Transforming Trauma: Art Therapy, Identity, and Healing With Kelsi Sheren
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I would sit there at the table and I wouldn't get up till around, you know, five o'clock that night. But it's not about the fact that I was distracted. It's the fact that I didn't think of suicide that day. It's the fact that I didn't want to kill myself that day. It's the fact that I was able to create something that was so much more than just another piece of fast fashion jewelry.

And now, Escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm Jon Gafford, and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. And back again for another episode of Escaping the Drift, the show that, like I said, man, gets you from where you are to where you want to be.

And today we're going to take an interesting trip from where you might, where you are to where you might want to be. We have an exceptional guest today. She is an Afghanistan vet that turned that experience into just so much more. I mean, just really has taken the experience there into turning it into becoming a high level entrepreneur, building a business,

from her experience there has now parlayed that into 10X speaking, has parlayed that into appearances on Good Morning America, being a high powered coach, being super knowledgeable in the area of using psychedelics to improve your life, for using breath work to tap into things. I mean, this is going to be super interesting today because this is hopefully we're going to get to the bottom of a lot of things you can start doing right now today to

to improve your life. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, so happy to have her today. This is Kelsey Sharon. Kelsey, how are you? I'm wonderful, man. Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to have you today. Even when we were talking about this, when we got on earlier, um,

just some of the stuff that you're into man is stuff that is just so incredibly interesting and i really do believe is so helpful so obviously you were in the military and in like you know i think we said earlier we talked about it before we came on everybody's heard that story you can find that story google google kelsey sharon afghanistan you can hear that whole story we want to get to some other newer stuff that's a little better but

Talk first about your life as an entrepreneur. When you first started out making those steps into building a business from scratch, because that's essentially what you did, correct? Absolutely. I had no damn clue what I was doing.

So that's always fun. How did you get started? What did you do? Yeah. So I started on the kitchen table as a form of art therapy through post-traumatic stress, uh, trauma. And one of the suggestions from the psychotherapist that I was working with and I've still worked with to this day was we need to get your hands busy so that we can distract your mind from the constant feedback loop of what it means to be in a stressful situation. When you give your, uh,

brain an opportunity to change the conversation, to create new neural pathways. You do that by interrupting the feedback loop and starting something different. So for us, we decided to start with art therapy, which at the time seemed absolutely ridiculous. I mean, I have never been the type to sit down and draw or color or paint. But what people don't realize about art therapy is that can encompass a

whole multitude of different options, whether that's woodworking, jewelry building, whether that's working with stained glass, whether that's working with your hands and art, it's art therapy is one of the greatest ways and underutilized tools to heal because so many people have an ego around, I'm doing art therapy, but it is really, really, really beneficial ultimately. And so I started with art therapy on the kitchen table.

I got a pipe cutter from Home Depot, which is like one of your lows. And I got some drills and hammer and a bunch of old spend casings from friends of mine that were still serving in the military. And I started building jewelry on the kitchen table in 2015. And it was the very first day that I had built this bracelet called the warrior bracelet. It's a beaded bracelet with a 762 or a 556 round cut down. And you know, I went through the process of like hammering out the firing

and learning how to do that properly, breaking all the bits, smashing up a kitchen table and putting this thing on this string of elastic and beads. And I called it the warrior bracelet. And what I realized when I was doing that was it was less about the bracelet and more about what it was allowing my mind to do

I would sit there at the table and I wouldn't get up till around, you know, five o'clock that night. But it's not about the fact that I was distracted. It's the fact that I didn't think of suicide that day. It's the fact that I didn't want to kill myself that day. It's the fact that I was able to create something that was so much more than just another piece of fast fashion jewelry. It gave me a purpose. It gave me a place to put my energy and it gave me a tool to start helping and be the vehicle to

put the money in the hands of these organizations that I wanted to support.

Now, it's interesting you just said that it gave you purpose because I think that that one component is probably, I always say it's probably the biggest key to happiness, which is why I think that like old people, right? Like when they retire, these great coaches and like you look at these amazing coaches and then within two or three years of retiring and even if they coach in like their 70s, 75, they're dead in like two years because they lost purpose. So if

If you're somebody that's out there that isn't, obviously you found your purpose through these bracelets at that time, at that moment. Do you have a process that you go through to make sure as your purpose changes? Because it does throughout your life. Hey, this is Steve Sims and I'm a proud partner of Escape the Drift Podcast with John Gafford. And I've got something for you for Sims Distillery. The community there is based on you.

you, the entrepreneur, giving you the tools to be a better version of you. Visit simsdistillery.com, use the word escape to get a $694 discount off of the community that you need to be part of when you want to demand a better version of you. Thanks a lot. Escape the drift and see you in simsdistillery.com. Well, and I'm really glad you asked that. I think a lot of people

get this understanding that, well, I started this company or I started doing this thing, so I absolutely have to keep doing it because I put all this time and energy into it. And I don't think that's wrong, but I also think that it pigeonholes you and puts you in a place where you can't start thinking about things bigger or what can spin off of these things. Brass and Unity, it's spun off

into a million different things. And it's because I've allowed it to be greater than just a product. I've allowed it to become a community, a movement, a healer, a tool. And I've allowed it to then take me to the next level instead of saying, no, this is what it's supposed to be and it cannot evolve. Humans have to evolve. Purpose needs to be there, especially when you're transitioning out of

Just forget the military. If you're a police officer transitioning out, if you are a professional athlete and you're transitioning from being an athlete into the civilian world, we're not given the tools and told how to do that effectively. So when you pigeonhole yourself or your business or your company or whatever it is that you do and say, no, it has to be like this, you are stifling not only your own creativity, but the human evolution and what it means to create something greater than yourself down the road.

Well, I think one of the mistakes a lot of people make is they become what they do. That becomes their identity. And I think that's a big problem. And I can't imagine being in the armed forces and that not becoming your – like you are a soldier. That is your identity because I think that's a big part of what they do there because I think it's a necessity in that role. Similar to what police officers probably go through. That has to become to a certain extent your identity.

But when you – that stops being your identity, right? When that stops, how do you – like there had to be – obviously, you went to art there because you understand – and yours was an extreme case, obviously. Obviously, I understand the PTSD that you experienced is beyond what most people when they just stop their – when they no longer are the bartender at PT's pub. I get it. It's a much, much different thing. But to a certain extent, if your identity is wrapped up in what you do, when it stops, how do you recognize –

man, I got to make a shift here and I got to find something else. Well, and I did that with Brass and Unity at the start too, right? So I went from the service being, this is who I am and this is what I do to then having no identity, no community, no purpose and no support. And when you transition out of anything in your life, if you do not have a community and you do not have a purpose, you are going to struggle no matter what that is.

So when I switched and I started doing the art therapy and it slowly evolved into a company, I number one, barely graduated high school. I don't know how to run spreadsheets. I don't even know how to, I still don't know how to make a spreadsheet. It's not my area of expertise. I'm not exaggerating. It's ridiculous. But my point in saying that is, is you don't need to know everything.

Everybody thinks that you need to know everything. You don't need to know everything. You can hire out the areas that you do not understand to the people that do. And you need to focus on what you are good at. And what I was good at was creating a product that was helping people and synonymous with the suicide prevention in our community. The problem, though, with that became I went from no identity, no community, and I latched everything onto Brass Inunity. And that's who I became.

And when that again in 2019, you know, when COVID all happened up in Canada, because, you know, we still have people walking around with masks on right now. We still go. Oh, yeah, we still go through it. So when I wrap my identity around that, I lost it again because we were a retail business and everything was gone overnight. And so I then lost myself once again. I struggled again with my mental health. I struggled again with my purpose because I

it was now out of my control. So what I suggest is that you have to take a step back and look at this is what I do. It's not who I am. This is how I show up as a human. And that's where the other sides of what I do now come into place is showing people that you don't have to be the thing you do. It's just the thing you do, but you have to know who you are. And the majority of people around the world walking around

have no clue in their core who they are, their values, what they will die for, what they will live for and what they want in this life. It's so funny. One of my favorite, one of my favorite tricks when I network and it's, and it's to prove the point that you just made is when I walk around in a networking event and you know, everybody's got that 30 second, you know, elevator pitch about their business and blah, blah, blah. And then they walk up to meet me. I always say the same thing. I go, tell me about you. And they start going,

I'm the CEO of so-and-so and we disrupt and we do that. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, stop. No, no, no, no. I didn't say, what do you do? I said, tell me about you. Do you have a wife? Do you have kids? Where are you from? And they're like, and you just see this look of almost sheer terror come over their face. Like, I was not expecting anybody to care about me as a human being.

How do I answer this question? And it's so true because people just get so programmed in that. And it's such, and especially like you just said, man, now granted that was extreme when the government can shut down everybody's stores and that happened to all of us, right? Yeah, of course. Dude, if you got a boss, they...

They can say today's your last day any day you go to work. It's just how the world works. And if you attach yourself, your personal identity to that, you're going to have a problem. Now, changing gears. So you start building these bracelets. How did you... Okay, so number one, it's a purpose-driven business, which I love. I love businesses attached to a cause that help things. Our businesses here are all purpose-driven businesses. They all have a charity component built into what we do. And so I love that.

How did you know that you were going from like –

I went from therapy to maybe somebody wants to buy this. And how did you find out if they want to buy it? So weird. So weird. The strangest thing ever. This again, I'm not an entrepreneur. I was supposed to be a career artillery gunner. Like, what are we talking about? So, you know, fortunately I had, uh, uh, my father-in-law used to own, um, a very prominent company called the Canadian arm of mechanics wear gloves. He understood how to grow a business. My fault. My husband was a professional super cross racer and he started Atlas and matrix concepts.

um so I understood that if I wanted to do it the tools are there and what happened was the market research like you said I didn't get on Instagram and I didn't get on Facebook I was like tell me what do you think about my jewelry I would go to friends with a plastic bag full of beaded bracelets and be like what do you think of these and they would be like um those are different yeah they'd be like what do you I'm like so what do you think tell me where

what we do like the colors do you like the design is there something you would like to see different and it always came back to this one bracelet out of everything i did it came back to this one bracelet and they were like this thing's cool what does it stand for and i was like ah here we go and what i realized is i didn't want to do another non-profit america has 46 000 active veteran non-profits do you know how many actually make change in the world oh god very few if any yeah

I know there are, trust me, there's a substantial amount that do, but out of the 46,000, it's not as many as we could have because we compartmentalize ourselves and we wanna be the guy to fix it. When really, if we just had,

put everyone together and connected everyone, the superpower that would be that. But the reason I say it is because when I started selling these products, the whole purpose was to be the vehicle that put the money in the hands of those organizations. I don't want to be a nonprofit. I don't want to ask people for money. I want to do an exchange of something that's going to benefit your life.

for what I'm able to create. And then we're going to take those funds, those 20%, and we're going to give it to those organizations that I've seen their books. I know what they do and I know how they affect change genuinely. So it went from take a look at my baggie of weird things to I'm going to go knock on doors. And I started cold calling retailers. I started knocking on retailers doors saying, Hey, I have this business. This is what it's going to do. Will you take a look?

And fortunately, almost right off the bat, retailers were like, I would love to chat with you. What's your lead times? I was like, it's a lead time. What's your buying time? So I'm like, there's buying times. They're like, what about your seasons? Do you do just, would you do a seasonal or yours? I'm like, whoa, whoa. They're like, you need to be six months in advance. And I'm like learning on the fly. And what I realized is it didn't matter what I was creating because the story around what I was creating was the thing that was selling it.

It was not the product. It was me and how I was selling. It was the story because you cannot sell anything without a story. You just can't do it anymore. No, I love that. Good friend of the show, Travis Lubinsky. I don't know if you know Trav or not from Flex Watches. Flex Watches, he's a good, I'll connect you. I think you guys would have a lot of synergy. Travis, they called Flex Watches that, you know, it's the same thing. They built a watch company that

that's based all around the individual watches have a cause to them. And so every watch is for something, which is very cool. But I think that you're right. And I think that the biggest mistake people make, right? And I'm going to break down your story a little bit as you went through it. Mm-hmm.

And I've done this. I mean, you know, a lot of people collect trophies of wins. I collect trophies of losses. That's my thing because I think they're better lessons than my trophies. They are. They are. So on my desk, I have $100,000 bottle of vitamins. My desk. And the reason it cost $100,000 was because it wasn't that necessarily at one bottle. It was the warehouse full of vitamins.

that we developed without asking if anybody wanted to buy it first. And so I'm always like, you better make sure before you spend too much money developing a product that somebody actually wants to buy it. So what you did effectively was you created a focus group amongst your peers to say, what's better, what's this, what's good. And then you started to

realized through that process that you could craft this story, but it became more about the community than the product. And I think that is really interesting because that's kind of the first time I've heard that. I've heard communities built around products, like a product comes out and then the community comes there. But I really feel like this was more about the community in kind of that way. Is that accurate or not? 100%. I don't care about products.

I care about people. I care how people feel when they wake up. I care about how they feel when they go to bed and I care about how they are in their family unit. And the way that I was able to access support for those people was just through a product that was

strategically designed around wearing it daily, meaning it's not a T-shirt, it's not a baseball cap, it's not in your face. It's as small as this thing on my wrist that you can barely even see in this camera. But it's the massive impact that the tiniest thing has. Like a lot of people will make jokes with me like what you can't see right now is I have

an entire wall of grenades over here and I have an entire bowl of grenades sitting beside me and I have a huge one tattooed on me because you don't need big things to make huge impact. You don't. And everybody thinks you do. Everybody thinks you need to have all of these massive tools at your disposal and all of these products here and this, we need to come up with the next great thing.

This is the next great thing. Do you see how small it is? It's always the tiny things that if you do it right, have the biggest impact. That's why I'm 100 pounds and five foot and I have a disgustingly level, huge impact because it doesn't need to be big and everybody thinks you need to have these

50 employees, 100 employees, 200 employees to make this change in the world. You don't. I have a paracord rope bracelet with a 38 casing that's been sold over 20,000 times and helps more people not kill themselves because when they reach for their gun, they saw it on the wrist and knew that the person that gave it to them was holding them accountable to a higher standard.

to stay with us. So this idea that you need to have a million employees and all of these things to be a successful company and to have impact is just not true. You just need to be doing the right things for the community. And when you make things from a place of

need and love and support and not looking for the dollar, the dollars will always come. Second you focus on the dollar, they'll never show up. You're doing it for the wrong reason. People don't believe you. They stop believing you. They don't believe in what you're doing at all. It's funny. My friend Pace Morby, I don't know if you know Pace or not. Pace is the sub two guy. It's this thing with real estate. And

He's got a community around him that's based on buying real estate sub two, which is a whatever. But here's the thing. I've never seen anybody pour into their community more than he does. And he has probably changed more lives than anybody that I know as far as it's in the helping coaching space. He gives away more than he sells, whatever. But

At the end of the day, it's because of his genuine love for those people that makes him successful. And I think that's something that a lot of people, I mean, being an entrepreneur has become the cool hit thing to say, right? Like 20 years ago, if you were at a party and you're like, what do you do? I'm an entrepreneur. People are like, that dude doesn't have a job. Like that.

Now it's like I'm going to score a black hoodie, some Jordans and go to an event where, you know, yeah, bro, we're disrupting. You know, it's what we do. We're disruptors. No, you're not. No, you're not. But my point is, I think there's way too many people in our space right now that do care way more about the money than they care about building community without realizing that if they invest in the community, the dollars will follow. Dollars follow. Dollars follow care.

And you know what? That's the thing. So I did a podcast a few years ago on Jocko. And the thing that we got from that was,

was nothing but a community. You know, people reached out and said, how do we, how do we like hang out? How do we talk? How do we get access to either your knowledge or the people you're around? Because you are the sum of the people. People say that all the time, but it couldn't be the more truer statement. You're the sum of the sounds, the people, the food, your environment matters so much. And so we just, we, we started a group, um,

We just started a group and I've had it for two years and people come and we do coaching calls every month. And when I say that we have a community, I mean like children have gone missing. People have been murdered. Wives have died from cancer. People have gotten healthy. People have changed their entire existence because there are other people around the world that were able to sit down with them and go, I see you. I got you. You are not fucking alone in any of this. Sorry. I can't hear something. Okay.

Only kids listen to this are probably mine at some point, so you're fine. Perfect. But it's so important what you focus on, where you focus your energy goes, and it matters. So if you are thinking, this is my bottom line, this is the dollar, then it's never going to get there. You need to focus on the people. And I know that may be bad business practice. Again, I am the most traditional old school entrepreneur where I –

dollars don't matter. I've never paid myself ever from anything. And it's because it's not about me. It's about how do we get others to see that they're not alone. Number one, number two, that they have the skillset. And if they don't have the skillset, we'll give it to them. And number three, to show people that you can change and you can evolve and you can grow and that you don't have to stay in what you were told, or you did a six year degree around if your heart's not in it, if it,

isn't coming from your chest and it's only coming from up here, it's always going to direct you in the wrong direction. Always. Oh, I couldn't I could not agree more. And it's funny because as you're saying, I'm thinking behind me says money right here. You can see.

But what you can't see, because I have a giant Fred Flintstone head, is the first thing it says is life. Life. Life and then money and then success. So in that order, we'll go with that. So yes, I couldn't agree with that more. Sorry, my giant head is blocking. I'm going to even argue. Okay. Okay. So I believe it's life, success, and money, and I'll tell you why. It's money. Okay. And the reason I say that is because you do not need money to be successful.

You need, you don't, you need to be a healthy, loving person who pours into their communities. And when you help you heal, and when you heal, you become successful in what you're doing. You become a successful human. And when you become a successful human, that opens the doors to you creating and making opportunity for money. - You know what? I stand corrected. The person that made this graphic behind me is fired as, no, I'm just kidding. The graphic is fine. I probably did.

To your point, one of my favorite things I ever heard, there's a kid named Caleb Maddox. I saw him many years ago on the stage at my buddy Cole Hatter's event, Thrive, which is a make money matter purpose-driven business event. This kid was like 13. They did one of them as the youngest motivational speaker. He was actually pretty good, right?

And he said that when him and his dad were super broke and just at the end of their rope and everything was going wrong, his dad would look at him and say, time to go give. Even if they had $3 left in their account, it was time to go give. Because by blessing others, it would come back to them in spades. And that's what they always did. And I've always, from the mouth of a 13-year-old kid on stage, I mean, I can't remember anything else that was said at that whole event except for that. So go with it. But you've got to do that. So-

So let's fast forward just a little bit because I want to make sure we get everything, man. We're blazing here and I want to make sure we get to everything. So I love the concept because it is in vogue right now. There's a lot of it out there, blah, blah, blah, coming on. And now you are super at the forefront of this, which is using psychedelics to cure trauma, cure past stuff. I don't want to put words in your mouth at all when it comes to this. You are the expert. So talk to me about

what you're doing with psychedelics. Yes. So psychedelics fell into my lap, just like everything else seems to. I was highly suicidal and still struggling from post deployment issues and some things along those lines and undiagnosed traumatic brain injury that were continually just plaguing me with issues. I was at a point where I'd started the Brass and Unity podcast in 2020. And I had a guest on the show named Matthew Griffin, and he runs this company called Combat Flip Flops. And so

He was a former army ranger and he was on the show. And it's the first time I was having a conversation with a special operator and his company was fantastic to me because they were doing the charitable side of things. And we were chatting and at the end of the conversation, he kind of leaned in and he said, you know, how are you doing?

I'm like, oh yeah, I'm good. Great. Yeah. Great. And then he asked again, but this man has a way of looking through you. And he said, how are you actually doing? And I said, to be honest with you, I'm not great. And I started crying, bawling my eyes out. I said, I'm not great. I don't know why. I don't know how to get better, but I'm doing all the things that's not enough. And he goes, have you ever heard of ayahuasca?

And at the time, I had no clue what that was. And he goes, look, ayahuasca is this tea. It's the chacruna leaf and the ayavine. And when you blend them together and you pray over them, it's called ayahuasca. It's this plant medicine that can really help you heal. And I've seen a lot of success with my friends.

I was then kind of given the opportunity by Heroic Hearts Project in the United States to come and sit and do this medicine with integration. And so integration is preparation on the front end and intention going into the medicine and what you're trying to achieve, then sitting with the medicine and then integration on the back end. And if you're not doing the integration on the front and the back, you're just going on a trip. So it's those are really, really important.

And so ultimately I went and I did. And again, I sat down. I was the only female in the room, which is a normal standard for me. And I was around Rangers and I was around Blackwater operatives and I was around, you know, recon Marines. And in those moments, you realize that it's just as much about the plant medicine as it is about the community that is welcoming you into the medicine. And so I went in, I did medicine. That was the first time I had done it. Uh,

We did three days of ayahuasca and then we came out and we did the integration piece of it. And ayahuasca is, you know, it has DMT. And so it does, it is, ayahuasca is not super fun. Everyone acts as if these plant medicines are these big lovey things, but ayahuasca

can be really hard on you. She is not just a medicine you drink. It is a journey. It is an experience. It is taxing. It is exhausting. In four to eight hours, it's a lot per day. And you are in it and you are doing the work and you are listening and absorbing. And there's a lot of purging and it can be really taxing on the body. So I went and did ayahuasca. And then after that, I

I realized that this was a place I wanted to focus in my life. I wanted others to have access to medicine to heal because I had done the 10 years of pharmaceutical drugs, 11 of them. I have done the psychotherapy, the EMDR, the community. I've done it all. It wasn't enough. And sometimes it's just not enough. So I then moved forward. And then again, later on in the year, I did ayahuasca again. And people will say, why would you keep doing it? Well,

For me, there was an intention and I wasn't working through it quite yet. It took me some time to start peeling back the layers of the damage. And so sometimes people do it once in their life and that is enough. And then sometimes people do it more frequently. And I don't recommend more than once every six months because of the neuroplasticity and giving the neurons the opportunity to genuinely solidify the change in the brain because it is changing your brain.

It is changing your reality. It is like removing the rose colored glasses. The thing that you have to understand is once they're off, you can't put them back on.

So it is, it does change your life and your reality around you. And so after that, I decided I was going to go to school and become a psychedelic integration coach. And I've done that. And now I do pro bono work with Heroic Hearts Project in America. And we prepare veterans to go sit with ayahuasca, psilocybin, ibogaine, 5-MeO, all the different plant modalities.

in the specific sense of what they're trying to achieve. So if somebody is working through addiction and working through issues along those lines, Ibogaine is a great alternative for that. If you're looking for a heart opener and those types of things, ayahuasca, MDMA, psilocybin are great for that. And so

They all have a neuro effect on your neurology. They all have an effect on your brain. They are not as simply as just taking a medicine. They have to have intention and they have to be done in a safe set and setting with somebody who's not a backyard shaman, who's somebody who knows genuinely what they are doing. I know you laugh, but every,

Everyone's a shaman now all of a sudden. I don't know if you know this. I have been the patient of a backyard shaman once or twice in my life. I'm so glad you're still with us. No kidding. Yeah, no kidding. But it's all about

the intention, right? And that's what matters so much. And so when I started doing that, I work with them. I also take on private clients and we send them down to the right facilities to go do this medicine safely and in a protected space. And most of the time, well, almost all the time, it's out of the country because Canada, where I live,

you know, there is movement, meaning I testified at the Senate, uh, Senate hearing for emerging treatments for psychedelics and first responders and veterans. Uh, I spoke on behalf of them and I expressed that we should not be sending our people out of country. We should be able to access that within the country. Then I partnered with apex labs and I did, uh,

the first macro dose of synthetic psilocybin in a clinical setting last year and it was highly successful and now we are looking to they're moving that forward to then start testing and working with veterans which is the most need at the moment macro or micro does macro macro so big guy hero does yeah guns guns a blazing yeah why not fire for a fact so we we went and we did that and it was very successful and i'm a big believer that

The medicine will seek you out. You don't seek it out. And a lot of people will be like, well, let's go do MDMA this weekend. Well, when you fuck around, you're going to find out. And sometimes if you're not doing it right and you're not doing it with intention, it can affect people. Not everybody is a candidate for psychedelics and people need to stop saying that. They're not. If there is mental health issues in the family, whether it's your aunt, your uncle, your mom, your dad that are schizophrenic, bipolar, it's probably not for you. That's just the truth. It's a

about looking at if you're on an SSRI or any medications. People will say, you can do it with an SSRI. Any training I've ever received and anybody I've ever known, we never allow you to sit with plant medicine if you're on an SSRI.

It's just not safe. And so ultimately you have to make a decision. Where are you at in your treatment in your life that you feel you need plant medicine? Now, I will always tell you plant medicine before pharmaceuticals because I've done them both. And I can tell you one just numbs you and holds you in place. The other one actually gives you the opportunity to go inward and heal the trauma that so many of us are sitting with in our life right now. Well, I feel like I need to say this just because I just, somebody might listen to this somewhere and be like,

Oh, I'm depressed. I'll feel better. Let me get some MDMA. Do not buy street drugs, MDMA. Dude, you are, that fentanyl shit is. Don't. I am actually amazed. I'm amazed at something. We just had EDC here, which is the electric daisy carnival in Vegas. And it's 500,000 ravers come rolling into Vegas. The fact that we had not one death at that thing is amazing.

Shocking to me. Like I thought I was going to wake up, read the paper and like bad drugs laced with fentanyl are going to be running through this thing and people are going to be dropping like flies. Do not go out and buy the street drugs because they will kill you. Well, and if it's depression, look at psilocybin.

Look at mushrooms. Look at a micro dosing regimen. They can't kill you. No, and they're non-addictive. But what they can do though, if they're sourced improperly, they can have molds that can internally affect your body. They can be inconsistent on the dosage and they can have other additives and fillers. So I always recommend going to

the people that you know that either grow it, that test it, that know how. If you don't know where your supply is coming from, you should not be using it. And if you're looking to genuinely change your life and work on the antidepressant properties that come from things like psilocybin, there's a microdosing regimen and it's not every day and it's not for seven days a week and it's not for the rest of your life. You have to give your body time to integrate what you are using over a

period of time. And that's kind of where I work with private clients who want to do microusing regimens, but don't understand where to get it, how to use it and the dosage, and then also how to integrate.

Well, I think one of the good things about the microdosing thing with psilocybin is now that Washington State is pushing here in the States to make that legal, I think if they may have already done it. I know a lot of guys in the green space here. We call it the green space and I guess the cannabis space that have now branched off into that in anticipation of that being legalized. And I can tell you just from these things, like –

Some of them are incredibly like manufactured where they're like, you absolutely believe that it's the same dosage in every single like gummy or whatever. And then some of them are like that, that bowl of like Thai chili stuff they have at like the Thai restaurant where like maybe your friend gets a five and you order a five too, but you get the one death seed in the whole batch that lights you up for a week. Like,

Like the consistency of this stuff still seems to have a long way to go. Yes. I mean, yes and no. Right. So I work with a company in Canada called mindful meds and they're the most hyper consistent product I've ever used. And I've used them for over two years. So you can do it, but you have to be a professional at this and you need to know what you're doing. And I think there is a method to the matter. Are they legally manufacturing that in Canada?

Gray area, my friend. Gray area manufacturing. It's lion's mane. It's good for you. Put it in your coffee. Well, we have lion's mane too. That's on its own. We have non-psychoactive and we have psychoactive, but we also have multiple. And when I say multiple, I mean like over a thousand active federal police that are using it. So, you know...

We're kind of tired of everyone telling us that in Canada, at least, that we can't heal our own bodies, that we can no longer get access. We don't have health care, man. We have death care. So we are going to do whatever it takes. All of our veterans are. All of our first responders are. We're done waiting for permission from Trudeau. We're going to step up and do whatever it takes. And if you don't like it, that's too damn bad. You don't have enough prisons to hold us all. So good luck. Man, if you didn't live in Canada, I'd be screaming America right now. Oh, sorry.

We are this close to moving to America, my friend. That close. Well, I mean, look at yesterday. I don't know how much of America there's going on right now. I think the difference between America and what you guys have going on right now is nowhere close to the statistical anomalies happening in Canada around censorship, assisted suicide, and the act of killing of its citizens. So you guys are doing okay. Jester Trudeau, he's an absolute nightmare. There's no question for that. No.

That's lunacy what's going on. I'm going to give you one stat to prove my point. Just one. Go ahead. It takes one. This is how ridiculous this is. Okay, ready? In 2016, Canada legalized medical assistance in dying. So did California. California has the same population as the entire country of Canada. Okay?

In that timeframe, California has only mated, meaning assisted suicide, 893 people. How many do you think Canada has? I'm going to assume it's ridiculously high. Give me a number. Come on, play with me here. 12,652. Over 50,000.

Oh, smokes. Canada is a predatory behavior. They're trying to include children down to the age of 12, mentally ill, homeless, and addicts instead of giving them palliative care. Wow. Dude, that is...

Wow. And here I am thinking it's all Tim Horton syrup and hockey happiness. Man, that's terrible. We've got Bill C-11 where no one can speak out. We have a government-run news agency, which is admittedly so. And then we also have the new hate bill, Bill 63, where people like me will be put in prison for life for not calling somebody by their pronoun. In Canada? Yeah.

You notice how you don't hear about it? It's designed that way. I'm telling you, as somebody who lives here, I mean, look, I feel like I'm a fairly educated guy, but you know, we kind of look at Canada as like, you know, just another big state. Yeah. There's a, there's a border there, but it's pretty much the same thing as what we kind of figure your hockey teams come here, our teams go there.

You know, there's some similarities here. And apparently there's really not. That's terrifying. Yeah, you don't hear about it, right? Unless people like Jordan or myself or a few others come down to America and start talking about it. You guys don't really have a clue because it's designed by Bill C-11 so that you don't because your hat's on fire right now. And your hat's also been sold to the CCP. You got to remember something right here, my friend. We're just right on top of you. I live on the border of America. I can see America from where I live.

Yeah. Wow. That is, well, so if you're listening to this and you're now super depressed as I am, man, I'm feeling a little heavy right now. You know, this is what we call in the podcast biz, at least I do, a segue. You ready? Here it comes. Here it comes. I'm feeling a little heavy right now, like a little stressed out. You know what? What could make me lift my spirits right now? What could help me?

Really easy. Go move your body. Stop eating shitty food. Turn off the news and be around healthy people. I was trying to get some breath work. Do healthy things. No, let's do that too. So most people don't even know what breath work is. You're breathing. You and I are breathing right now, but you're not consciously breathing, right? You're just inhaling and exhaling, inhaling and exhaling.

But breathwork is different. Breathwork gets you out of your mind and into your body. Breathwork can regulate your nervous system. Breathwork is the hidden tool we all have in our toolbox, but have just been told that we need pills to handle instead. And so people will give things like Xanax to calm down or any of the other cocktails you want to give people when really all it takes is for you to sit down.

and learn how to breathe properly. And your nervous system will go out of the sympathetic and into the parasympathetic, and it will kick into rest and digest, and you will be able to handle your life. But people want to get pills for that, and you don't need to. Breathwork's easy. You have access to it. It's not hard. Okay. Walk me through. Let's say I'm stressed out. Give me a breathwork exercise that we can do here live that's going to... I'm not. I'm not stressed out at all, actually.

- It's a little upsetting, but this is a good conversation. - Absolutely. Okay, so I always do, there's a good reset that takes about three minutes to do. And essentially you can do that at any point. I do it in the mornings to kind of get me going. And for the first 30 breaths, you just want to sit up tall. You want to give your spine nice straight so your lungs can inhale. And you're just going to breathe in your mouth and out your mouth. And it's just going to look like this.

You're gonna do that for 30 breaths. And when you hit the 30 breaths, you're gonna do a breath hold. And you're gonna go deep breath in, deep breath out, deep breath in, and you're gonna hold.

And then after that, you want to do a full three minutes with me here? Okay. Yeah, we'll do three minutes because you can do this in the car too. If you're wherever you're listening to this, let's all do this together. It'll be a group exercise of goodness. Are we good? Ready? So do you want just a rest and relaxation breath or do you want to get ready for the day reset? I'm ready for the day. I need to rock. Okay. I got to go.

I'll opt out for this with some dudes that can really play and I'm terrible right now. So I need to be funny because like, if I'm not funny and entertaining, they'll realize I'm a shitty golfer and then they won't play with me anymore. Well, it's not that you're a shitty golfer. It just, your mindset, you're already starting off with a shitty mindset. So how do you expect yourself to play?

No, no, no, no. I haven't played golf in three years and this will be my third round in three years. So I'll get it back. I'm getting there, but I'm already, I'm a realist. Stop. Don't be so silly. You're fine. So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to lead you through. Normally it's with music. It's not now. Don't be weird about it. So all this is going to be a breath. I'm going to tell you to do a breath hold. And after that breath hold, when you feel ready, I want you to release. And then you're going to switch to nasal breathing. And it's going to look like this. Three in and then out.

I'm not going to do it into the mic. It's just weird. Yeah, don't do that. 30 seconds of the first, we're doing this one first? We're going to do inhale like this. I'm going to count it out and then I'm going to tell you to go into a breath hold and then I'm going to count out the bottom end and then at the end, we're going to do one more breath hold and you're going to be done. Okay, ready? Let's start with the mouth breath. Ready? Let's go. Deep breath. Keep going. Stay with it.

You might get a little head light headed. Stay keep going. There you go. Keep going. Five more. Okay, deep breath in, deep breath out, deep breath in. You're gonna hold there and just stay there. Keep that breath in. Think about what you want to hold on to today. What are you making room for? Stay with it. And when you feel ready,

You're going to release through your mouth on your own time. And from there, you're going to inhale through your nose and exhale out your mouth for the next pattern. And we're going to stay here. What are you inviting in today with every inhale? What are you letting go of with every exhale? Taking the tongue off the roof of our mouth, blowing our shoulders from our ears every exhale. There you go. Opening up our hearts, exhaling our stress.

A few more here. Inhaling that love for ourself and releasing the weight that is no longer ours to carry. Getting ready for our next breath holder, taking a deep breath in, deep breath out, deep breath in. And now on the bottom of this exhale, deep breath out. We're gonna hold empty right there and stay there. Being mindful of the tension on our face, keeping our tongue off the roof of our mouth.

And when you feel ready, I want you to take the deepest, the most fresh, the most fulfilling, the most oxygenated breath you have and the positivity that goes with that into this golf game. I'm releasing it all. I gotta tell you, I hope to God nobody was driving during that first part because if so, man, you probably, I did. I almost like, yeah, I mean, man, yeah, you feel super lightheaded at that first part.

Yeah, because what's happening is your oxygen is changing in your blood, right? The CO2 difference is changing. So you get this thing that can cause tetany, which is cramping, but it's okay. If you, you know, the thing that people need to realize is that your, you know, your frontal lobe is your governor, but your breath, you are the gas pedal. You can go as hard as you want or as easy. You're a hundred percent in control. You just have to give yourself permission and focus to do it.

That's so funny because one of the things that I do in my training regimen is I do EWOT training, which is I have an oxygen machine in my house, fills up a big bag, you get on the bike for 10 minutes and you breathe. It's like 97% oxygen to super oxygen. And honestly,

After that, I feel about the same as my really expensive oxygen setup. And I'm less expensive and better looking, so it's fine. Look at that. You got that was for free and my oxygen setup was crazy. Yeah, that was wild, man. So you have different breath works for whatever anybody wants. If you want to go up, you want to come down, you got to chill out, you got to do that stuff. You have all of these different techniques, correct? Yeah.

Yes. And I also teach somatic breath work, which is, you know, the soma is the body and it's about getting out of the mind and the body. And those sessions are designed to move energy, meaning it is designed for you to let go and to remove the stagnant. And often when we ramp people up,

and then they come out of the breath hold and they come down, their body is released naturally. And that's where you kind of get those videos of like people screaming or crying hysterically, or their bodies are doing these weird things. It's because energy is moving and it's my job to come in and bring you up 10% more. So somebody starts to cry. Most people don't know how to use their voice. They've always been told, be quiet, be quiet. Don't be loud. Don't be too much.

People need a space to do that. So if I start to see you going, "Oh, I'm gonna come over, I'm gonna tap you and I'm gonna bring you up and I'm gonna bring you up until you fully release that."

And most of the time people will let out this scream that you've never heard before. And it's because we have been told that humans don't need to express. We do. You need to express your feelings and your emotions. It's energy stuck, stagnant in the body and breathwork can help with that. So whether you're a professional athlete and you're getting ready, like I work with NFL and CFL guys and we get them ready. Like they drop the ball. They need to be able to get right back into the positive mindset and go, I'm not dropping that ball again.

They need to be able to come into their breath and come into their focus and into their bodies and less out of their mind and they make less mistakes. You know, it's so funny. It's what, you know, my son, he's 16 and I've got him, I love to do, I love to do the daily mantra with him, which is, you know, tell me all your negative speak. And then he like wrote it on a board. It was an exercise we did. And I said, okay, so like anything that was negative, we just wrote the exact opposite of it. Right. Like we just took a negative. Yeah, reframing.

Yeah, we just reframed it completely into positive. So that's his mantra every day as he reads that. One of the things that he put was, "I let things roll off my shoulders." That's one of his positive now reframed mantras. And he recently cannot play lacrosse anymore because he has bad ankles and it was a weird thing with his ankles. So now I'm getting him into playing golf, right? And

I'm teaching him inside out where he's learning, you know, we're going to putt and we'll learn how to chip and we'll just get further, further, further back as we go along. And, uh, and I told him yesterday, I said, that's why this is such a good game for you. Cause you've got to let this go quickly. Cause you're gonna, I said, dude, you're going to shank it into somebody's house. I don't care. It's just gonna happen, right? You're going to hit it. You're going to hit a tree. You're got, you're going to miss the ball. It's going to happen. And you've got to be able to let that go instantaneously and get that. So how do you get these guys? I mean, obviously I wouldn't do it in a breathwork pattern because people like, dude,

I mean, you know, listen to somebody's podcast or somebody walks by and all he hears, they're not going to think they'll listen to a podcast. That's okay.

yeah they're gonna think they're on pornhub not watching listen to podcast so how do you how do you get them to like what is the calm down pattern or what is it so i've i golf so i use this technique and it's worked flawlessly for me and i'm not saying i'm a great golfer but i'm saying it works to bring me back down out of the frustration if i just chip something completely way too far um it's really simple you just it's it's um nasal breathing out your nose uh in your nose out your mouth so

Just that, just the end of what we just did. - Yep, and I do that for six rounds and then we go again. - So just six in and outs brings you down, focuses you back in and you're good. - And if it hasn't hit the point at six, keep going to 10 and then go. - Well, let's talk, 'cause you just mentioned it. You said you coach some NFL folks, you coach some high power athletes, but you coach entrepreneurs, you coach anybody that's looking for that. What areas are you coaching in? Where do you make the most impact with people's lives?

So I kind of work with a lot of people and I'd say the impact I make is different in a lot of different areas. And so for coaching in particular, when I'm working with my clients, it's mindset. It's that stuck feeling. It's that my negative nihilistic mind just runs like crazy. It's the negative voice. It's the, I can't, or I was told I'm not good enough. It's all of those things that all of us have that are super normal, not just athletes and CEOs. It's like,

it's the guy that's transitioning out of the service who was a special operator. It's the mom that was a mother of children who their children are gone now. And she goes, who am I? We have to work together to find out who you are because most of the time people don't even know how to start that. So I work with literally clients from all over the world.

all over the world. But ultimately, the clients I work with the I don't work with everyone, I interview you to see if I'll work with you or not. And the reason I say it that way is because I can tell you if you're going to do it or not. Because

Because there's no point in you wasting my time and you wasting your money and me saying, do this. And if you're not going to do it, I'm not going to work with you. I'm just really strict. And so I think that ultimately the most impact I make is just being me in every facet of what I do. My show has helped people realize that

It's okay to be hurt. You can heal from it. You don't have to become the labels. My clients realize that they can drop the ball. It's not the end of the world. My mother's learned that they can be a mom and still have a career outside of that. It doesn't mean that you're a bad mom. It means that you need support. You need the tools and you need the way forward. And also I'm done with toxic compassion behavior. It means that I'm not going to coddle you.

I'm going to give you the thing that you have been told the whole time that you, you know, the hard thing. If you tell me, you know what, Kels? I did really good on this, this, this, and this, this week, but I ate like shit. I'm going to go. Why'd you eat like shit?

Well, I, you know, I just had a moment of what was the moment of weakness? Well, I felt bad about this. Why do you feel bad about this? Well, I didn't do the work that I was supposed to do. There's your problem. You didn't do what you said you were supposed to do. So I'm going to call you out in a respectful manner and say, if you want to be here, this is how you do it. But if you're not willing to do it, then I will work with you. Yeah. So I have two questions from that, from that we just said, number one is what percentage

Is it everybody that is your programming that you received as a young person, right? The limiting beliefs that were placed on you either by friends, family members, environment, whatever it might be. How much of people's struggles as adults is from...

the limitations they place on themselves now and from the programming they received is youth. I would say it's a lot of youth and I'll tell you why, because I was a high level athlete as a child. So I know what I was taught. I know where my faults are. I know where the issues were. The majority of our issues, I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist, but I will tell you the amount of time I've done this, I could have had a degree by now. Most of everything that happens to us starts when we're children. It's the small things that we're told. It's the subliminal messaging. It's the

I can't and no one ever corrected them and said, of course you can cut that word out of the dictionary. When I was five, my mother got a dictionary and made me cut out the word can't.

It does not exist. You are defined by the people around you. And when you're young and somebody says, well, you don't do that, honey, you're going to get hurt. You go, okay, I'm not going to do that. And then that tells you down the road, I'm not going to take risk. I'm not going to jump in with both feet. I don't trust my own intuition to say that I can do it. So a lot of times it goes back to that. It goes back to childhood. Now,

when you're older, if you are in a specific type of profession and they've told you you're not good enough, you're not big enough, you're a woman, you're a man, you can't do this, you shouldn't be over here. Then we look at that.

I was told I was too small to do my job. So I shut up and I did the job. And so it's up to you. It all comes down to what is your limiting beliefs. And I don't do always just one-on-one. Like I have a self-led limiting beliefs course, six weeks. You just go do it on your own time. You're welcome to it at any time. You never lose access, but it's about

Those have got to be the driven people. Most of the time, people will start the course and they'll never finish it. And it's because they don't know how to implement the steps all the way through. Other than me telling them, there's no accountability. So when people are serious about change and changing limiting beliefs and their mindset and actually taking the risks and the steps, then they get serious and they work with me one-on-one.

Dude, my wife asked me one time, she said, "How can you get up there and speak and give away all of your secrets? You just give it all away. You don't keep the secrets. So how do you do that?" And I said, "Babe, if I get up there and I speak in front of a thousand people, maybe two of them will implement all this." Even if I'm like, "Look, here's a million dollars.

Here's 31 steps that will land you here. Two out of the thousand we've got there. That is just such the unfortunate truth with it. So I love the fact that you've got to earn the right to work with you. I had some people one time with me. I was coaching some agents and it was a couple of weeks in. They called me and they said, hey, can we reschedule? Something came up.

One of them had something. I said, I said, no, the first time I'm like, yeah, I get it. Shit happens. You got to go, you know, whatever. Yes. We'll reschedule. The next week, something else came up and they already told me, I said, let me ask you one question. And they said, what? And I said, if you had a meeting today with Tony Robbins, would you have changed it? Yeah.

And they said, no. And I said, okay, well, if you don't value my information as much as you would value his, you're not going to fucking do it anyway. So it's a waste of both of our times. Oh, we'll show up. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Because the fact that you were even willing to cancel tells me everything I need to know.

Like I have dude, I am down to help anybody that wants my help to the end of the earth, but you gotta, you gotta show up and earn it. You can't be an asshole, right? I don't do that. - And it's not always like people are like, well, no, you just wanna be paid that amount. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I've done 15 years of learned behavior to know how to do this. And my time is valuable the same way anybody else's is. But just because I'm not Tony Robbins doesn't mean that you don't owe me the same damn respect 'cause I've earned it. - 100%, 100%.

That was awesome. Yeah, I'm a super fan of yours. If they want to find out more, if you want to get in touch with you, learn more about all of the stuff we covered today, how do they find you? Yeah, so kelseysharon.com if you want to book me for speaking. I'm a keynote speaker. I did speak at TEDx. They're not publishing it. It was on veteran suicide. You guys can see that on my YouTube page.

Also, if you want to book me for coaching, get a consult, KelseySheron.com. If you want to support the podcast, it's Brass and Unity, which is being rebranded soon. If you want to support or read my book, which came out last year, it's Brass and Unity. And if you want to get in touch on Instagram, that is probably the best way. All of my programs are on there. My Limiting Beliefs programs are on there. My coaching programs, monthly group programs are on there. Ultimately,

My show is where my heart lies. And so we have hard conversations. We talk to brilliant people like yourself, and I'd love to have you on. But I think what we do is we show up differently. What I do and the people I'm around, we show up differently. And we look to help you in your lives and not influence you to buy things, but to show you the things that are actually going to change your life rather than just talk about changing your life.

Well, dude, I hope you change as many lives as humanly possible because you are straight. I mean, I know it sounds like a cliche to say because you're an artillery person, but you're shot. I love that about you. If you listen to that, like, listen, if you if you just got done listening to that and you are still drifting along with the currents of life, I don't do that. Wasn't a life raft that was straight up just snatching you out of the currents by the back of your neck. You need to take advantage of this.

Follow her, listen to her podcast. And dude, nobody's coming to save you, so you got to save yourself. We'll see you next week.

What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully, you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.