial arts and being involved in martial arts for years, I've seen, I've seen some things.

I've seen practitioners do some things via not touching that were absolutely unbelievable.

I haven't crossed that bridge yet, but it's there.

And I always, people will always ask me, hey, what do you think about this?

What do you think about this?

And I never say no to anything.

I always say, how is it working for you?

If the practitioner is safe and they're, therefore they're there really doing what they should do, which is helping the patient or client heal, then I'm all for it.

I didn't really know anything about Reiki, and I had a few experiences with Reiki that I really can't, I can't explain, but there were energetic responses and knowing that the body is an electric being and the ability, I think that the touch is just a roadmap, but I think there's practitioners that have honed skills to absolutely be able to affect change without touch for sure.

That's crazy.

So back to the cranial sacral.

How do you know where, I guess, what are the basis, what's the basis of what you learned to touching these areas really lightly and a big response.

Yeah, the training is actually very intensive and it is very much about feel.

You actually learn how to pick up on the pulse, the craniosacral pulse, and there's different areas of the body that you can pick this up.

And then there's a series of techniques that, to rebalance the cranial sacral system.

It's an energy based, very light touch system.

And again, explaining it, I mean, there is science behind it.

I mean, they've done anatomy labs where they've had, you know, had fresh cadavers that hadn't been embalmed and the cerebral spinal fluid.

And interestingly enough, when a patient, this is how doctor Upledger discovered this when the patient coded or, you know, died on the table.

The cardiac is dead, the lungs are dead.

But what he noticed was that the cerebral spinal fluid was still pulsing through the brain to the spine.

That's actually how he realize that, well, what is this?

Because typically this would be discarded even, you know, even like the fascia, right?

It's only been the last maybe 20 years that they realized that fascia isn't a viable organ in the body.

They would discard it during anatomy lab.

You wouldn't.

They would literally throw it out.

You'd have a dry body.

You'd have muscle, tendons, ligaments and bone.

The fascial system was discarded.

And it really wasn't until, like I said, the last like 1520 years that they said, oh, wait a minute, this fascial system is alive and it's connected to the entire body.

So that's a good example of how, you know, we're learning still about the body and things.

So with craniosacral, it's specifically based on this cerebral spinal fluid and trying to get the pulse and kind of rebalance or re regulate the cerebrospinal fluid flow through the body.

Man, that sounds so cool to me.

So me and you both believe in the energy and the motions and the physical body all kind of go hand in hand.

So I'm kind of curious about any sort of stories or experiences you've had with, let's say, someone's story kind of coming out and improving and then having that show up in their body or vice versa, where you have something, you know, that is allowing someone to improve their posture.

So you've put someone through a movement thing and it's now then, you know, turned into their personality, confidence, things like that, you know, because I see them as connected.

Even the Stanford, I think it's, or Princeton research on the power postures.

Standing in a good posture increases, you know, dopamine and testosterone and all these different things.

And so how have you kind of seen that connection play in hand to hand?

That the, that connection I see often, you know, someone comes in to see me, and especially if they're dealing with pain, you know, we have a protective mechanism of this.

And after taking them through, you know, a session that I do, and now I'm also really careful.

I'm, I don't look at myself as any type of a healer whatsoever.

I am helping, I'm working with my client to help them facilitate their own healing.

I'm very careful about using that word healer personally.

And there are healers out there, so that's very important to me.

And I always say this is a partnership.

I'm just, I'm clearing some pathways for you to help you get out of pain or to move better or to sprint faster.

I can tell you one thing that I learned very on in school.

I was working with, I was in massage therapy school, and obviously the day is spent doing lots of hands on therapies.

And at the time, I was like, I didn't want any of the woo woo stuff.

I wanted to learn everything that I could do to help athletes get better.

So in my mind, it was like, you know, aggressive soft tissue work, stretching, opening up.

And my partner, we were doing work.

We were doing, like, lower body work.

And it was, if he was a female.

And there's also a big consent thing, you know, you want to really ask people to kind of enter into their plane.

So when I'm working with people, I'm also very upfront in saying, you know, I'm going to do some work here in the, in the pelvic girdle, in the adductors.

If I'm working with kids, the parents are standing, sitting right next to me as I do that.

In almost all my work, too, that I do is, is almost fully clothed or gym clothes.

And so my partner, I was working her add doctor, and, you know, all of a sudden she just bursts out crying.

And I thought I was like, oh, man, I just like, you know, must have went over a trigger point or a really, you know, crazy knot or something like that.

And the, it was just a full on, you know, release.

So I gave her some space, and, you know, I'm a student, too, so now I'm, like, freaked out.

I'm like, oh, my God, did I hurt this person?

So the teacher had come over and, you know, and I.

It kind of just let her have a little space.

And then we talked later, and I just wanted.

I came up and said, hey, are you okay?

So this student at the time was even a little bit older than me.

She was probably 40.

And she said, I don't know what happened, but I had a point in my life when I was seven or eight, when I was sexually assaulted.

And she had blocked out most of it specifically, but she knew of the event, and the work that I had done in that inner thigh had released or activated some emotions inside her body.

And that was a big.

That was like, whoa.

That's when I knew.

This work is powerful.

Hands on touch from another human to another human is very powerful, and it also wields a lot of responsibility.

That was a, you know, that was kind of, like, my first experience with that.

And, you know, I've had so many great stories of.

And I call that a great story because she was actually able to start processing that after and was able to go and get some other therapies done and things to help her go through that, which may have not have been, I guess, awakened unless that specific moment didn't happen.

You know, that's, to me, that's.

That's a synchronicity.

That's a.

That was meant to happen.

And I still keep in touch with her even, you know, 25 years later.

And we kind of, like, joke around about that and kind of, like, laugh about the.

How powerful that was.

But I get to see amazing moments like that all the time.

You know, having someone that has been in pain and having them send me a text a couple days later, and I, you know, I kind of break the seal of traditional medicine, too, where, you know, I check in on my clients often, and there's really nothing else in this field that gets me so excited is when I text a client and they say, hey, I haven't had a headache in three days, or my pain went from a seven to a three.

That is the ultimate for me.

That's the ultimate high.

I get goosebumps when that happens, because that really sets me straight up, like, man, this work is so powerful.

So I'm grateful that I get to experience that often.

Yeah, that's what's so cool, man.

Like, just think about the the mind body connection and the idea that the body keeps the score.

And so the fact that you could literally, you know, be unleashing some of those things for somebody and then, you know, being able to even potentially with some of your story work, be like, hey, you know, like, we can talk about it if you want to, you know?

Yeah.

You know, that's really why I had kind of got into the enlifted method, because, and I have.

I have a lot of therapists that are like, mental health practitioners, sports psychologists.

And I wanted.

I asked them and I actually took them through some of the work, and I said, I just want to make sure I'm not out of my scope of practice.

I want to make sure that I'm not, you know, stepping on your toes or doing all unequivocally said, absolutely.

This work is amazing.

It's stuff that we don't do.

We could, but it's just not in our wheelhouse.

So my next horizon that I'm working with is how can I really integrate this story language and lifted work in even more than I'm doing now?

So that's my own kind of personal business stuff that I'm working on.

Yeah.

And would you say that you've been able to see a decent amount of progress with people that you are using the lifted method upfront?

Yeah, yeah, no, for sure.

One thing that I did, and I've always had, I didn't serve in the military, but I've always had a very deep connection to veterans.

I did a lot of studying in school on post traumatic stress disorder and outside of school.

And so when I finished level one, I immediately started messaging some veterans groups and some people that I knew were veterans and said, listen, I have this program pro bono.

I just want to go through some of the work with you.

And it's been pretty amazing, actually, Chad, that I mentioned earlier, he was on Cal's podcast, and I was listening to the podcast.

I never met the guy.

And I just finished, I think, level one, and I sent him a message on instagram, and I said, hey, my name is Matt Meyer.

I just did this program.

And I said, you know, no strings attached if you'd like to go through some of this work.

So Chad and I messaged back a little bit, and, you know, a year later, I took him through.

He's gone through about seven or eight sessions with me.

We became actually good friends and connected in a couple other different ways.

He's got a great program.

The analogy I use with this story work and language work is it's like if you took a big steak and you just smashed it down, swallowed it, you're going to have indigestion, right?

You're going to have bloat.

You're just going to have this, like, unsettling stomach.

And what I tell people is it's like you have that undigested steak, sorry, vegans, in your belly.

I'm going to help you regurgitate it, and then we're going to cut it up into little pieces, and then you're going to re swallow it.

And it sounds really.

It's so true of what it is, because these stories that are swirling in the head, it's getting the stories out on paper, and it's just guiding people through their own story.

I'm not giving advice on how they should handle their nasty brother or their relationship.

I'm literally just helping them cut through all of the self talk and all of that for their story.

And the results are.

I mean, the results are amazing, to say the least.

That's crazy.

So, okay, so did you face any imposter syndrome at the beginning?

I love to talk about this a little bit.

Having a fresh certification and then moving into helping veterans.

To me, that sounds terrifying.

I'm gonna be honest with you, because, like, I've gotten into a lot of this mental performance work and stuff, and when I think about working with someone with, like, a real, you know, serious issue, like PTSD, I get scared.

It's like, man, I don't.

I don't want someone to unload something on me that then triggers something in them.

Now they go through, you know, a breakthrough or, you know, breakdown, and I'm responsible for that, and I don't know how to necessarily pull someone out of that.

And so how.

How did you kind of traverse that?

Well, I can.

I can tell you personally.

So one of the reasons why I had even one there was the one reason was getting into this enlifted work was twofold.

It was because I saw the need for it.

It's interesting, high performance sports.

What I found was, is that when you're working with these athletes and these teams, you are literally at their beck and call.

And when I first got in with teams, you just say yes, and, you know, you're at the facility working six or 7 hours, and then the athlete calls and then another athlete calls.

And I was finding myself, like, sometimes making house calls, working with these athletes till midnight, and I was burning out, and I was burning out fast.

And it was interesting.

It was like I got to the top of the mountain.

And I was like, oh, yeah, I'm like, yeah, I'm here.

But I realized that if I, there's five or six other people that are constantly trying to get to the top of that mountain.

And I had kind of come to this, like, standstill moment of like, man, is this really what I want to do?

I had always thought, like, yep, I want to work for a professional sports team full time, and that's going to be my thing.

And then I started to realize maybe that's not quite what I want to do.

And when you start putting the brakes on, there's always people that want to fill in that spot, which is good for them.

It's great.

So I was struggling with trying to do the thing, but also spending enough time with my family, and, you know, I have two young daughters, and I was struggling with that, and I was struggling with being able to balance that out.

So for a couple years, I kind of hit a very, like, you know, I was in this grave area where I was working with the teams, but my performance was going down, and I was just kind of stuck.

Speaking of all the letters after your name, I knew I was stuck when I had purchased an online course to do.

And, you know, I love learning.

I love education, and I purchased this course and I would open it up and I just could not.

I could not do it.

And the course was amazing.

It wasn't anything that.

It wasn't the course's fault.

And I was just.

I think I was burned out, really.

So level one of enlifted is not about anybody else.

You actually are doing the work for yourself.

And after going through the process of that and doing my own story work, I was like, yeah, it was me.

And I had massive impostor symptom syndrome.

And I also had a nice little side plate of the victim mentality.

Right.

And so that it was self care as well, doing this work and realizing it really kind of brought out precisely what I want to do.

And, you know, I have a beautiful private practice now.

I'm able to go to be there for all of my kids events.

I mean, I was on the PTA.

I get to go all do all their stuff, and I can still have a practice, but I had to do.

I had to be okay with other therapists and practitioners doing what I thought I wanted to do.

And that took a.

That took a lot out of me that, you know, I had to say no.

And I knew that by me saying no, there wasn't going to be like, oh, come on, man, you know, I can really.

No, there's five other people there that, oh, man, I can't do it.

And you learn very quick, like, oh, okay.

So, personally, I had to really go through that trade off of being like, all right, if I'm not going to be the guy, I can't.

I can't, you know, swim around in my own shit with that.

So sorry.

I don't know if you can square on this podcast.

You can.

Absolutely.

You can.

Absolutely.

Yes.

But so that really was a big part of me doing that work.

Even if I.

If I knew I was going to do that or not, I was like, oh, I'm doing this for everybody else, but I was really doing it for me.

So, you know, coming out of that and doing the level two, and it just created a lot of space and clarity for what I wanted to do and what was important.

And I still.

I still get the imposter syndrome sometime.

You know, it's.

It's.

It still happens.

You know, I have an athlete that I work with, and I build a relationship, and all of a sudden it's crickets and I don't get the calls anymore.

And that would keep me up at night.

What am I doing?

What am I not doing?

Do I need another certification?

Do I need none of those?

So I have come to a place where I'm okay with that.

If I'm giving 100% of what I do and it only goes so far, I mean, I'm happy with that.

That's crazy.

What a story.

I mean, to go from, you know, letting go of the needing to be the guy to ultimately ended up being.

You're the gear, the guy.

Now you're working with two professional sports teams.

Like, you're still the guy, you know, and you did it in your own way.

I am.

And that's where, too.

You know, there's.

There's levels that you have to.

That you have to look at.

And, you know, for me, first, my self care, how I am as a human, and my health is number one because I can't give more than I can't give myself.

And then being there for my family, and then third is being great therapists to help people, but it's got to start with the person.

And it sounds first, it's like, is it being selfish?

But it's really not.

You know, that I was at a yoga class, I remember years ago, and the yoga teacher said that it's very cliche when she says, you know, if you're in an.

You know how they say when you're going on the airplane, and they say, if your mask comes down, put the mask on you first before you can help others.

And, you know, you're.

And I'm like, all right, whatever.

But I was like, shit, that's so true.

So that's, you know, that's been a big thing with me, is taking back the control of my own health and making sure that I'm functioning the best I can through all these different things that I know how to do and sauna and cold top and breath work and journal, all these things and movement.

And then I can give to my family and then to my clients, whether those clients are an 88 year old woman who wants to travel or a 23 year old high performance professional athlete.

I love them all.

I love them all.

So what would you say were some of your methods then for tuning into that place and understanding what wasn't for you and being willing to let go of that pathway that you were taking that had probably felt very powerful and it was pulling you, you know, maybe society's expectations, maybe your own picture you'd create in your head of, you know, what you should be doing, quote unquote, or what would be a good job, quote unquote.

Yeah.

Before you had really settled into this new thing, you know, because I know a lot of people struggle with creating their own unique pathway and will therefore pull themselves down a pathway straight through retirement that maybe they never really wanted to do in the first place.

So the fact that you were able to pull away from that, to me, is very respectable.

And I'm curious what methods you might have utilized along the way.

The method was being 100% honest to yourself about what you want.

I think also, too, I'm fortunate because I'm in a career or profession that I absolutely love to do.

And, you know, I have my two girls that are 16 and eleven now.

I tell them all the time, I said, look, I'm.

This is real time.

If you don't do something that you love, no matter what that is, I don't care if it's an accounting or, you know, owning a spa.

That is so important because you will burn out and the people around you will usually suffer first.

You know, the family, the friends, your loved ones, because you're, you know, you've created this energy about you, and then the last thing to go is yourself.

So, you know, during the pandemic, I had a lot of time.

My.

My office at the gym was shut down because gyms were shut down.

Right.

Brilliant.

That gave me a lot of time to really sit and think about what I wanted to do.

You know, the other thing that had happened was I had always operated, kind of like I operated.

I had a little office within a gym, and, you know, I was working for a sports medicine clinic here and here.

But I had the opportunity to open up an actual standalone space, which I was always very afraid to do.

You know, my wife is a banker financial person, so we have this, like, yin yang relationship where I'm like, up here and she's always down here.

Yeah.

And it forced me to kind of step out of that, and I was able to open up my own standalone place, which I never thought I would be able to do.

And, you know, all the things that come with having your own office and things in your own space, but it'll be coming up on four years in January, and I'm just like, I love the more and more time I spend doing this work.

I like spending more of my time here with, with my clients.

You know, I have a little treatment room.

I have a movement gym space.

I have a little place in the back to do some podcasting.

So.

But I'm still always having to review my thoughts and my process of how I'm doing and how I'm working with and doing these other ventures because it's so important.

And you can never eliminate the imposter syndrome.

It's always going to be there.

It's just a manageable thing.

I think it's human to always think like, man, I could be doing better.

I could be doing this.

But going through some of those basic tools of what we call for stepping a story and, you know, connecting and going for a walk and doing, you know, some breathing and journaling, all these little tools that are very simple, they're very profound.

So it's kind of going back to basics.

You know, I go back to basics, and anytime I'm starting to feel, you know, stuck in that and go back and kind of recalibrate what I want to do and what's important, and I always come out like I'm doing the right thing, I'm on the right path.

Nice.

So.

So how then are you balancing the current contentment of being happy with what you're doing and enjoying it with, with growing the business and maybe future plans for, you know, or do you have future plans for growing the business or just going to ride this out through retirement, you know?

Yeah, I mean, I also, I don't ever want to retire.

I'm going to be doing this work.

I'm 52.

I'm going to be doing this work till I'm dead.

Bottom line, I'm going to be either teaching or helping.

Helping people.

I would say, like, personally moving to more of an online platform is something that I've been looking into.

A course, offering a course or something that people could purchase and work with them.

The cool thing about, you know, technology is technology is that you can work with people.

And that was something with doing some of this story work and lifted work.

I worked with people that have been all over the country, and it's like, okay, cool.

You know, now I don't have to have the person right here in front of me.

You know, I can get on the computer and do very promising work with people from, you know, wherever they are, depending on that.

So I'll still always have a capacity to work with people, like, traditionally, but moving forward, being able to spread my wings, to be able to help others that maybe I couldn't in the past because of things like some of these platforms that we have Zoom and whatnot.

So, yeah, that's my next goal that I'll work with.

That's honestly awesome.

The fact that you're able to work with people both in person, you know, with the several different modalities that you're using, as well as online through story work, like, that's.

That's crazy.

So, you know, and, like, going back to the posture, you know, and this is something I've just been kind of like, whiteboarding is being able to do some of the story work, which is really just like, mindset, right?

So mindset.

The definition of mindset in our world is the story we tell ourselves.

Right?

That's the definition of mindset.

So going through and doing some work with somebody, working on their words, working on their mindset, and then teaching them some positions of posture, you know, teaching them some breathing things, these are all things we could do via, you know, an online platform, which is really powerful, you know, someone that's slunched over, you know, giving them some cues and some movement things to be able to say, all right, I.

We're going to do these three mobility exercises.

You know, we're going to do some of the story work and kind of mend it all together.

That's my, uh, that's.

That's my goal with what I want to do.

That's cool.

So creating, like, a course around it, if you will, as well, you know, or even group work or something like that.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And I'm a life.

I'm a lifelong learner, so.

And interestingly enough, that course that I purchased like three years ago, I just wrote in my journal the other day, I was like, finish the course that I bought, and I'm going to finish that course.

And with, like, a different mindset of, like, I don't need this because I'm not good enough, but I'm going to continue to be a lifelong learner just.

To get back to learning.

So.

Yeah, but it's always, you know, you're always the, the other thing, which is interesting, especially when you're talking about professional athletes.

The imposter syndrome is huge in that community.

Huge.

Literally, some of the best professional athletes have massive cases of imposter syndrome.

And that's why often you'll see some of their careers will all of a sudden sideline or they have an injury and it just takes them out.

And there could be three other people that happened to in that world and they were fine.

So that's something noticing, too, is, man, the imposter syndrome and the mental health aspect in these professional sports are huge.

And even going down, I'm seeing it in youth sports.

I mean, I think that the pressure and the struggles that society parents are putting on these young athletes is just, I could probably do a three hour podcast, just go off about youth sports and, you know, I think what's happening here and things like that.

So.

But, yeah, imposter syndrome running huge in professional sports.

I think Mark talks about it, too, like, you know, some of the best special forces guys that he's worked with, huge, huge imposter syndrome.

And you're like, what?

And he gave us some examples and it's like, wow.

So those people that you don't think are have it.

They do.

And it's nasty.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

That's crazy.

Have you worked with any sports psychologists in, like, or had experience with sports psychologists and maybe seen a person who needed this help or done it yourself?

I'm kind of curious about your experiences with witnessing firsthand someone having imposter syndrome and either wanting to help them or knowing that they're getting help.

So I have a colleague who's a sports psychologist who works with a lot of professional athletes.

And when I finished, when I finished level one, I said, hey, I want to go through this with you.

And because I wanted to see, I talked about it earlier, I'll make sure that I was in my scope of practice.

And I took him through about three or four sessions, and he was really blown away.

He was really blown away by it because it's just, he's like you're getting into these, like, cracks and crevices that we just don't do in the professional field.

So that was a huge, like, wow, this is great.

This works great.

This is good.

The challenge is, and this is not the challenge even with me, but even working with him and a few other people in that field, not only are the athletes very guarded about getting into that, a lot of them do not want to open that box.

The teens and the teams can also be very dark.

I worked with an amazing hypnotherapist actually in the area that does just phenomenal work who was working with some professional athletes, and he had actually went in and had an interview because the athletes were like, hey, this guy is amazing.

I'd like maybe bring them in some capacity.

And after meeting with some of the executives up there, they shut the door as fast as they could because there is a lot of.

There's a lot there when you're starting to break down and getting into this, breaking down through some of this ego and some of these things, which could be a lever for some of these guys being the athletes that they are, they're shutting out of other things.

I was just thinking.

Yeah.

So I get.

I have lots of great conversations with, you know, a couple of these people that are in the field, and it's like they need it, but they don't know they need it.

And they may not be allowed to have because some of that closed, which creates anger, rage could also be a fuel for them being an amazing athlete.

Yeah, that's a tough thing.

And I think that's.

That's something that I've come across as well, that athletes will actually fear doing that work, you know, because it's like, well, you're gonna get rid of the chip on my shoulder.

Like, that doesn't seem very helpful to me, even though, like, obviously on, maybe it's like, maybe when I'm done playing football, maybe when I'm, you know, going into my civilian life, then we can work on that stuff.

But for now, I'm just gonna leave it to the side.

But then, you know, having that belief at least that we would.

That, like, you, you would just perform better in general, most likely if you could kind of just be in a more realistic place.

But who knows?

Actually, I don't really know.

Or the person may say, what the fuck am I doing?

Like, I have a life to live.

Yeah, that's the ultimate.

Like, whoa.

So that's a field I give.

I give those men and women that work in that field, that's a.

That's a real challenging.

That's a real challenging place to be where it's like, you're helping, but you got to be careful.

Too much help.

So, you know, that segues into a little.

We talked about, like, where some of these veteran guys and some of these athletes.

And I made this parallel with a couple practitioners.

There's a lifted coach up in Vancouver, Kyle Stubbs, who's amazing, who's law enforcement.

And we had this conversation last year in Richmond how there's a lot of parallels between the veteran community and the professional athlete community upon their exit of their fields and with veterans, it's pretty, you know, it's pretty straightforward.

I mean, these guys and girls have seen massive amounts of trauma, stress, PTSD, and it's all of a sudden, like, do you ever see the hurt locker?

There's this one scene where Jeremy Reiner, he's in this.

It's like a 15 minutes, they're in Iraq, and he's disposing this IED, and it's just this crazy, stressful scene.

And all of a sudden he's back home and he's, like, looking at the freezer section that his wife sent him to to get, like, waffles.

And it's just like, he's looking and it's like that transition and that really.

That really caught me.

That.

And what I see is with a lot of professional athletes, you know, since they've been.

If you're.

If you're a professional athlete and you're making.

You're getting paid to do your sport, probably by the time you were ten or eleven, you've been told, like, you're special.

And they're groomed and they're playing travel and they're playing their high level sports.

And then they get into college, and then now they're drafted and now they're playing professional.

Some of them run into the same problem where when their career ends, they're kind of lost.

And some of them have families they don't even know.

Very similar to military life.

And they're in their late twenties, early thirties, and they're, like, staring at that giant freezer full of waffles.

Like, what do I do now?

There's a guy named Evan Britton.

I don't know if you know Evan.

So Evan Britton is.

He's an ex NFL athlete, and he left the NFL, and he was actually the co host of Mike Tyson's podcast.

And then he started his own podcast, and Eben has.

And he's told the story about him going through injuries and then getting out of sports and figuring out, like, you know, well, am I going to be an announcer?

Am I going to coach?

But he realized that he needed to have an absolute ego death of his former self, which was very toxic.

So that's where the plant medicines came in.

And that's why you've seen a lot of these professional athletes that are starting to dabble and use these plant medicines, really in the same way that these veterans are and the need for it.

You know, they're using some of these medicines to help them figure out what they want to do in life after all the trauma, you know, after the concussions, after, you know, the military life and the death and destruction.

And they're leveraging these now to kind of dissolve the old so they can live their life.

And I think that's they're just touching the surface of the benefit of what they could do, hypothetically, if I were taking some clients or athletes through some of these plant medicine ceremonies, hypothetically, of course, the enlifted method is an amazing integration piece that I've hypothetically used.

And getting through the story work and then using the medicine to help kind of clear those neural pathways and then doing more work after and seeing the shift of before.

Just the story work itself is so powerful.

But now, if and when that person is ready, when they add a plant medicine to it, it's like a turbo boost to help clear that out and get on the other end of it.

Just, it's an amazing field.

I just saw an article, I think, the other day, the last couple days, about how there's great research, actually, with plant medicines and concussions, and athletes are trying to get a hold of these to be able to use to help heal from concussions.

But you saw, like, Aaron Rodgers and there's lots of athletes that have been kind of singing the praises, some of the guys and girls that have the clout that they can say it.

And, you know, there's a lot of fear because of the legality of it, right?

But, you know, I've had so many amazing conversations with athletes, professional athletes, college, a few Olympic athletes, on some of the excitement of some of this research that's coming out with plant medicines, but there's such a big stigma, and obviously, the legality of it makes it a barrier.

But I think it's the next ten years, you're gonna see just a huge shift of using some of these substances to help heal trauma and PTSD and honestly, just to be able to live life better after you're done with your sport or your military service.

That's crazy.

It seems so cool, too.

And I feel like it would even help an athlete shift back to a mindset of, like, I love this game, you know, and I.

And I'm good at it.

And I've practiced a bunch, and so I just enjoy being out here playing as opposed to this, like, competitive do or die, you know, anger coming out into the field.

Yeah, those things.

And so that's the tool.

That's the scary tool because these plant medicines are teachers.

And if that teacher says, no, this isn't for you, that's a challenge, you know, because these are businesses and it's super exciting.

I love, like, reading about it.

I think it's so cool.

I get to have really cool, kind of off the record conversations because, you know, you build relationships with some of these athletes and you spend time at their homes and with their families.

And I.

I mean, some of my best conversations I have are just kind of these off the record conversations about, like, what are you going to do after?

How are you going to do that?

And hearing what some of these guys and girls want to do and how they want to do it is just really cool.

It's, you know, just being there to just talk and support is very rewarding for me.

Yeah, I can imagine.

I can imagine, man.

And, like.

And that.

So this is actually something that's very interesting to me as well when it comes to the PTSD and the athletes having things in common.

And there's actually a TED talk, and I wish honest, I could remember the name, but it's about how soldiers enjoyed war, actually would rather go back to war.

And the whole talk was about basically the fact that these gentlemen had brotherhood.

Brotherhood was a big part of their life.

And so whether it's in sports or whether it's in the military, you have this brotherhood.

You have these people that are all, you know, exactly who's a for you, who's got your back.

And you are constantly experiencing this, like, you know, group ecstasis, this group, you know, flow together with other people, and it just feels amazing.

And there's almost nothing that can really make up for that, you know?

And so then all of a sudden, you exit the military or exit, you know, the NFL or whatever, and now you have no brotherhood.

You have nothing.

And so I think it's kind of cool.

Even with the plant medicine being put in place there is, because it does help with the.

The over.

The underlying fact of interconnectedness, of knowing that we are all in this together of establishing a brotherhood through the people that you did, you know, the retreat with or through the, you know, just general humankind, honestly.

And so I think that's, to me, something that seems really cool to me is that reestablishing a brotherhood for these people, whether it's in sports or outside of sports, partially through prime medicine, partially through coming together to integrate into those things and have these conversations in the way that you're describing them.

Yeah.

And I'll even go a step further.

I think one of the things that's happening with the youth socially is that they are missing that brotherhood.

So, I mean, I have girls, and it's a little different, but I know for boys, for young men, you know, they.

I did a.

I've always had a real, like, affinity towards native american culture where we live.

There's.

I've been fortunate to actually attend some sweat lodge with some of the local natives and whatnot.

And there's no the vision quest of young men in society.

And this happened in all cultures.

We don't have those.

We don't have those anymore.

For young.

For young men, not only have those been taken out, is that now, if you are a young man and you show any signs of aggression, which is different than violence, it's immediately put down through the schools, through social media, this kind of.

This toxic masculinity.

So there's a search for this that's missing.

And with social media and whatnot, it's like we're actually driving wedges through that.

You know, that play.

Now kids, you know, they're playing.

They're playing online together instead of, you know, in person and, you know, working those things out.

You know, you're at the baseball diamond and someone slides into you and, you know, roughs you up a little bit.

There's something important about how you.

How you handle those things.

And we're missing a lot of that.

And for.

For young.

For young girls, I think it's a little bit different, but still.

It's still a little bit of a problem.

You know, there's a physiological thing that happens with, with females, you know, when they start menstruating, that's kind of the coming of age.

Right?

That's.

That's a piece, but with boys, they don't have that piece.

That's why I'm a huge proponent of martial arts, especially for boys.

After about a ten year hiatus of me not making time for it, I just recently started getting back into jiu jitsu and Thai boxing and that community and culture is amazing, and I really missed it.

And for kids, I think it's really wonderful, especially for Boysenhe, you know, wrestling and some of those physical sports, they're so important, you know?

Boy, that's how they learn.

You know, when I was.

When I was little, my dad was a teacher, and I was obsessed with playing war and toy guns.

And, I mean, I would, I didn't have any younger brothers or sisters, and if I didn't have any friends, I mean, I would literally, like, I would hide, like, a toy gun in the garage and I'd go in the back for hours, I mean, and play.

And I remember, and, you know, finally they just, they let in.

But I remember when I was in my twenties, I read this study and I sent it to my dad.

It was about how, like, if you gave, they put kids, boys and girls, in rooms and they gave me sticks, and the boys made weapons and the girls like, made like, tools and stuff like that to make dinner.

And I remember sending it to him.

Look, I'm okay.

I'm okay.

I turned on.

He's kind of like, laughing.

He's like, I guess you're right.

I.

You know, that correlation, it's hardwired into us to do certain things, and when we take that away, we're changing the fabric of our DNA.

It's crazy.

So you being into so many different things, is there an avenue you'd like to head more into, or do you kind of enjoy being like, the doing stuff online, being a proponent of holistic health, doing stuff in person?

To me, it sounds like you're doing a lot.

And I respect, I have a huge respect for people that are doing a lot and let themselves do a lot.

Yeah, I mean, I love it all.

Like, I.

When I, when I pull in to, you know, one of the facilities to go work with a team, I'm excited about it.

You know, if I have a, you know, I have a call.

I have a call after this to actually, for a veteran that reached out to me this past week about doing some of the enlifted work.

I mean, I'm like, so excited to talk to him.

I love podcasting, so I like all the channels.

And I think for me personally, having different types of stimulus and that makes me tick, you know, doing hands on work, you know, teaching a workshop, doing things like this, it all, it all makes me happy.

That's crazy.

So you go into the actual, like, the bandits and the bills facilities and just like, do you show up?

Do you have your own kind of schedule or do they call?

We usually have, you know, there's a sports medicine team there, so we're just kind of arms of these teams.

So we have schedules and, you know, which guys want to be seen.

And I.

You know, then typically, if the.

If the day runs out, because the professional athletes do, they're on a very, very, like, tight scale.

Their days are literally.

They have screens everywhere telling them where they need to be, what time.

So if time runs out, then, you know, you'll circle up and, you know, work with some of these guys either at their houses or they'll come to.

You know, they'll come here to the facility.

One.

That's my little place, and we can do some work.

So, yeah, it just kind of depends on the.

On the mode and what part of the season and they're into makes a big difference.

And so are these guys deciding to acquire your services or is this.

Or is it done through the actual team itself?

Cause, I mean, we're talking about post rehab still, like, guys who've been injured but have not.

Not in physical therapy anymore, trying to.

Learn how to move.

Right.

Usually it's like that team approach, you know, they might recommend, hey, I want you to go see so and so, you know, our acupuncturist or our chiropractor, and then, you know, we'll chat and they'll say, like, you know, maybe it would be good if you saw Matt or you saw, you know, one of the other practitioners.

So it is a very team setting, and it's, you know, you definitely have to put your ego at the door and you have to be.

You can't be the only person you have to really look at.

Like, this is a.

This is really a team approach of helping these.

These guys and girls get.

Get better, whether, you know, whether or what that is.

So that's.

That's a cool part, but you do have to be a team player.

That's.

That's for sure.

If not, you'll find yourself out the door fast.

Yeah, that's crazy.

So you're just constantly working with these dudes and you've been doing this for how many years now?

15 years.

15 years.

So it's.

Yeah, it's been pretty cool.

Football, lacrosse, baseball, hockey.

I actually been working with a paralympic athlete who's in Paris right now who's going to be running this weekend for the Paris Olympics, which is really cool.

So, yeah, I've had lots of cool, different athletes I've worked with, and then also a lot of.

I work with some, like, law enforcement to, like, border patrol, their tactical units, some of the state police, some of their, like, higher end, you know, like kind of like SWAT special ops guys, which is cool.

Very similar, same drive.

They're beat up, you know, and helping them out in different capacities.

What I do is great, too.

That's awesome.

And so have you come up against any of these athletes who.

Okay, I already know the answer to this question.

I know that you've had to have come up against athletes who are resistant to whether it's the story work or whether it's an ice bath or infrared light, red light.

Like, how might you kind of address some of these.

These hesitations towards these modalities?

You know what?

It's all.

I feel like it's how you approach it.

And one of the things I think that sometimes it's not hesitancy, it's you can get overwhelmed really fast.

So there's so much out there now, too.

And not only, like, in the community, but within these facilities.

I mean, they have cryo chambers and light beds and all this crazy stuff.

Sometimes it's more of, like, overwhelming.

Like, what do I do?

So, you know, they have amazing staff, too, that, like, help guide people in the right direction.

But, you know, my thing is always like, you know, what do you need right now?

Do you need recovery?

You know, do you need kind of figure, let's figure out what you need right now, and then help them and say, hey, you know, I think you should.

It'd be great if you did some, you know, acupuncture and then maybe checked in and did some, you know, cold and hot therapy.

Most of the things, too are.

Are great because it's hard to err on them.

You know, if you did a cold plunge before you did the sauna, like, it's going to be okay.

I think, like, not getting paralyzed by all of the stuff is a factor.

And just teaching, like, all these things are good.

It's just trying to figure out what fits into your schedule and what you can do.

And there's some people.

There's some people that love being in heat.

There's some people that hate being in the cold.

So it's like, how can you leverage all these different modalities?

And some athletes are very sensitive about what they want and what they don't want.

Some will never get adjusted by the chiropractor before the game, only after.

And there's some players that have to get adjusted, you know, or there's some players that will want this type of body work or stretching before a game and not after.

So it's really an individual factor.

I mean, there's a lot of superstition in professional sports, too.

You know, a lot of the guys, they eat the same thing.

Even if the, even if they know they're not supposed to, it's like, they're going to eat this, they're going to eat that.

Um, you know, I worked with an athlete that he would only eat, like, green, sour patch kids.

Sour patch kids are apparently, like a big, like, pregame thing.

They're quick sugar anyway, but only eat green ones.

So there's a lot of, there's a lot of, like, funny superstitions or, you know, they only want the, they only want the orange Gatorade or this.

So a lot of the time is just, you know, is not taking it too seriously.

Just, you know, giving some knowledge, pointing them in the right direction.

That's, that's the best thing you can do.

And how do you approach the story work if someone's not knowing that you do story work, if someone's coming to you for the physical work, how might you wedge in some of that?

Like, hey, I do story work.

Yeah.

So that's been a, that's been something I worked through.

So, like, at my, I in my studio here, like, I have, I have a few things up on the wall.

Like, there's what we call, like, the soft talk words.

So I have a plaque that has these words, like, probably, maybe, I guess these words.

So I have it right there.

So a lot of times people will be like, oh, what's that?

And I'll say, well, you know, those are what we call soft talk.

And soft talk is when, you know, we're using these words and it creates some hesitancy.

You know, if I said, hey, Todd, I'm going to be in town in December, you know, do you want to go out to dinner?

And you said, yeah, probably I could, I could.

Let me, let me look at that.

My schedule, maybe that could work.

So even though you don't know that, you're kind of being wishy washy, like, my brain is registering that it's like, oh, maybe Todd doesn't want to hang out with me.

And you might even, that might not even be your intention.

So it starts with just those little words, you know, that, that injury to healing piece is something I use a lot when people walk in because that's pretty easy because most of the people I see have some type of injury.

So I say, you know, listen, you're not injured anymore.

You're healing.

So there's a few little things I've been trying to connect people with on that.

A lot of times I'll send, you know, if we're talking and the person's open, I'll send them a few podcasts that give a little, give a little, like, startup of what the enlifted method is and what the story work is.

And I'll say, hey, here's a 15 minutes podcast.

Listen to this, see if it resonates with you.

Doing workshops.

So I try to go out and do a few workshops at local, like crossfits and things like that.

And we do what we call language games, little, little games to talk about how language affects you and how changes, you know, and some people are, some people don't want anything to do with it, which is totally fine.

But you can usually tell when someone's inquisitive a little bit and they want to, they want to hear a little bit more.

That's crazy.

And so that's another thing that you have busted through imposter syndrome to be doing workshops now as well through story work.

Yeah, I was starting that up.

I mean, I can imagine.

Okay, I'm here.

We're ready.

Now I'm doing my first workshop.

Like, how'd that feel?

Yeah, I did that last fall.

I hosted a workshop and I got in front of everybody.

We did some of these language games and some of the work.

And, yeah, I mean, it was amazing.

One of the big things is you just have to do it right.

You just have to do it, do the thing.

You can get paralyzed by, like I said, almost collecting all of these certifications, and it's like, I need another certification and I need this and I need that.

A lot of times you just need some clarity and you just need to do the thing and start there.

So I was guilty of that as well, just collecting all of this knowledge and information and then just trying to regurgitate it.

And I learned that's not the way to do it, at least for me.

Yeah, that's what I've been learning through doing this podcast.

Honestly, I was going straight into my master's degree, planning on going straight into my PhD in six months from now or so, six to eight months.

And I'm like, oh, man, what am I, am I doing that?

Am I in that cycle of just acquiring a bunch of knowledge and not actually getting out there in the world?

And so this has been really good for me to have these conversations and then have that reiterated through different people, you know, but also, this is kind of getting out in the world through being able to talk about these things out in public, which is nice, you know?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, podcasting to me is, it's, you know, I think I stole this quote from somebody, but it's kind of the last, like socratic piece that we have in culture where it's this unedited conversation, typically, you know, unless you're like an ABC News and you have sponsored.

But, you know, like Rogan and stuff.

I mean, he's 3 hours.

It's a just talk.

And sometimes it goes over here, sometimes it goes over there, but it's true conversation and it's back and forth and it's like, oh, hey, maybe I didn't understand that.

We've lost a lot of that, too.

So podcasting in this form is still not been.

It's still under the radar in a way where it's not being edited and censored.

I think that's.

There's so much learning in that, you know, that's how humans.

That's how humans learn, you know, that's how they learned was they got together and, you know, even pre Greek, you know, they would get together and talk and they would sit by the fire, you know, they would native american tradition, you know, they would have sweat lodge and, you know, sometimes they would, you know, they would drink peyote tea and they would come to resolution.

See, that's what's so cool about the power of story work, because not only is it story so powerful in the stories that we're able to tell, and our power as a storyteller, whether it's through marketing, whether through its inspiration, you know, but then also becoming aware of the stories that we're telling ourselves and creating that awareness around that is like, is the entire thing is super awesome.

I love.

I love the story work.

I love telling stories.

I love being involved in this conversation, one to one.

It's amazing.

So I'm curious.

We're going to start to wrap it up here.

I'm curious what sort of advice you would have for people at home that are seeking to improve their holistic health, mind body connection, you know, movement patterns.

You know, you can kind of.

You've got a lot you could touch on.

So advice at home is kind of vague, but we're just going to leave it at that and kind of see what comes out.

Yeah, I always kind of go back to those.

Those principles that I talked about that I learned from Paul.

Check was what are the things that kind of those actionable items this low hanging fruit.

And sometimes when I have clients that come in that, you know, they haven't, they haven't exercised or moved in 40 years, and it's like they're, they're starting basic.

So it's like, how much water are you drinking?

You know, what's the quality of your water?

And, you know, and I've had people say, like, why don't drink water?

I drink diet soda.

And it's like, okay, so we're going to do is you drink eight diet sodas a day and like, this is real.

I'm, you know, this, this actually happens.

I said, we're going to switch out now and you're going to drink four diet sodas and you're going to have four glasses of really high quality water.

So, example, same thing, food.

It's like, just let's start switching your food.

You know, before you talk about diets and things like that, let's just try to switch to more of a whole food diet.

Let's try to cut out like, the processed food.

Baby steps when it comes to movement, too.

I mean, I have to prescribe walking for some people because they don't walk getting out in the sun.

I mean, I'm a very, I'm a big proponent of natural health.

So, you know, getting people to go for a 15 minutes walk, you know, outside or walk around their backyard with no shoes on, low hanging for sleep.

You know, my young athletes, I tell them this and it's like, ten to six is optimal sleeping time for humans.

10:00 p.m.

to 06:00 a.m.

you know, ten to two is physical repair, two to six is psychological repair.

I, so if you have an athlete or a person that's going to bed at midnight, even if they sleep till eight, they're missing pieces of that.

So, you know, if you're used to going to bed at midnight, start trying to go to bed at 1130.

There's just, it's really the low hanging fruit, you know, the, the movement and then the mindset, the thoughts and the words, you know, it's like, let's spend a couple minutes doing some four, seven, eight, breathe.

So I'll have, you know, I'll send them little YouTube videos.

I have a whole bunch of YouTube videos I probably take out.

The soft talk should do myself, but I haven't gotten there yet.

I have like 20 YouTube videos that I'll, I send people with like, alright, this is basic breathing.

This is, you know, your, your stretch for your ankle.

I want you to do it's just that slow process.

And I always tell people, too, like, this is a process that you have to be in for life, especially if it's not like a professional athlete and they have a game on Saturday and, you know, their shoulder is messed up.

Like, for the people that come in, I was like, this is a lifelong piece, so start aligning yourself with things that are good like that.

I have tons of books.

I recommend podcasts and things because I feel like if you create, start creating the environment, it's, you know, it's gonna be better.

Like, turning off the news.

Like when you.

If how many people, like, they eat and they watch the news.

I mean, you're just talking about, you know, getting into a high, sympathetic state while you're trying to digest food.

It's, it's, it's, it's not good.

So just a lot of little things that I've learned and trying to pad their, their day with that without overwhelming, because it's also very easy to get overwhelmed.

It's like, you know, you do a Google search and you're like, oh, great, meditation before bed.

It's like, yeah, like, holy crap.

So I try to be specific and I'll say, like, all right, these are three really good videos.

Start here, you know, so they don't get overwhelmed.

But that's really it.

It's like that low paying fruit, and then all of a sudden it's two weeks, three weeks, a month, a year, and they look back and like, wow, I feel better.

I'm moving better.

I don't have as much pain.

So that, to me, is the factor in the world of professional sports.

Sometimes you have to be.

It's not that easy because you have to get a specific outcome.

So sometimes you're taping things up and you're moving things and you're activating things so they can perform.

Very similar to the military community.

It's almost like you're going to have to deal with the stuff later to be able to go out and do what you need to do now.

Yeah.

So what would you say?

I know that everyone's different.

I know that all the athletes are coming to you with different issues.

What would you say that you find is most common?

That high performers are not doing that surprises you?

Oh, um.

That's a good.

That's a great question, actually.

I think.

I think it's the, the emotional, spiritual work that they're not doing that for whatever reason either.

They don't know what path to go down.

There's some fear of digging into those junk drawers, the physical stuff, usually the guys and girls are on top of it.

They have nutritionists, they're checking all those boxes.

The one thing that is interesting so is like, I'm a big proponent of float therapy.

So flotation tank therapy, and a lot of high performers, executives and athletes, to tell them that they're going to go in this float tank with no phone, no light, no sound for an hour and float, it's almost completely causes, it's just them thinking about that almost causes them anxiety.

So I think turning down the volume of everything and sitting, being with self in the quiet, which in itself can really open up a lot of things, but it's a world of constant inputs, input, so decreasing a few of those inputs to just sit, be quiet, you know, do something like flotation therapy, I think has a huge value and can make massive changes if you can get the people to do that same.

I mean, high executives, too.

I worked a lot of executives, physicians and stuff like that.

That's a big ask.

Yeah.

That was the perfect answer, honestly.

Yeah.

Get the constant stimulus that they're always under.

And a lot of these people make it to the top by being these people that are totally down to work hard, totally down to fill up their schedule with whatever it is that they need to do.

Not necessarily totally down to just sit and be with themselves and do nothing.

Yeah, that's tough.

That's tough.

I mean, Bruce Lee said, doing no thing is important.

Doing nothing.

That's awesome.

That's awesome.

Hello, Bruce Lee.

Okay, so I'm curious then, you mentioned that you have lots of books and stuff that you can recommend.

Books, podcasts and stuff.

This would be the time to do that, I always ask, I guess so if you have some sort of basic stuff around anything that has really changed your lives or athletes lives.

Absolutely.

So my bible that I call it that every person that I run into and I'll say, listen, I see you once, or I'm going to see you.

I've had clients I've worked with for over 15 years.

It's Paul Check's book, how to eat, move, and be healthy.

So that book changed my life, actually.

In Arizona on vacation, about 20, I think it's the 20th anniversary print of that book.

That book is the most thought out but simple way to navigate all of those things.

I talked about, movement, nutrition, sleep recovery.

You know, it's actually a workbook, which is really cool.

So there's some really simple questionnaires you fill out, and then based on your questionnaires it gives you a little roadmap, you know, for $22 on Amazon, I think that is, you know, that, that checks all the boxes.

I have a really?

Yeah, I mean, I have a huge library stuff, but that to me, is like, that, that's, that's amazing.

That's, that's a baseline, you know, podcasts and stuff.

I'll sometimes, I'll recommend certain episodes of podcasts, like, depending on what the person wants.

So that's kind of a big conversation in it, in and of itself.

But it's finding those, you know, finding those likes in those things that you're interested in and kind of, you know, going from there, you know, like the Huberman podcast and stuff gets into a human performance, you know, Peter Attia, there's so many, there's so many great, there's so many great things out there.

So.

But I've realized, too, I'm very careful about getting leading people down the rabbit hole because I love rabbit holes and I go down rabbit holes, but I have to be careful not to carry people with me because they'll be like, whoa, what is this?

You know, I'm going deep here.

So, you know, I'll recommend certain podcasts and stuff kind of based on the individual, and say, all right, this is a great, this is a great podcast.

This is a great book.

But the Paul check one is definitely, I mean, every person, literally athlete, non athlete executive could benefit from that.

That was a life changing book for me.

That's awesome.

Just, does he talk about any of the, like, the cranial sacral stuff?

Because obviously that caught my attention.

I'm curious about some of that stuff.

I know he's a big proponent of that.

Like, in some of his, his courses in the work he does.

He does a lot of hands on work, I don't know, in how to eat, move, and be healthy.

He's really trying to focus on things you can do at home.

So he teaches, like, these zone exercises, which he calls them zone, but they're actually chakra exercises, right?

So Paul's worked with some of the highest end athletes in the world, and sometimes when you say things like chakras, people are like, what?

Chakra?

So he renamed them zone exercises.

Right.

Cool.

Nice.

It's like, so qigong breathing.

So the book is really set up for, like, take it and start working something like cranial sacral therapy or some of the other work.

You have to have an external source to do that.

But I know he's a huge fan of that, and I'm sure practices it himself as well, personally.

That's awesome.

Yeah, I'm definitely gonna have to get that book.

I'm a huge fan of Paul shakes, and I watched a lot of his videos.

I take in things very well through audio format or video format, but I'm.

There's a roadmap in this book that sounds pretty awesome, honestly.

I'll have to check it out, so.

Thank you.

Yeah, like I said, it's really.

It's.

It's dumbed down.

I hate to say the word dumb, but it is as basic as you can get for that reason, to be able to touch a lot of people, a lot of things.

So.

Yeah.

So, shameless plug for Paul's book.

I probably.

I mean, I recommended that book.

No lie.

Probably a thousand times.

No, it's honestly perfect.

Yeah, I don't.

I don't think there's enough people in the world who know who Paul check is, so, honestly, I'm glad that we've been able to tag him.

Agree.

Okay, so now, final thing.

Where can they find you if they are curious about working with you?

Tag your socials, my website, whatever.

Whatever you got.

Whatever you want to share, probably.

The thing I use most is Instagram, so I usually.

I'm on there a couple times a day.

I don't post a lot of stuff, but I do.

I get plenty of people that message me through Instagram, so it's Matt Meyer, 911.

That's where I do all my work through, so feel free to send me a message.

I'm kind of revamping my website right now, and then I'm going to be relaunching my podcast, uh, this fall, also, uh, which would be pretty cool.

So I'll have that all linked in once I figure out how to do that or hire somebody to.

Yeah.

Heck, yeah.

Yeah.

And I'll put as much of that as I can on the screen for you to make it simple.

Yeah.

Awesome.

All right, brother.

Yeah.

Hey, thank.

Thank you for being on the show, man.

It was.

It was a great conversation, and I know that we could go even deeper on any of these topics, but I love the overall place that we were able to go with that.

Good.

Thank you.

Yeah.

It's been a pleasure talking with you and, you know, talking about the biz and sharing my own story.

And, you know, when I do my.

When I do my podcasts, I always say, like, if one person listens to it and can make an actionable change, it's like, it's worth all the work.

I think.

I think we're gonna rabbit hole some people, honestly.

But to me that's perfect.

We've introduced this, some awesome things and some actionable stuff as well.

Hopefully someone will pick up Paul check's book and get to work.

Thanks again.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you everybody for watching.

And you take care.

Thank you.