The Return of The Lion Tracker — Boyd Varty on The Wild Man Within and Nature’s Hidden Wisdom

All roads in personal transformation lead to the information is inside you.

You actually know it's in you in the way that lions know how to be lions and leopards know how to be leopards if you want to find your way to your fullest expression. It's in you. It's

fullest expression. It's in you. It's

subtractive making the space to allow that information to come forward. And a

big part of that is just letting yourself follow the energy of the nonrational energy of people, places, experiences where you literally feel your body full of an expansive, alive

energy. And getting good at following

energy. And getting good at following that is the ultimate tracking.

>> Buo, good to see you.

>> Good to see you, man. Thanks for having me back on the show.

>> Absolutely. And I love your background since you have commandeered my recording office in Austin. It's pretty surreal. I

got to say, I like what you've done with the place.

>> We might just pull in here for a few weeks.

>> You know what? You're welcome to.

>> That's great to see you, man. Yeah. I

think the last time we were together, we were walking in a squall across the Cotswwells.

>> That's right. We had our own semi- wilderness adventure. I mean, there was

wilderness adventure. I mean, there was there was some wild there. There was

some wild. More cows than I would tend to run into in your neck of the woods.

>> I was very impressed with your your badger track. You did spot a badger

badger track. You did spot a badger track.

>> Thanks. That is thanks to Boyd and Renius and Alex and all the rest of the actual tracking teachers. So, let's hop into it. Now, this is going to be a lot

into it. Now, this is going to be a lot of improv jazz because I wanted to introduce people, of course, if they have not heard episode one, which they should listen to, to your eclectic

collection of stories. And I have a number of prompts. I do not have any idea what these allude to except for one. So, we have JV, firefighting,

one. So, we have JV, firefighting, lunch, Toby, Feeasant, and then we have a number of others. Where would you like to start? Dealer's choice.

to start? Dealer's choice.

>> Well, maybe we'll start with with something you don't know about me, which is that uh I was the head of an elite firefighting unit for a period of time

in my 20s. And I took over the team from a French foreign legionnaire who had some of the most incredible personal power you've ever seen in your life.

Like when he would walk somewhere, there would literally be a 20 yard radius around him where he would project this aura of absolute confidence and intensity and you just felt this is an

incredibly capable person.

>> And this is in South Africa.

>> This is in South Africa and our job was we we were part of a team called the habitat team and our job was to do a number of things on the reserve. We had

to fix roads. We had to mend fences. We

had to make sure that animals were generally safe. We had a controlled

generally safe. We had a controlled burning program and then we also had to fight fires in the case that you got a runaway fire. And when I took over from

runaway fire. And when I took over from Chris, I was probably about 23. I was in the phase where as a family business, I was doing every job. I was the part-time

marketing manager and sales manager. So

I would fly off to various travel shows in the world and sell safaris. And then

I would come back to South Africa and I would be on the firefighting team. And I

remember that I was so daunted by taking over from Chris that I had actually practiced his walk alone in my room a little bit to try and get the cadence and the presence right. Literally right

off the bat, the first incident we had was there's a bit of a setup to it. And

the setup is that the monkeys had been generally attacking the buffet.

>> These are the vervet monkeys.

>> The vervet monkeys have been all over the buffet. They've been stealing

the buffet. They've been stealing things. And so some enterprising staff

things. And so some enterprising staff member had been driving down the road and they had seen a sculpture, paper-mâché sculpture of a life-sized

lion. And so they had bought it. In the

lion. And so they had bought it. In the

late afternoons and around meal times, they would trot the paper-mâché lion out onto the front deck that overlooked the river where people were having food and the monkeys would see it and they would alarm and stay away. And then the

papermâché lion would be picked up and it would be put in the bar for storage.

So, like literally day two, we have a small electrical fire breaks out on a socket in the gym and my team get down there and we instantly realize that we

we can't spray this out. We've got to shut the main power down. So, I send one of our team members who was a guy by the name of Lucky Immunzi.

He was named ironically because he was incredibly unlucky. He had in fact lost

incredibly unlucky. He had in fact lost an eye in an incident in the bush. And

the way that he handled this is he had bought a beanie and he had cut a single hole in the beanie and he pulled it down over his face. So he had a single viewpoint out of the center of the

beanie with his one good eye. He would

rock around the place dressed like this.

Anyway, I sent Lucky to shut the power down. So he ran to the bar where the

down. So he ran to the bar where the switchboard was and he burst into a darkened bar with its hatches closed because it was like late afternoon.

There was no one around. He hit the power and he turned to his left and in the bar in the darkness was a lion.

>> The papermâché lion.

>> The papermâché lion was in the bar. So

we lost Lucky for about two and a half hours cuz to his mind and valid in the bush he saw a live lion in the bar and he just disappeared. So I realized we

better get down to some training cuz I I felt a certain amount of pressure to make sure that we maintained the standards of the French foreign legionnaire. So I decided that we would

legionnaire. So I decided that we would get involved in a series of drills and we would we would keep ourselves at an elite standard. And the team was made up

elite standard. And the team was made up of, if you think about it, there was maybe like 10 guys. There was a headman by the name of Isaac and Contour who was

just incredibly also physical, maybe like 6'5 muscular guy. There was Lucky Kzi who was the track tractor driver with his beanie on. There was myself doing my French foreign legionnaire

walk. and we believed in ourselves, but

walk. and we believed in ourselves, but we weren't quite where we needed to be.

And so, randomly in the afternoons, I would set up I would set up opportunities for us to have drills. And

so, there was a small soccer field at the back of the camp and I would go and get debris that was lying around. And at

random times, I would light a fire and then I would send out the call. And

there were all of these kind of calls.

It was first like station, station, stations would send it out on the walkie-talkies. Everyone would run to

walkie-talkies. Everyone would run to their tractors. They would grab their

their tractors. They would grab their gear and then I would scream, "Positions! Positions! Positions!" The

"Positions! Positions! Positions!" The

team would load into the tractors. They

would like drive out. They would get into positions and then I would scream, "Start the engines!" And all of these powerful generator engines on the back

of the trailers would start co. And then

the fire would start to build and I would scream, "Spray, spray, spray!" and

the hoses would open and a blast of water would come out and the fire would be out in moments and we would be the heroes of the entire district. Anyway,

the day after the incident with the papermâé lion, I set one of these fires and we get the fire going and to be honest with you, I had some old thatch that had come off some of the roofs of the lodges and I had built like quite a

nice bonfire of thatch and it took off a little faster than I had initially expected. So, we had quite a sizable

expected. So, we had quite a sizable fire right off the bat. got on the radio. I screamed, "Station, station,

radio. I screamed, "Station, station, stations." The team scrambled. They got

stations." The team scrambled. They got

their gear on. Positions, positions,

positions. The tractors came rolling in.

I was thinking to myself, "This is looking incredible." I was walking like

looking incredible." I was walking like a French foreign legionnaire around. I

was giving commanding instructions. Open

the hoses. Spray, spray, spray. The

hoses open and an absolute trickle of water comes out. By this side, a wind has picked up and the fire is now starting to get some wind under it and it's starting to look like actually this

fire could get away from us. And so my way of handling the situation because the pressure was now building was to repeat all of the commands at a louder volume. Station, station, stations,

volume. Station, station, stations, positions, start the engines, spray, spray, spray.

Still an absolute dribble of water. And

it was at that moment that we realized that Lakim Kanzi in the moment critique had managed to park the back tire of the trailer on the hose pipe.

>> [ __ ] And he saw it at the very same time I did and he rolled forward. The

problem was is that the pressure had now built up behind the kink in the hose.

And when that hose finally filled with water, not only did it knock the hoseman out, but we totally lost control of it.

It was flailing around like a deadly anaconda. The fire was now starting to

anaconda. The fire was now starting to get away from us. The headman who was meant to be spraying the fire was in a bleeding heap on the floor and my French Foreign Legion walk was taking me

absolutely nowhere. That's when I got my

absolutely nowhere. That's when I got my first lesson in what firefighting was actually about. And in fact, it's

actually about. And in fact, it's probably the lesson that stayed with me through all of this is that when something is going that wrong in the moment, you think to yourself, you know, it can be quite devastating to your ego.

It can be quite devastating to your leadership. But I've come to see those

leadership. But I've come to see those moments as quite positive because it does force a kind of reflection. And the

thing that I definitely learned that day and that has stayed with me through all crisis situations and everything that I've faced ever since then is that it's very few people who know how to bring

the energy downwards when the energy is moving upwards. Mhm.

>> And you know somewhere beyond trying to do an impressive walk. If you can figure out how to when literally energy is moving upwards start to create a slowness and a steadiness about your

actions.

You can start to actually do a kind of a powerful energetic jiu-jitsu on things. And so ever since that day I've been I've been focused on when when the energy is climbing trying

to slow it down. That's in the category of things you don't know about me.

That is in the category of many things I don't know about you, which is shocking.

Shocking or not surprising at all given how long I've known you. But I want to say a few things. So, first, what you just said about mastering the ability to bring the energy in a full circle back

to calmness. That's something that Rich

to calmness. That's something that Rich Barton, who co-founded Zillow and many other company, Expedia, etc., also said about leadership. This was not that long

about leadership. This was not that long ago. on the podcast. The second thing

ago. on the podcast. The second thing that comes to mind is I really think somebody needs to write a scripted comedy show based on real life called

Londo. Just about

Londo. Just about >> all of these crazy stories and I thought I would perhaps introduce a new character who would be on the Gilligans Island of Londo. JV, do you want to

introduce JV? How do you want to do

introduce JV? How do you want to do that?

>> Well, just one comment on what you what you say. You know, I think a lot about

you say. You know, I think a lot about my kind of like the body of work that I'm involved in now and everything I'm interested in as story hunting.

>> And one thing about it's about London Lozi, but it's it's not just that. It's

like any time you spend in the natural world, it is like a story making machine. Mhm.

machine. Mhm.

>> You can go out on the most simple walk into the woods and because it is both it's how would I say it the natural world is not just where meaning constellates it is meaning in some

fundamental way and then incidences occur inevitably like little things happen and you know one of my ideas is that storytelling is is awareness like

actually what storytelling is is paying attention and the natural world starts to just every day generate eight incredible encounters. Like if I think

incredible encounters. Like if I think of the guests who got at Londoni, let's say 60 guests go out. That's 60 people who come back with a diverse array of stories and incidences that occur on

that day. Some of them will be

that day. Some of them will be ridiculous. Some of them will be

ridiculous. Some of them will be sublime. Some of them will be profound.

sublime. Some of them will be profound.

But it's hard to cast yourself versus modern life, which can sometimes feel very stayed and like the same things are happening all the time. The natural

world is a story machine. M

>> it's a meaning machine. It's it's a symbolic machine. And people who stare

symbolic machine. And people who stare into it, it's like very unwo people, people who've just, you know, come out on safari, they come back and they and they've stared into the natural world

and they've seen archetypal energies that they recognize. When you see a lioness grooming her cubs or you see her

protecting the cubs, when you see them switch into hunting mode, you can't help but see this these profound symbolic energies that are in

us functioning all around you and it somehow it permeates you and you feel yourself in relationship to that in some profound way.

>> Yeah, for sure. And uh we haven't even talked about this. It's something you don't know. I spent a week in the

don't know. I spent a week in the Montana wilderness doing outdoor survival training with this just incredible gent who I'll highlight on the show in a

probably a month or two. But it's

incredible the density of stories that you come back with. Even if you don't intend to gather anything extreme, it's so

I would say also for city dwellers, it's so novel at every turn, particularly if you're injecting any level of shared privation or hardship, which is

sometimes done deliberately, sometimes forced upon you in the case of like freezing rain and hail and you're trying to make a fire when your hands are barely functioning, things like that.

So, let's let's and we're we're not going to necessarily belabor the point, but I just I just have to press on introducing I'm not sure which character

on Gilligan's Island this would be, but JV. Let's let's talk about JV and then

JV. Let's let's talk about JV and then we're going to loop back to story hunting and and some of the connective tissue that that connects all of these things. Well, I mean, of all

the people who had a profound influence on me, one one of them was my uncle, John Varti, who went by the name of JV.

And JV was a wildlife filmmaker. And

from the time that I was about 6 years old, I became his camera assistant, which to say that he had a streak of wildness, he had grown up in the hunting

era when, you know, hunting was still what they primarily did in that area.

And one thing about someone who grew up lion hunting is that it has it tends to reset your drama meter because if you think about it in lion hunting there's really only two outcomes. A lion dies or

a human dies. So he his sense of danger was dramatically reset by this type of childhood experience that he engaged in as a young boy. And so at the time that

I spent most of my time with him, it was between the age of about 6 and 15. He

was making wildlife documentaries and I would I remember I would put my clothes out on my bed at night and then at about 4 in the morning he would show up and he would walk in looking like

kind of like Africa's version of Texas Walker Ranger 44 on his hip shirt with cut off sleeves and he would open the door of my bedroom buddy let's go and

like Tim if you met him now he would say to you hey so what do you do and you say well you know I run a podcasting. Okay,

let me tell you about podcasting. Um,

he he had these sort of arms that stuck out. The Shangan people called him

out. The Shangan people called him Makwan, the one with the crooked arms cuz he like walked this >> like a John Wayne walk.

>> Yeah, totally. John Wayne with his 44.

His clothes were always torn to pieces and he started wildlife filmmaking. And

I became his camera bearer from a very young age. And I had two jobs. The one

young age. And I had two jobs. The one

was to drive. And like a lot of kids who grow up in nature, I learned to drive from the time I was about 6 years old.

And this so one job was drive. The

second job was camera bearer. The

driving job was tough because like one morning we found a a pack of hyenas that were feeding on the remains of a giraffe.

And one of the hyenas picked up a giraffe leg and it started to run across the savannah with this gigantic giraffe leg in its mouth. and he wanted to get the shot cuz getting the shot was like

the primarily issue of every moment. He

said, "Muddy, we got to get the shot."

Now, he's set up in the pickup section of a vehicle where he's got a tripod up and a camera and I'm now driving and he's screaming faster, faster, faster.

And then I will speed up and then you'll scream, "Not so fast. You're going to hit something." And he's screaming left,

hit something." And he's screaming left, cut left, cut left, cut right. And on

one of these instances, he said, "Cut left." and I turned to the right, but he

left." and I turned to the right, but he was bracing for left and so he fell off the back of the the pickup >> and the camera hit him on his head and this put him into a mild rage which had

him chasing me around the vehicle threatening to punch me in the face and then eventually like he he would go into a red mist and then he would come to and okay get after the hyena let's go find

it and so most of my trauma was around driving him around as his camera bearer.

Then in another incident, he said to me, it was a herd of elephants that were coming down to a water hole. And he said to me, "Okay, we're going to creep in there. We're going to get ourselves well

there. We're going to get ourselves well positioned on the bank. We're going to get a nice low angle shot of these elephants drinking."

elephants drinking." And so I said, "Okay, let's go." So I'm carrying the camera. He sneaks down to the edge and he grabs the camera and he

starts to film. And this big bull this big bull elephant turns and it starts walking towards us.

And I immediately felt my heart rate starting to go up because I could tell the position we were there not really a lot of places to go. His way of handling

the approaching elephant was to simply zoom out on the camera repeatedly.

Every time the elephant got closer, he just zoomed out a bit and pushed it back till eventually it was about five or 6 m from us, standing over us. And at this point, he looked up from the camera and

he turned to me and said, "Hey man, why didn't you tell me it was so bloody close?" And then we got into this freeze

close?" And then we got into this freeze off where we basically it was just a standoff. And at some point he whispered

standoff. And at some point he whispered back to me and said, "Larry, if this elephant comes, I want you to crawl into that hole there." And there was like an abandoned warren where some warthogs had made a hole and his escape

route was for me to crawl in there. And

so it was just like this constant sense of like wait are we are we okay here or are we in massive danger he had film camps all over Africa and one of his

film camps was in Kenya and I I'll never forget when I was maybe about 10 or 12.

He put me on the back of the film van and he gave me a kind of machete and he said to me as we drove through the the city of Nairobi, he said to me, "Buddy,

if anyone tries to grab a hold of any of our camera gear, just hit them on the hand with the machete."

>> This is like babysitting Londo edition.

>> Yeah.

So then at a certain stage he moved up to Zambia and he had a film camp up in Zambia and he was always trying to get great shots and he had a knack for it. You know like

in the Masai Mara where the where the Verbeast would be crossing the river.

You would see the BBC, you would see Discovery Channel. They'd all be parked

Discovery Channel. They'd all be parked in a certain position. On the other side of the bank would be, you know, a million Verbeast and they all looked like they were about to cross. And then

John Varti would be parked 400 yd away seemingly away from the action and at the last minute the entire herd would turn run down river and somehow managed to cross right in front of him. He had a

kind of magical knack for being in the right place. He had a real profound

right place. He had a real profound sense of how animals move and operate.

And there was just like a wildness to him. He loved being out there. He loved

him. He loved being out there. He loved

the wilderness. He later in his career made a few attempts to rehabilitate cats and get them back into the wild. So he

tried to get a young leopard that had been abandoned back into the wild. He

involved in a reintroduction of a lion project where he found a lion cub and tried to get it back into the wild. So

he went he did all sorts of things. I

mean when we were living with him in Zambia, I'll never forget we were living in the Luanga Valley with him and he he had a small boat that he would traverse the Luanga with. And the Luanga River is

the densest population of crocodiles in the world. And the boat he had had a

the world. And the boat he had had a tiny like two horsepower engine on it and often it would get >> just like a dinghy, right? It's just

like a >> total dingy. Like the top of the boat from the water line was inches and he would load it with all sorts of things.

Then he would hit a sandbank and he would say to me, "Buddy, you got to get out and push the boat off the sandbank and I would like look up and down the bank where there were hundreds of crocodiles." And I would say to him, "I

crocodiles." And I would say to him, "I I don't want to get out." He said, "Hey man, get out. Stop being a nafta" is what he would call us. They get out, push the boats,

and then one day he found a a young dead elephant. He was kind of maniacal about

elephant. He was kind of maniacal about getting shots. He found a young dead

getting shots. He found a young dead elephant that had been washed down the river, and he decided what he wanted to do was tow the elephant towards the bank where he could tie it to the bank and

then he would lie in the grass and he would get great shots of crocodiles coming in to feed on the elephant. So we

get in the boat, he's got this piece of rope. We get up to the elephant and he

rope. We get up to the elephant and he says, "Okay, buddy, tie the rope around the elephant." And then he heads off

the elephant." And then he heads off upstream in the boat and Tim, when I tell you he took full throttle of the boat and with the drag of the elephant,

we went absolutely nowhere for 45 minutes. He was like abs and only I

minutes. He was like abs and only I realized this cuz I was looking at the bank and I could see that we weren't going anywhere. The boat was in a full

going anywhere. The boat was in a full plane and he was just rigorously committed to trying to get the elephant to the bank. So eventually that didn't work. We ran out of gas in exactly the

work. We ran out of gas in exactly the same spot.

So then he sent me to the shore to get some spades cuz we didn't have ores for the boat. So he sent me to get a couple

the boat. So he sent me to get a couple of spades and we used spades and we managed to >> spades meaning like a shovel.

>> Shovels. Yeah.

>> Yeah. We managed to like row the elephant to the shoreline where we tied it to the bank and for the next four days lay in the long grass there while he shot films of crocodiles, you know,

feeding on this elephant. So, it was it was just a baptism into like the the ramblings of an incredibly wild person.

>> So, here's a question I I may not have ever asked you. I don't think I have.

But listening to these stories, I can't help but wonder how you think about how do you orient towards safety, right?

Because I think about people, for instance, in a modern environment, doom scrolling every day, they just have this slow IV drip of cortisol with no real imminent danger, but this perceived

threat >> that is just infused into their daily experience 24/7.

And then you listen to these stories and you're like, "Okay." And and certainly some of the stories in our first conversation for the podcast were you're almost dying being attacked by

crocodiles and this that and the other thing. And there's there's no short list

thing. And there's there's no short list of these incidents and then you listen to your adventures with JV or the firefighting. It's like, okay, on any

firefighting. It's like, okay, on any given Tuesday, you flip a coin and those could have gone sideways in some capacity. How do you orient towards

capacity. How do you orient towards safety or danger? And how has that changed over time?

>> It's certainly something I've wrestled with because after all those years with my uncle, there was definitely there was a double-edged sword to it.

On the one side, when I think back of how old I was during a lot of those incidences, I remember feeling tremendously out of my depth. And I

remember feeling like, wait, what are we doing? And I don't I don't know how to

doing? And I don't I don't know how to handle this.

And he he was of the mindset that you should be able to handle anything. I

mean, he would walk off into a dangerous situation and he would hand me a rifle and he would say, "Buddy, if I get into trouble out there, I'm expecting you to help me." And so then I would be left

help me." And so then I would be left with this like 8-year-old sense of responsibility and feeling like I'm going to need to take action against this, but I'm I'm illprepared to take

action against this. And so I found myself quite split in some ways. Like on

the one hand I would feel very apprehensive about certain things and then in other instances I would like the apprehension was always prior to the incident but then in a situation I

always felt very calm and felt like I actually had capability and I've thought a lot about that now like cuz I always have a sense that whatever's going to happen I can handle it and I and that is

a gift he gave me a sense that we we will figure it out in a very instinctual game time live way. Like I can be in pretty high octane situations, but I'm

nervous of it. I still have a part of me that feels like I'm ill I'm going to be illprepared for what is coming. And I I feel those two places in myself all the

time. And I think a lot about, you know,

time. And I think a lot about, you know, recently obviously I just had a son and I think a lot about what it would be like to build capability in him because

I feel like I feel like I I have a sense of capability. I I I feel like I

of capability. I I I feel like I listened to your interview with Chris Sacker where he was talking about, you know, just like young people needing to have more incidences in their life, needing to have kind of, you know, been

in a bar and, you know, bumped a car and like lived life.

>> And I feel very full of that, but I also feel like some of that stuff was I was over my head and that, you know, I've had to manage some of that.

>> So, how do I orientate towards it now? I

think trying to build a sense of capability and confidence in whatever I'm doing has become ground zero >> and not just expect things of myself but

actually get take the time to realize like if I'm doing something new my approach to it would be like I should just be able to handle this and I think what I've learned is that I need to go

slower and build confidence and build capability and that has been the ultimate healing on those ones.

>> Amazing. So I'm looking at this I want to make sure we layer in stories, but we can intersperse with other things. So, we're going to get to

things. So, we're going to get to perhaps lunch. Maybe Toby feeasant. No

perhaps lunch. Maybe Toby feeasant. No

idea what that refers to at all, but there's one that I want to pull out here just to see where this goes. Learnings

from 10 years of wilderness retreats. I

mean, you've taken so many different types of people on wilderness retreats.

Certainly you've had many varieties of experiences yourself as a participant, as a guide, as a tracker, as a facilitator.

What are some of the kind of main entries in the diary of lessons learned after a decade of doing these types of retreats in the bush? I

run the retreats every year through the winter months and I feel like every year we get more aware of what we're actually trying to do on the retreats and we get

better at them. And I think the the primary thing that I've come to really value is that

the faster we can put people into what I would call the natural state, the speedier the uptick of transformation. And I think when I

transformation. And I think when I initially started creating transformational spaces in nature, I was I wanted something to happen. And I felt

like my job was to quickly try and figure out where a person was blocked or where there was a kink in the energy and try and and rapidly help them develop

awareness around how that particular blockage trauma belief system could be transformed. And

I feel like I've become way more relaxed with it now. In fact, on our retreats now, the first day is into silence and

nature. And the speed at which I have

nature. And the speed at which I have this idea that comes from Martha Beck where her take on the natural world is that it's a wordless environment.

And so if you look at the animals, they don't have verbal minds. So you don't see them thinking past and future. You

don't see lions lying there thinking, "Oh, Janine messed up that hunt yesterday and so we can't trust her going forward." And so if you can go

going forward." And so if you can go into wordlessness, then very quickly people start going into oneness.

And so the key thing I have found now is get people to be quiet, get them into more wordlessness, create an opportunity for them to interact and receive lessons

from the natural world and then things rapidly start to happen. The other thing is that I would say is that I I say now that when people come they enter into the London Lozi time war because if you

can take away their tech which we now enforce I I absolutely will not allow any tech because what happens is even if a you know a person who's running a company comes and they go into silence

the first afternoon and then we go out the next morning and we're tracking an animal and then they get back and they pick their phone up and they've got a human resources issue back at the

company. they start to pop out because I

company. they start to pop out because I also think that there's a profound chemistry to it as people go into wordlessness and the soundsscape starts

to work on them. As they start to put their attention on living things and start to feel those archetypal energies that you that are in the natural world,

literally their brain starts to cascade different neurochemistry.

their nervous system starts to go more generally more parasympathetic and they start to enter into a different state of awareness. And in that state

their natural inner knowing starts to spit out by literally by I would say within the first 24 hours something in them will start to know and it will

start to spit out insights and you don't have to work too hard at it. The other

is if you say to people, I want you to go and open yourself to receiving lessons from the natural world. The

psyche is so intelligent, especially in a retreat space. It's it's funny like if you have a 10-day retreat, people will orientate perfectly to that

10 days and they will what will need to occur in that 10 days will occur. If you

said it's a two-day retreat, they will get aspects of the same thing, but the the psyche will know kind of how much time it has. In the same way, the psyche will start to interact with the natural

world and they will start to see and receive messages that are particular to what they are working on. And so really the lesson from 10 years of retreat is

don't work too hard. M

>> allow the space allow people's psyche to start to be in relation with the natural world and then insight will start to naturally develop very very quickly and people can

do this at home if you start saying I want to go out into the local park I want to go out into my garden and I have a specific question and you write that question down and you start asking

asking specifically nature could you help me answer that question it's almost like a zen [ __ ] You're holding a an intention and an a desire for certain answers and then what

you see your psyche will run that through a specific matrix and insight will start to develop.

>> Yeah, there are a few things that come to mind as you're saying all this. I

took up a number of notes.

One is that I think people bias or certainly I'll speak for Americans but this is I think common in a lot of countries bias towards

the question of what should I do right and it's an immediate tilt towards addition if that makes sense >> but sometimes you get to where you want

to go or achieve a certain state by removing the obstacles to that state. So

when you were talking about natural state, I was thinking of for instance when I was on this Montana trip, I had a few friends with me. Some of them had

phones, some of them didn't, even just for taking photographs. And I left my phone behind very deliberately. And I

and I feel like if for instance you're not in the bush in South Africa, if you're not in the mountains of Montana, if you simply take a digital Sabbath,

remove say bright light after sundown, do a few things where you're simply removing modern conveniences that are actually very unnatural from an evolutionary perspective. You start to

evolutionary perspective. You start to access this natural state. And what the hell does that mean? That can mean a lot of different things, but one for me at least that I noticed at Londallozi, I

noticed it certainly in Montana, you can notice it simply walking around without a lot of the modern technologies that we

are very much ill adapted for at this point. is that these older faculties,

point. is that these older faculties, these very well-developed capacities that we depended on for so many millennia come back online. Maybe

they're always online, but the volume is very low. And so, you start to notice a

very low. And so, you start to notice a lot more and it just fundamentally changes your perceptual >> lived experience on a day-to-day basis.

I would say another thing that Londo nails and what's so cool about it is that it is a function of being

synchronized with wildlife activity and that is really early morning drives. So

you have the game drives which are typically what time would you say people are waking up in the morning?

>> You want to go out at dawn and you want your circadian rhythm to be affected by that sunrise and the cool of the morning.

>> Mhm. Yeah. So people are generally to get a bite to eat and a cup of coffee waking up let's just call it 30 minutes before sunrise something like that

>> and what that means is you are typically jetlagged and I think that actually works to the benefit of a lot of folks because you get this incredible time dilation like your experiential day

feels like 2 or 3 days because you wake up it's dark then it gets light then you come back and have a bite to eat and probably take a nap. Then you wake up,

you do another drive. It gets dark and you have this very full spectrum experience that makes a week at Londoi feel like 2 weeks, which is very similar

to being in the Montana mountains or really anywhere in nature where you are waking up with light. You are going to generally winding down with the sunset.

And I just find that natural state and I'll shut up in a second but bringing those very very missionritical for millennia faculties online whether it's by turning

them on or just simply turning up the volume so you notice them to be nurturing and recharging in a way that is hard to put words to. Right. And

you carry that back into the modern world with you.

>> It's spot on. Um a few things on what you said there. Number one is, you know, so many people arrive on the retreats with a sense of

of what to do next. You know, sometimes someone's built a company and sold it.

Sometimes someone is changing career, sometimes someone is going through a relationship change and they arrive, as you say, with this desire of like

what's next? And what has struck me so

what's next? And what has struck me so much is in order to open to the natural state so often the first thing to do is

to let go of needing to know what that next thing is.

So often when I say to people, stop stop trying to know and stop trying to use this retreat to get the next thing and in fact let yourself not know and and

just enter into the circadian rhythm of being up of seeing the sunrise and seeing the sunset watching it go from stars to stars. We work a lot now on

this rhythm that you're describing. I

like to go out early, drop into meditation, let the dawn break around you, then intensity. You need to switch on and track. And we need to operate well on our feet. We need to be tuned

in. We need to listen. Then get back to

in. We need to listen. Then get back to the camp and drop the energy again.

Nothing. It's only this western culture in which in which is like level 10 energy all the time. Everything in

nature moves through intensity rest.

Intensity rest. And as people feel themselves allowed to rest. Another

insight is I think we used to try and do too much on retreats. Giving people high intensity moments and then spaciousness to be more like an animal

that starts to conjure it and then sit around the fire at night and then let the natural world be your teacher. The other thing is is that

teacher. The other thing is is that and I know that you've had these experiences. It's really become quite

experiences. It's really become quite remarkable to me how many mystical things happen. When I first met Martha

things happen. When I first met Martha and I started to understand transformational processes, I was still like a drink a beer, you know, punch someone in the face type of person. You

know, I was 20 years old South African.

I did not consider transformational processes or coaching or inner work. I

had no grounding in that.

And and then also just like the animals are going to bring messages. That was

all quite woo for me.

But I have seen now the most remarkable things. You know, one thing that comes

things. You know, one thing that comes to mind is on every retreat there will be magical occurrences with the animals.

A woman will sit in the circle and she will say, you know, I grew up in a family of alcoholics. And when you grow up in a family of alcoholics, it's it's

incredibly dangerous all the time. And

so what I learned, I've learned to make myself invisible. I've learned to hide.

myself invisible. I've learned to hide.

And I've I've never let myself be seen cuz being seen was dangerous.

That afternoon we go out and she's sitting on the back of an open Land Rover. And a male lion that's been

Rover. And a male lion that's been sleeping, rouses himself, stands up, walks towards the back of the Land Rover

stops and he looks up at her and he he looks into her eyes and and is just breathing, gazing at her. And it's so intense to be looked at by, you know, a

400 lb serial killer like that. There's

something so kind and powerful and the presence that that animal projects. And

she looks away initially and I say to her, you can look back. And she turns and she looks back and I can feel it's the most profound revealing psychologically that she's ever been

involved in. And after that something

involved in. And after that something shifts in her and she's able to start allowing herself to step forward.

Another one that comes to mind is we had a a guy come on a retreat and he's sitting in the circle and he says to me, you know, one thing that has happened is since my father died, I've

been totally unable to grieve. Like I

know that I I want to break open, but I can't get to it. Like I just can't cry.

And for the first few days that's the case. On the third day, you know, I'm

case. On the third day, you know, I'm sort of talking to him. I'm checking in on him. And we're sitting, you know,

on him. And we're sitting, you know, Londo has these kind of decks that you sit out on, but there's a thatched area, but it's open. And a bird flies into the

thatched area, and it lands on the little gumpole over his head. It looks

down at him, and it starts calling intensely, like very unusual. Sometimes a bird will fly through, but this bird flies into the area where there people and starts

calling. and he looks up at this bird

calling. and he looks up at this bird and at the moment he sees it, I see tears come to his eyes and he starts to weep, weep, weep. And for 10 minutes, he

can't talk. And then he looks at me and

can't talk. And then he looks at me and he says, "This is going to sound so weird, guys, but you know, my father was an avid bird watcher >> and this bird, the southern boo, was his

favorite bird."

favorite bird." And stuff like that is happening so regularly that I can't deny it. I just

know that things will happen, magic will occur. Um, I mean, look, we also had one

occur. Um, I mean, look, we also had one woman who was describing her trauma and how in her in her life, everything gets taken from her. And while she's describing that, she's eating a piece of

toast at breakfast and a monkey literally jumped down and snatched the toast out of it.

But there's definitely a sense, and I think that native cultures knew this, and I think it's woowoo to us, but if you intentionally start

working with the natural world, it it knows on some level a field of living sentience. It starts to sense

living sentience. It starts to sense that intentionality and that awareness.

And then things start to happen. And I

think people need to be re-enchanted. I

think one of the things that we're afflicted with is that we are dullled down and we are disconnected from magic.

And sometimes it doesn't even have to be that woowoo. Just to see a leopard and

that woowoo. Just to see a leopard and her cubs leap up into the branches of a Merilla tree and to feel like God, this is the beauty of it and to have that

affect you in some profound way.

I've just seen so much of it now. I'm

I'm a real believer that nature wants us to heal and nature knows when we come to her with the desire to mend our soul.

It also strikes me that and I'm speaking to myself as much as anyone else that sometimes we we tend to want to fight fire with fire. And I'll explain what I

mean by that. And it doesn't always work in the sense that we have a problem or we perceive a problem through our thinking. And so we want to use more

thinking. And so we want to use more thinking to fix that problem.

Or we think I just need to try harder and it's like well if trying harder would have solved this it would have been solved by now right in some way.

>> Absolutely.

>> And there's so much canvas to explore that is as you mentioned wordless. And

so if you're able to even entertain the question of, you know, what if the path or the relief could be found outside of words and concepts, right?

What might that look like? And what it might look like is spending time in nature. And one of my favorite

nature. And one of my favorite experiences at Londallozi, and I've, as you know, I've been a bunch of times

now, is the silent morning drives.

>> Mhm. And just to explain that briefly, do you want to explain that briefly?

>> Well, maybe I could say two things about that. The the other is a story comes to

that. The the other is a story comes to mind, a very silly anecdotal story, but one of the things that led me probably all the way to this conversation is prior to my firefighting days when I was

on the London Lozi sales and marketing team, I found myself in London and I was by day I was seeing different agents and I was telling them about London and then

we got invited myself and a friend who I was traveling with. We got invited to a party that night and at that time I was struggling with very very severe depression and we did that childish

thing that you sometimes do when you're in your 20ies where we decided we would go to the party and we would kind of make up fake backstories and like kind of be in character for the night.

>> Yeah. And so when people asked me what I would do at that time, out of nowhere, I started saying I'm a writer. And I hadn't got even close to

writer. And I hadn't got even close to writing anything at that stage. I was

would be totally daunted by the process.

But when I said it at this party, this total [ __ ] story I had made up.

Every time I said it, I felt a little uptick of energy in my body. Not in my mind, not a rational sense that this is what you should do. I just literally felt like oh this little like kick of

energy and I decided to follow that little kick of energy and when I got back to South Africa I you know sat down at my old computer and I started writing down

stories and I noticed that whilst I was engaged in the process of writing the depression would lift or I would not be aware of how much just gray I was

carrying around. I would wake up in my

carrying around. I would wake up in my bed and I would have that feeling where you wake up and you just feel like, "Oh my god, I'm I'm gonna fight to get through this day." And I would do my

duties. I would do all the things I

duties. I would do all the things I needed to do like with this gray cloud around my head. And then I would sit down at the computer and I would start to write out some silly anecdotal story

and suddenly something would lift and I would follow that and and literally everything that has brought me to here has been following that nonrational energy in my body in like I I'm aware of

what makes me feel a little more energized, a little more expansive and I just figure out how to move towards that.

Now in order to do that you do need some stillness.

And one thing that has become so profound for us is, you know, the safari business is evolving and I think that we're working hard to change what it is.

It used to be you come there, you have your guide who gives you an interpretive wilderness experience. He tells you

wilderness experience. He tells you about all the animals. He describes

their habits, their gestation periods.

He taps you into, you know, the biological sciences. And that that can

biological sciences. And that that can be so wonderful. And

all of that information can be more information. So what we started to do in

information. So what we started to do in the attempt to take people into deeper wordlessness was to say you're going to go out and you are going to be in

silence. And hopefully that silence

silence. And hopefully that silence pulls you into a deeper place. But what

you're also going to do is you're going to watch your mind. And you might be watching like looking at something and you might find yourself saying, "What's going on there?" Like why is that animal doing it? What animal is that? What's

doing it? What animal is that? What's

even happening here? Just be aware of that and try and come out of needing to know which is the primary state of our society, right? Like in only in eastern

society, right? Like in only in eastern philosophy do we find our way to don't know mind. The whole western mind is

know mind. The whole western mind is structured around needing to know. So if

you find yourself needing to know, let that go and just be in pure pure experience of it. Let the silence work on you. Feel how everything is unfolding

on you. Feel how everything is unfolding with an intelligence. And you don't really need to rationally know it. Try

and feel it at a deeper level. And to a man, people report coming back. Some

people report feeling incredibly frustrated. Some people said, you know,

frustrated. Some people said, you know, I found my mind wondering to wait, should I when I'm at home, is should I catch the six train or the the the five train down time? Like people's minds go

to did I turn the tap off? Who's looking

after the cat? If you can keep them in it, eventually you drop through to a different sense. And then as you watch

different sense. And then as you watch the animals, you drop into a different layer of language. And it's what I would call the first language. And it's the

language of energy. And you start to feel how when a leopard turns and looks at you with the shape of its body, with the look in its eyes, with the way it moves it head, it is conveying energy.

And you can watch the prey species move through different nervous system states from totally relaxed to listening and aware to attuned to potential danger.

And you can feel how as they move their bodies, every one of those states in their body has a feeling to it. And you

can feel that feeling in your own body.

And getting to know that feeling is where I think it's definitely more where native cultures operated. And inside of it is a deep sense of connectivity

because you can feel yourself relating to every creature once you know that language. When you can look at a leopard

language. When you can look at a leopard and without any words between you, feel its energy, feel what it's conveying to you, you can be in a dialogue like that.

And I'm sure you've had this Tim, but in shamanic ceremonies and when I've been around healers, you know, I remember once asking to my my my teacher in the

medicine space, will you teach me? why

won't you teach me? And he said to me, well, the the feeling is not there yet.

And I said to him, no, I'm asking you.

He said, yeah, but you I can feel your your distrust and what whatever you say to me, the feeling you energetically are giving off is still there's still too

much distrust. And only when the feeling

much distrust. And only when the feeling is different between us will I start to teach you. And so and to me that that space was so full of that

that first language energy, the the energy between things.

>> I want to also maybe underscore for folks that this might sound very abstract or esoteric, but there are real direct applications of what we're

talking about to everyday modern life as well. And a few names that we know in

well. And a few names that we know in common come to mind. One is Diana Chapman who we both know of course and the whole body. Yes. And really tuning

into your kinesthetic, your bodily sensations for making decisions of various types for choosing things. Could

be as simple as something on a menu.

Could be something as high stakes as to say yes or no to a potentially huge business partnership with a given person. Let's just say I've had her on

person. Let's just say I've had her on the podcast. people can listen to that

the podcast. people can listen to that episode for more on the whole body. Yes,

and how to navigate that if we don't get into it. Now, another that comes to mind

into it. Now, another that comes to mind as you said that the particularly let's just I'll limit it to the United States for now because other cultures are quite different in this respect with CS and so

on, but the idea that you wake up and you just go 10 out of 10 from when you wake up to when you close your laptop is anathema to the natural world. That's

just not how things work at all. And if

you engage in say going on safari, if you spend time in the natural world, certainly if you do any type of hunting, you realize there are these natural rhythms. So if you go on, let's just say

an elk hunt or something like that. You

may spend a few hours doing act, y, and z and then just bed down. You're like,

the animals are are bedded down. We're

not going to find them. They're

inactive. It's going to be incredibly difficult. So instead of waste our

difficult. So instead of waste our energy, we're going to have a snack and take a nap. And I recognize that, you know, having a snack and taking a nap may not make sense in between your Zoom calls. But the point is

calls. But the point is that if you talk to someone like Josh Weightskin, another mutual friend of ours, who for those who don't recognize the name, he was he was my second ever podcast on this podcast out of 800

something plus, he's going to hate this, but he's known best for searching for Bobby Fischer. He was a very high level

Bobby Fischer. He was a very high level chess player beginning at a very young age, but has has applied his learning approach to mastery in a number of different fields. World champion in

different fields. World champion in Taichi push hands, first black belt under Marcelo Garcia, ninetime world champion in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, now foiling at a very, very high level on

huge waves. And what does Josh say when

huge waves. And what does Josh say when he looks at all of these world-class performers in these different disciplines? when he looks at the people

disciplines? when he looks at the people he works with directly, ranging from sports at a very high level. I don't

know if it's public yet. I think it is.

Yeah. The Celtics for instance, all the way to the absolute 1% of 1% in say the finance world. One of his mantras, and I

finance world. One of his mantras, and I don't think he'll mind me paraphrasing this, is avoid the simmering six. And

avoiding the simmering six is if you look at say Marcelo Garcia before he's going to compete in a world championship mat. They're running around trying to

mat. They're running around trying to find him because it's 5 minutes to go time. And where is he? He's sleeping

time. And where is he? He's sleeping

under the bleachers. He's taking a nap.

He's at zero. And then he wakes up, shakes it off, and then in the 200 feet before he gets on the mat, he switches it to a 10.

>> And he's going from rest to full engagement. He's not sitting in the

engagement. He's not sitting in the middle with that IV drip of 24/7 cortisol and sympathetic overdrive. That

is deliberately what he is avoiding. And

that is in large part how he is able to partition resources to engage so fully and dominate competitively. And that's

also true for people in the finance world who are working in very high stakes environments for making decisions around placing trades and so on. What

we're talking about, this is just my somewhat clumsy way of saying that I every day I'm sitting in New York City for God's sake. This is I mean it is the

concrete jungle, but it is the city that never sleeps, right? is is in some ways the the antithesis of living at Londo.

And nonetheless, I can take a lot of the lessons learned that you see so clearly there and you have to squint a little bit to apply it here in such an intense environment, but you can and you

actually really could benefit very quickly from doing so. So Diana Chapman, Josh Weightskin, just want to point out how broadly these these themes apply, even if they seem to some people

listening maybe a bit exotic.

>> Mhm. Yeah, I know. It's well said.

>> Yeah. Fire. I felt like you were just about to jump into something.

>> Yeah. I mean, just all roads in personal transformation lead to the information is inside you. You actually know. It's

in you in the way that lions know how to be lions and leopards know how to be leopards.

If you want to find your way to your fullest expression, it's in you. It's

it's subtractive getting making the space to allow that information to come forward. And a big part of that is just

forward. And a big part of that is just letting yourself follow the energy of the nonrational energy of people, places, experiences where you literally feel your body full of an expansive,

alive energy. And getting good at

alive energy. And getting good at following that is the ultimate tracking.

Full aliveness. Another Joshism.

Fully alive. Jim Demmer, too, who's also been on the podcast. Mutual friend of ours.

>> Let's, as promised, we're going to kind of hop between these tracks. I've got

lunch and Toby Feeasant. Where do you want to go? Or we could or we could choose option C if there's another one that comes to mind.

>> Well, let me tell you about my friend Toby and I. Um, so Toby was an Englishman and I'm sure he won't mind me telling the

story to millions of people, but Toby came on safari with his family and this is quite some time ago now, maybe a good 20 years ago. came on safari with

his family and he had such a great time and he had such a great energy and attitude about him that he managed to convince us to let him stay on as a kind

of general hand around the camp. And so

when his family flew off, Toby stayed on and he immediately got integrated into the village of Londallozi and he picked up all of the worst jobs. He, you know, he had to clean the lanterns that get

put out every evening. At one stage he was painting an ablution block and just every time I saw him he was on some kind of like errand around the camp and one

day Toby and I one day Toby and I was sitting down at the staff canteen and a radio call in that some guests had reported that they had seen a snake in

their room and so myself and another ranger said okay we'll go handle this and Toby said guys do you mind if I come along said Toby come with us and so we

jumped into a golf cart which sort of is how people get around in the back of house of the reserve. We jumped into a golf cart and we went up to the rangers room to fetch our snake catching stick

which had picked up the name 50/50 because it was a bit of a Heath Robinson. It was a piece of PV piece of

Robinson. It was a piece of PV piece of PVC pipe that someone had run a a lamp cord through that had made a kind of noose. And the way that it worked is you

noose. And the way that it worked is you would get the the loop at the end of the stick around and then you would pull on the cord and it technically it should tighten up and catch the snake in the noose, but it was a little bit niggly in

certain places. Sometimes it wouldn't

certain places. Sometimes it wouldn't close all the way. So, it had picked up the neck then 50/50. So, we grabbed 50/50 and a big kind of like black dust bin and we jump into the golf cart and

we drive down to the room. Toby's

hanging on the back of the vehicle. We

get down to the room and there are two German guests who are looking somewhat shocked and I'm going to be honest with you, Tim. I gave them my most

you, Tim. I gave them my most powerful Don't worry, I'm here now. The

Safari Guide of the Year has arrived.

You You don't need to worry. I'm going

to go in there and sort this situation out. And so they were left standing at

out. And so they were left standing at the door and myself and Toby and the other guide went in and we're expecting to It's very rare to have a snake in a room, but sometimes a little house snake

or a green variegated bush snake will get in. So we're walking around and I

get in. So we're walking around and I noticed the suitcase on the rack, a sort of an empty suitcase. And I flipped the lid open and what rose out of the suitcase was one of the biggest black

mambers I've ever seen in my life. It

kind of levitated out of the case. You

want to explain why that isn't your garden variety gardener snake? This is

>> a black mamba is it not only is an extremely venomous snake, but it is highly mobile and very difficult to handle in a confined space. And if it

bites you die quickly. So myself and Toby and the other guide, we went for the door at the same time. And I

remember the three of us kind of jammed in it as we were trying to exit the room at high speed.

>> Three stooges. And I might have reached forward to grab their faces to pull myself through. We got outside and I

myself through. We got outside and I said to the Germans, there's a big steak in there. And they said, "Yeah, I'll be

in there. And they said, "Yeah, I'll be told you."

told you." And so now we faced with a bit of a dilemma and they're watching us. So we

decide, no, okay, we know what we're dealing with now. We must go back in.

And so we make our way back in. And now

we are tiptoeing around the room and we're flipping up cushions and we're pulling bedspreads off. And what the Germans see standing outside is they see like a pillow fly out the room because you don't want to lift it slowly. You

want to kind of like rip it open and see what's under it. Then they see a chair fly out. Then they see like a duvet come

fly out. Then they see like a duvet come flying past them. Toby at this stage has positioned himself for maximum discomfort. He's close enough to be in

discomfort. He's close enough to be in the way, but he's not close enough to be fully helpful. And he's giving us a

fully helpful. And he's giving us a running commentary on the dangers of black mumbers. He's saying if they bite

black mumbers. He's saying if they bite you, you will die instantly.

Their venom their venom is deadly in tiny quantities. I'm like, Toby, you are

tiny quantities. I'm like, Toby, you are not helping the situation. Can you

please shut up? And I remember at one stage we pulled the duvet cover off the bed and the bed had an electric blanket on it and the cable of the electric blanket came off and it made like a snake like motion and all of us like

reared backwards and eventually we saw the snake under the bed and my friend managed to get 50/50 down there and he gripped the ma. Now what you normally want to do is you want to get it behind

the head then you grab it behind the head and then you put it in a bag. He

managed to grab it midbody and it was maybe a two and a half meter snake and so that ma went full propeller on the end of the snake catching stick. It was

like whipping around and they part of them is they've got this incredible elastic powerful body.

So, it was like a lot of snake whipping around on the end of the stick. And then

it turned and it curled its way up the stick, but 50/50 helmet. And eventually

its head was about that far from my friend's hand, but he had it. We had it far, >> like 6 in from the hand.

>> Terrifying. And we decided it's going to be too much to try and get it into the bucket. So, we're just going to ride it

bucket. So, we're just going to ride it out the camp. And so, now we make our way out past the perturbed looking Germans and we go to the golf cart. And

I'm driving. And you have to imagine a standard sort of golf court, golf cart.

I'm driving, my friend is standing next to me and he's holding the stick out with the giant snake on it. And then

Toby jumps onto the back of the golf cart and we start making our way out of the camp and we're kind of like bouncing along. Just as you exit the camp,

along. Just as you exit the camp, there's kind of a gateway where there's an electric fence that keeps the the elephants and the buffalo out. So, as we approached that, my friend who's

thinking about the snake that's 6 in away from his hand, he pulled the stick in to allow for us to pass through these two pillars of the gate.

When Toby on the back looked to his left, the black mumber was now fully adjacent to his face with about 3 in between him and this leg. And Tim, from

where I was driving, I remember looking to my left and the golf cart was going quite fast and I saw Toby take off in my

peripheral vision and as I looked to my left, his feet were passing the where the roof of the golf cart was. He had

exploded off the back of that golf cart.

It looked like someone had shot a rocket into space. As I drove off, cuz I kept

into space. As I drove off, cuz I kept moving, I looked back. He was still heading in a vertical direction over a bush. It must have been a good like in a

bush. It must have been a good like in a high jump term. It was a good like a a solid 5 to 6 ft vertical explosion. And

the last I saw of him, he was like he was petering out and disappearing over the bush like a kind of like a like a frisbee falling. And

frisbee falling. And I remember we got out of the camp and we released the snake and the snake went off into the bush and my friend and I looked at each other. We were absolutely

wideeyed and we turned and we began to make our way back into the camp. And as

we came through the gate of the camp, standing in the middle of the road with a look of shock and awe on his face was Toby. And we drove up to him and the

Toby. And we drove up to him and the first things he said to me, I'll never forget it. He looked me dead in the eye

forget it. He looked me dead in the eye and he said, "That was incredible."

And shortly after that he he went back to England and he had to I think he he went and studied briefly but very quickly he came back to South Africa and

he became a safari guide and and he actually now runs a travel company. You

can look him up if you're in the UK and you want to come to Africa. I think it's called Bonomy Travel. And I always think that so often what emerges out of these stories is not what you think. You would

think that an encounter like that would be like I'm packing up and moving back to the UK, but it was actually quite the opposite. He moved back to Africa,

opposite. He moved back to Africa, became a safari guide, and still runs a safari company to this day. And I think about that often, like things that have gone wrong that I I

would thought that would be the end of people turn out to be the adventure that everyone's looking for.

So just to to talk about calibrating danger differently. You like running.

danger differently. You like running.

Alex also master tracker likes running and you guys just go running outside of the gates, right? You just go for a long nice run.

right? You just go for a long nice run.

Now typically for instance if you run into a bear or a wolf or a big cat, you don't want to run. Like run is what prey do. Yeah,

do. Yeah, >> this is a strong prey drive signal.

>> But you guys were training very intensely for what? Can you talk about this?

for what? Can you talk about this?

>> Yeah, we can.

>> Yeah, this is [ __ ] wild. And

in any case, I'll let you introduce it because it's it's just it's it's so on some levels hard to believe and hard to envision also.

>> You mean persistence?

>> Yes, I do. My friend Alex is one of the best trackers in the world in my opinion. He's authored many books on it.

opinion. He's authored many books on it.

He's the founder of the tracker academy and his singular mission, Alex Funder.

His singular mission has been to preserve indigenous wisdom, particularly the art form of tracking. And I think in southern Africa, he's done more to teach, train, and preserve tracking than

anyone else. And what started our

anyone else. And what started our journey to be with the Bushman people in the Kalahari was he went up and he ended up spending a few days with a group of Bushmen. There's a lot of different

Bushmen. There's a lot of different names. Some people refer to them as the

names. Some people refer to them as the sand people. They asked us to call them

sand people. They asked us to call them Bushmen. They said we are the Bushman

Bushmen. They said we are the Bushman people. Please call us Bushman. So

people. Please call us Bushman. So

that's how I will refer to them. And

during that time with them, he was blown away by the ecological intelligence of this group of people. These guys tracked a porcupine one day for like 10 kilometers. They would they would sleep

kilometers. They would they would sleep around the fire at night. Now, normally

when you sleep out in the wild at night, someone keeps watch. And so, Alex asked them, "Who's going to keep watch?" And

they were like utterly sort of perturbed by this. They say, "Well, why would we

by this. They say, "Well, why would we need to keep watch?" And this is in a full-on wilderness area. Alex said,

"Well, what if an animal comes?" And

they're like, "An animal will never come here without us not being able to feel it." And literally if a hyena walks by

it." And literally if a hyena walks by or something, one of them will wake up.

So they they're a tuned at a at a very different level. And Alex saw this and

different level. And Alex saw this and he was blown away by it. And so that was the initial trip. And what resulted in that is a request was made that we would

come back as a as a group and expedition and we would assess the skills that were still kind of alive and functioning. We

wanted to get a sense of what was possible still and what what people still knew how to do because the Bushman people are probably the most persecuted native people on the planet. You know,

they've been displaced from everywhere.

And so it was to go and say like has their initial tracking knowledge been lost or you know what what still exists?

So that was what initially called us to the area and we spent a few days starting to assess that process and it was quite

remarkable because Bushman people now are living in a very interesting way.

They mostly live in the towns. They've

been pushed off a lot of their land and they do various jobs in farm labor etc. the governments of some of those southern African countries provide a

stipent of like 400 you know dollars or pula or rand.

So, you would think that a lot of the the indigenous skills had been lost because a lot of people are on this kind of like it's not the doll, but it's like a government supplement.

And yet about 70% of the food that most Bushman communities are still getting, they're gathering from the desert. And

so, they're living in this kind of urban way. And yet underneath the surface, if

way. And yet underneath the surface, if you if you connect in, there's still this way that they are living in tune with the desert. One thing about the Bushland people is that they never

stored food. Unlike other, you know,

stored food. Unlike other, you know, various tribes who would have like a storehouse where they kept food. To

them, the desert is their storehouse, which is quite an amazing idea. There's

just like there's no sense of needing to hoard or store because it's an abundance psychology that everything you need is there.

>> And when you say desert, just for people who are trying to conjure an image, I mean, it's desert. It is kind like a little scraggly bush here or there, >> at least based on the video I've seen, but it's it's very much a desert

environment.

>> There's areas where it's like semi-arid where you have this these harsh bushes and then there's other places where you are in red beach sand. It would be akin to walking on the beach. It's so sandy.

There's places where ground squirrels have these huge colonies. So, as you walk, you fall down cuz the the ground underneath has been hollowed out. So, it

can be very very tough operating there.

And so we spent a few days with different groups of bushmen and we were taken out into the desert and we watched this incredible energy of people

moving very slowly through the desert and they will dig up a tuba or a root.

They'll cut a section of it. Everyone

will eat some of it and then they will replant it back into the desert and they will they'll never take a whole piece of food. They'll take a portion of it and

food. They'll take a portion of it and then they'll put it back under the soil to grow. and walking particularly with

to grow. and walking particularly with the woman as they gather. I had this feeling that we could have been you know 300 years in the past or 300 years in the future. There was such a strong

the future. There was such a strong sense that whatever happens these people are attuned to their environment at a different level. And then what emerged

different level. And then what emerged out of that is we were invited to participate in probably the oldest practice of hunting that exists on the

planet which is persistence hunting. The

assistance hunting has there's accounts of it across many many different terrains including in the snow where the snow shoe tip the advantage towards

people but it is the pursuit of an animal until the animal tires. And so in order to do it you need an incredible skill set. One you need an unbelievable

skill set. One you need an unbelievable fitness. You need to be able to move for

fitness. You need to be able to move for a long period of time in in the peak heat of the desert. Two, you need to be able to track at a level where you're

tracking at a run. Now, that can be easy in parts of the desert, but man, it is not easy at midday in the I thought it would be easier in desert sand. It's not

easy because as the sun gets to 12:00, which is when you want to be doing it at peak heat, it throws no contrast onto the ground.

>> I was going to say no shadows, right?

>> No shadows. We were invited to be a part of this and you know this is something that and we were seeing you know is is this still alive? Is this who knows how to do this?

>> And just to throw some numbers out there if you can indulge people with Fahrenheit. Well, give people Celsius

Fahrenheit. Well, give people Celsius and Fahrenheit if if that's possible.

That's asking a lot. But when we're talking about a persistence hunt for the Bushmen, what type of distances or time are we

talking about? like how long does it

talking about? like how long does it take and then what kind of temperatures are we talking about?

>> You know, Tim, it's it's really interesting because I think in the one that Craig Foster filmed, it was around 30 km over about 5 or 6 hours, something like that.

>> Mhm.

>> But what I what I discovered being there is that there's this incredible equation, and the equation is is heat on one axis and time on the other. So as

the heat climbs, the amount of time reduces >> goes down. Yeah. Right.

>> The distance reduces. But then there's also an interesting factor which is what type of season has it been? Has it been, you know, dry for a few seasons in a row or have you had a rainy season? Because

the the condition of the animal has a a huge effect.

>> So one thing that happened while we were there is that they they're on the back end of a number of years of droughts and so that was a big kind of factor. So

that's all going on and what emerged is that we were invited to be a part of this but it hadn't been done in a very very long time. And so there was some discussion around who knows how to do it

and like whether it it's still alive.

People who we had asked around had said no one does that anymore. The the older generation who knew how to do it was lost. So there was conjecture around

lost. So there was conjecture around whether anyone even knew if this was still possible. So we go out on the

still possible. So we go out on the first day and what was amazing about it is to the Bushman people it's called the great dance.

>> That's the name of the dock, isn't it?

>> Yeah.

>> The great dance.

>> Yeah. Craig Foster, just for people who are like, do I know that name? My

octopus teacher was his most famous work. It's a great dance because there's

work. It's a great dance because there's a tremendous act of of faith in it and it's part of the mythology and the spirituality of the Bushman people

because it is it involves being engaged with the animal at a very deep level and transferring the animal's energy to you. That is ultimately what

happens. So you are moving with the

happens. So you are moving with the animal, you're tracking it, you're running it and it and you are with the spirit of that animal and you are with spirit itself. And then spirit is as you

spirit itself. And then spirit is as you are closing in on the animal, it's giving its energy to you. And the final act of giving from great spirit and from the spirit of that animal is the actual

killing.

And one thing that'll happen is as guys are involved in it, they won't, it's a very funny superstition, but it's symbolic, they won't jump over a log because if you jump over a log, you are

expending energy and you're pushing energy back at the animal, whereas actually you want to be drawing the animals energy to you.

>> So, there's this very interesting rhythm that guys get into. So, anyway, we go out and we we're looking for tracks in this huge area and there's there's no

tracks. There's no tracks and the energy

tracks. There's no tracks and the energy of of everything is kind of like dialed down and you know there's like there's one guy wearing a Barcelona FC t-shirt, there's one guy in full traditional

gear. It's a full mix. It's not out of

gear. It's a full mix. It's not out of some idealized sense of how this is done. It's like, you know, game time

done. It's like, you know, game time real life situation. And then we come on to a herd of kudu's fresh tracks.

>> What is a kudu? Can you paint a picture?

It's a very tall regal antelope and it has kind of large spiraling horns. Kudos, there are desert adapted

horns. Kudos, there are desert adapted antelope. A kudu is not that well

antelope. A kudu is not that well adapted for the desert. So there are certain animals that you wouldn't try and do this with because they're just too adapted to the desert. For example,

a hemp literally the way that it breathes, it cools air through its nose.

Kudos are not adapted. So they they're susceptible to the heat. When this group that we were with of incredible trackers got onto the track of this herd of kudu,

the whole energy shifted and it went from quite lackluster to like someone had flipped a switch and suddenly these guys started to switch on and they went

into archetypal hunting energy. And when

I say to you that I've become very interested in energetic archaeology, I feel like there is so much energy latent underneath anything that modern

life allows us to get close to. And when

you see these guys switch into hunting energy, you feel this energy that is in every single one of us, but we never we never need we never have access. We

don't access it because we don't need it. And suddenly the first guy shifts

it. And suddenly the first guy shifts into a dog trot. He starts kind of trottting on the track and then the second guy starts to run and these guys

start to move and now you have to do a lot of complex things. One, you have to track. You have to stay on your kudu cuz

track. You have to stay on your kudu cuz the herd quickly breaks and a single kudu breaks away. That's the weakest one. So the guys are onto that one. Then

one. So the guys are onto that one. Then

you have to you have to navigate. You

have to run.

There's such an equation. You have to have a sense of where you're going. Then

all of this together at a certain point it becomes this incredible act of faith because you have to fully commit. I am

running into that desert. I'm running

away from water. I'm going in that direction and I don't really know what the outcome is going to be. I don't know the condition of this animal. I don't

know the heat. I don't know the terrain.

I'm I've got to just go and follow. So

it becomes a real act of faith. And and

and as I say, like you're running away from water in the desert, and that can be a big factor. And you don't know how far you're going.

>> And it's hot.

>> Yeah. On the day we did it, I don't know what the Fahrenheit is, but it was 47° when we started.

>> Yeah, that's hot.

>> And so at the front of that group, Tim, there's an energy that develops amongst that group of hunters. And I can tell you that if you drop out of it, it's like a it's kind of like a pelon.

If you if you fall out of it, you will never catch that group again. But if you find yourself in it, it's almost like you can ride the energy of the group.

And so, how would I describe it? It's

kind of like a ceremony. You just, you don't know what's going to happen once you're in it.

And so, I managed to find myself on this occasion in the center of the group. And

these guys were tracking so fast and they running. And as a group, if the

they running. And as a group, if the animal cuts one way, someone on the left will pick up the track. And as it cuts to the other way, that someone else will cut onto it. So they're working as a team. But as you run, you're also

team. But as you run, you're also dropping people cuz the heat is building too much. And it's it's just so intense.

too much. And it's it's just so intense.

And then also people are going into different psychological states. So one

of the Bushman religious practices is to go into trance. And you can feel yourself wanting to go there. For the

first hour of it, I was in a totally neurotic state. I was in my head and I

neurotic state. I was in my head and I was thinking to myself like, it's too hot, you know? I'm going to die of heat stroke. There was this voice running.

stroke. There was this voice running.

This is we're going too far. We're not

going to get find our way back. I'm

going to get separated from these guys.

Too far out. There's no water. It was

just this just total neurosis.

And then somewhere in there, I started to feel myself going into a different energy.

And I felt that the only way to do this was to let go of these thoughts and let my body just go until it couldn't go anymore. It was weird because it's not

anymore. It was weird because it's not often that you I mean great athletes talk about this which I am not but there's kind of like you're reaching for a place and athletes some athletes know

how to get to that place >> and I felt myself go through the layer of mind neurosis and let go into like I'm just going to let my body do what it

knows to do and from that place I tapped into a level of energy that felt like it was coming out of the earth that felt like it was coming from the group that felt like it was coming from the animal.

And we went for about another 2 and 1/ half hours from there.

And you're just like, you're glowing red. The guys are tracking. At one stage

red. The guys are tracking. At one stage I found myself on the front of the track and I was you can feel the animal moving up ahead of you and you have to keep

moving. You have to keep it moving. And

moving. You have to keep it moving. And

then you'll get a glimpse of the we got a glimpse of the kudu and then it disappeared for another 40 minutes and we're just on the tracks. Then we got another glimpse and it disappeared for another 40 minutes. And then as it gets

closer, the guys start to feel that the energy is transferring. They are

starting to get the upper hand. And as

they feel themselves getting the upper hand, the younger guys start to run harder and faster. And at this stage, I had lost my teammates, my friend James and Alex. I had lost them. And then

and Alex. I had lost them. And then

suddenly Alex was in front of me, which is a classic Alex move. And what had happened is the kudu had run in a dog leg. And so where he had been behind me,

leg. And so where he had been behind me, suddenly he was in front of me. And

suddenly the kudu was directly in front of him. And as that happened, the entire

of him. And as that happened, the entire energy shifted again. And the guys just found another gear. And it's quite amazing to to witness it. And then

eventually the animal is so tired that it literally just stops and it gives itself to the hunter. And those moments

where the animal will run no more and the bushman's spirit, there is something there is something so profound about it because you can't be there and not be in

a profound state of respect and receiving. And you are also so close to

receiving. And you are also so close to the truth of where your food and the survival of the village comes from. You

you're not strolling down the meat section at Whole Foods. You you are right on the cold face of what it means to take life and to take the energy of

another creature. And after the animal

another creature. And after the animal goes down, they put sand on it, which is symbolic of a blessing onto the animal and thanking the animal for what it has

given them. When you eventually emerge

given them. When you eventually emerge out of that energy, it could have been 1 hour, it could have been 10 hours, you're in such a different psychological

space and you have been involved in an energetic that is totally primal and that is it's ceremonial. There's no

other way to describe it. You are you are in a current of energy from some from the earth.

>> That particular kudu, how much would you guess it weighed?

Any idea? Probably around

the 180 kg mark.

>> Oh, that's a big boy. Yeah.

>> Yeah. I I would need to check that.

>> Yeah. 400ish lb.

>> A little bit less than 400, maybe. When

it's cut up, every single piece of that animal is taken and and eaten.

>> Mhm.

>> From the time the guys started working on the carcass, it must have been 15 minutes.

>> Wow. That's fast.

>> Every single piece of that animal.

>> And then how are they are they just carrying it on shoulders? I mean, how are you guys actually getting that back to camp?

>> You put the haunchers on your like all different array >> of carries and everyone walks it out and then you've got still obviously got a long way to go from there.

>> What happens when you guys get back to home base?

>> Well, what was amazing about it is there was a strong sense of pride amongst the hunters. They hadn't done it in a long

hunters. They hadn't done it in a long time and they wanted to show that they still knew how to do it. And it was almost like that they had remembered an aspect of something that they had done

for many many generations. So there was a there was a beautiful energy to it.

And then back at camp there was it's just immediately like food starts to get eaten.

>> Yeah. I bet

>> what I came away with is that if you were to look at Bushman culture now, on the surface it appears very diffuse, but the actual skills are very much alive and they they simmering just under the

surface like this incredible ecological knowledge of how to live in harmony with the desert. And if if AI does wipe us

the desert. And if if AI does wipe us all out, I'm pretty sure that the Bushman people will just walk back into the storehouse of the desert and be

really really comfortable there.

Yeah, if you want to see modern polite behavior disintegrate very quickly, just go to a place like San Francisco. I remember the power went out

Francisco. I remember the power went out for 2 days, 2 and a half days and people were very, very civil in the beginning and walking around the street greeting one another and then people realize

their food is going to thaw, their food is going to spoil.

>> Yeah. and and agitation and aggression start to percolate very very very quickly because people don't know what to do.

>> Yeah.

>> They have no idea what to do if the basic architecture of convenience is removed.

>> I've thought about it a lot and I think that you know all the things you imagine to happen. People are so much closer to

to happen. People are so much closer to primal wildness than they ever realize and survival starts to kick in and then I think there'll be a wide junction.

Some people will go into survival of the fittest and then others will move into states of collaboration for like good reason, protection, food safety. So

there'll be like it'll be interesting to see how it breaks down.

>> You can get into some good prepper stuff.

>> Exactly. Just pro tip, make sure you have water. Water is number one. You're

have water. Water is number one. You're

going to need water a lot sooner than you're going to need canned lentils.

>> That's right.

And by the way, if if you have any dried canned food, you're going to need some water typically for a lot of that. So,

make sure you have your water and your Jet Boils or something along those lines.

>> It is also amazing to see how little water the Bushman people can operate on.

>> Oh, it must be absurd. Their

evolutionary track must have prepared them so well for that. I would be dead within 24 hours. We had one morning on the same trip where we found tracks of a cheetah and we were quite keen to show

the guys like some of our tracking skills and it was like it was a camaraderie amongst trackers and we were with this 70-year-old man and we following the single cheater and

it kind of turned into like mildly competitive at the front. So if someone lost the track the next person would be on it and then if you stepped off it someone else would be on it. And for the first like 2 hours, we were quite

effective. And then these guys just

effective. And then these guys just started to put a clinic on us as it got hotter and hotter. We ran out of water.

Like we were like climbing under these thorn bushes, lumbering along, and they were just like cruising through the desert. And by 11:00, this 70-year-old

desert. And by 11:00, this 70-year-old guy was walking us off our feet. And we

had drained our water bottles, and we were like, "We need to get back home cuz we need to get water." And he he hadn't had a sip all morning. And we were like, "Okay."

"Okay." >> Wow. Yeah. You win. No contest.

>> Wow. Yeah. You win. No contest.

>> Yeah, no contest.

>> Oh boy. All right. So, I want to hop to to two different potential leaping off points. You can tell me if one of these

points. You can tell me if one of these makes sense or if there's something else you want to hop to. You can follow whichever track is appealing. Being a

resolved figure, seeking the wild man.

You want to pursue either of these. What

do you think? Or we could we could take option C off menu. No, I mean I think the wild man is a powerful theme and it comes down to this idea that there is so much energy. Like I've come to think of

much energy. Like I've come to think of the wild man as awareness like self-awareness, awareness of all

the different layers of energy that are inside you and then also access. And so

when those two things start to come together, you start to see a real type of presence, the type of presence that you see in the natural world. And I'm

really become interested in conjuring more of that in my own life. How do you liberate different layers of energy in yourself? And how do you develop like in

yourself? And how do you develop like in my definition of presence would be access to the moment? And particularly

now working in a lot of these men's groups, the idea of conjuring the wild man, it's wildness in the sense that it is in tune with life force, but it is

also wildness in that it is access to the moment. And what I mean by that is

the moment. And what I mean by that is to have your wild man fully available means that if you are required to front up in some ways and protect something

and be able to be assertive and aggressive, you have access to that. But

if the moment is calling for a tremendous amount of softness or tenderness, you also have access to that. And so trying to figure

out how to develop access to as many moments as possible has become kind of a central piece of exploration for me at the moment. And to become resolved

the moment. And to become resolved within that is now as a father I think a lot about figuring out how to be

available through a full spectrum of the masculine experience to my son to my wife to my family where do I run into

blockages in myself where do I start to feel like I really want to be here but I don't know how to show up in this moment >> and so that's what that exploration has become. come primarily about.

become. come primarily about.

>> Let me ask you a question related to that. So if we think about

that. So if we think about access to the moment and sort of full spectrum access to these different emotional sensitivities, let's just say

I know that's that's a bit of a clumsy way to word it, but let's just say that.

How do you personally think about colllocating you and your family? And

here's what I mean by that. The way that I have tried to solve for this, what I've realized is that in a place like New York City where I'm sitting and it's like got accosted by this very aggressive,

probably mentally unstable person yesterday in huge crowds of people.

>> Mhm. a feeling of like collective cauterization, if that's a word, but just people have dropped down walls and I put on sort of a protective armor that

seemingly disallows me to access all of these different sensitivities because it just seems like suicide to be too porous in an environment like this, right? So whether

I wanted to be open or not, I I don't think it would be good for me necessarily in New York City in most places to have that level of kind of openness, right? So, I I do spend a lot

openness, right? So, I I do spend a lot of time in cities. I find cities exciting, but I block out, you know, a few weeks of the year where I'm just completely off the grid and hopefully at

the very least keeping these sensitivities from atrophying too horribly, right? Like I'm working the

horribly, right? Like I'm working the muscle in these blocks of time that I that I put out. There are other people, of course, who just live

in a more peaceful perhaps environment that allows for this type of exploration and expression and experience, right? And it

doesn't need to be the middle of South Africa. It doesn't need to be in the

Africa. It doesn't need to be in the middle of the mountains of Montana. It

could just be in a peaceful suburb. It

doesn't need to be or in a like a chiller city than New York City potentially. How do you think about this

potentially. How do you think about this for yourself?

>> I think about it probably through discernment. Like I think that it's wise

discernment. Like I think that it's wise to to be somewhat armored in the environments you're describing. But what

I see in groups now a lot, this has become the core thing is I see particularly in men's groups a desire to be more available, you know, but

actually not knowing how to not having the the access and the literacy to know what that would even look like. But now

you don't want to go into extreme tenderness, you know, in the middle of New York City. You you probably want to be exactly where you are, but you want to know that you can open to deeper

levels in the right context.

>> And you want to know what has kept you out of that, which would usually be some kind of conditioned response, something that you learned to do, a way you learned to freeze or shut down when

things became overwhelming. And then you want to figure out how to develop more options for yourself in that moment.

Trauma to me is freezing, right? Anytime

you've been forced into some kind of traumatic situation, it's characterized by a reduction of options.

>> Mhm.

>> And so in order to cultivate more presence, one is you have to be present to the fact that you're frozen and actually be able to feel like, okay, in this moment I want I want to be more connected, but I don't know how. So,

first to be present to that and then second to start to figure out what what other choices would look like >> and literally other things you could do in that moment in to move out of the

frozen state. And that's where I think

frozen state. And that's where I think the men need other men than the wild man is somewhat a collective exploration. Men

being with men particularly in wild places that it just naturally starts to emerge. You don't have to work at it too

emerge. You don't have to work at it too hard and it doesn't have to turn into a drum circle. If you take a bunch of guys

drum circle. If you take a bunch of guys out into a natural wild place, their psyche starts to relate to that wild place and they start saying, "I I can't

tell you why. It's intangible. It's

energetic." But something about this has something to do with me. I can feel myself in a way here in the presence of that waterfall and that mountain and

that lion and the process of being out here. I can feel myself. And then the

here. I can feel myself. And then the conversation starts to open and you're able to start to say like, okay, where are the places where we run into

blockage and if we want to be wild, we need access to the moment. Just like in the way that an an innocent animal has access to, it knows what to do in any given situation. Like leopards are not

given situation. Like leopards are not in their heads. If they want to be aggressive, they're aggressive. If

they're caring for their young, they're caring for their young. If they need to set a territory, they do it. it it flows out of them. And so that creating spaces in which that can naturally start to occur has become really interesting to

me.

>> How do you think about Well, side note for people, I don't know why this popped into my head, but if you're like, man, I'm never going to see a leopard. I was

like, you can get a little whiff of leopard if you go to the movie theater and the popcorn is burnt.

>> Smells like leopard urine. So that's

just a just if you want to take a big big inhale. When leopards mark their

big inhale. When leopards mark their territory, they spray and it has the almost exact scent of popcorn.

>> Yeah, it's really wild. I remember I was like I was like, "Nah, that's not possible." And then we were driving at

possible." And then we were driving at one point and I think it might maybe it was Cersant, but one of the one of the trackers that we were with was like held up a hand to stop the car and I was

like, "Holy [ __ ] there it is. I feel

like I'm sitting in the movie theater.

That's crazy." In any case, I'll leave that there. But what do you think the

that there. But what do you think the trappings of some personal development or men's groups are? And the reason I ask and this this is not a strong position I'm taking but it's just a thought is that there are many side

effects and many benefits too of a highly individualistic society.

>> Right? So if you in the case of the US you take this Protestant work ethic, rugged individualism, this lionizing of the the selfsufficient

independent person. There's a lot of

independent person. There's a lot of production that can come from that, right? like productivity, but there are

right? like productivity, but there are there is is frequently some degree of collateral damage and from a collective perspective. And that's that's not too

perspective. And that's that's not too woo. Like collective could just mean

woo. Like collective could just mean like in your family, right? Like if you if you trained yourself to be sort of a cold-blooded business killer with

blinders on and that's the gear you learn to use is sixth gear. If you don't have some degree of flexibility and you're very good, which is very common, this applies to I think men in a lot of

fields, women probably too, but I think especially men, compartmentalization, so when you're able to like increase your pain threshold, compartmentalize certain things, lock certain things away can make you very, very, very effective as a

performer, >> but in an interpersonal respect, it can be compromised. Okay, the reason I'm

be compromised. Okay, the reason I'm bringing all this up is that I think about say let's just take for example men who want more access to different

states and sensitivities. And I'm like, okay, well, why do they want that? Well,

they might want it because they want to be able to better listen and interact with their >> partner, right? And just for the sake of argument, let's say that's a female partner. And I'm like, okay, well, I

partner. And I'm like, okay, well, I agree with that. Right? This has been one of my homework assignments for the last two decades. It's getting better at conflict deescalation, which I never had a good model for. I've made a lot of

progress, more work to be done. But

there's also I feel like maybe that this perceived necessity on the part of men is a reflection of

also a society in which you have a couple within which each person expects the other to be kind of everything for them. Mhm.

them. Mhm.

>> So it's actually we need more community solutions where it's like okay look if you expect your man to be just like one of your girlfriends you're going to have a chat with like you got the wrong animal probably right and then if the

dude is like why can't you just be a dude let's be dudes it's like well maybe you just have you got the wrong animal which is part of the reason why I block out for these weeks when I do these

trips they're almost always all all men trips right because that's that type of experience in modern day I think is largely absent or disallowed outside of

maybe a few sports context and similarly if if a couple is in isolation right putting aside the child rearing aspect of this and the challenges that entails I suppose this

is very meandering but I haven't verbalized this before to what extent do you feel like personal development for let's just take the men's group as an example

should focus on the individual and that kind of access versus trying to figure out some like structural solutions and scheduling and blocking things out so that they have access to more people outside of their partner. Does that make

sense?

>> Yeah, I think it does. I think there's steps to it. I think the first step is both partners developing more literacy

away from the partnership. So I think it's first work in the eye.

>> There's an inevitability and a necessity to that. Then once you start to get more

to that. Then once you start to get more skills in the eye, you want to bring that to the Wii.

>> Mhm.

>> And you want to start to practice. And I

I actually think that one of the issues with relationship is that our model for it is still like, you know, built on the romantic traditions and it's like you're going to fall in

love and then, you know, here's this beautiful thing. Whereas relationship to

beautiful thing. Whereas relationship to me now is way more an active practice space. But you have to be working

space. But you have to be working yourself and together. So those two things have to go together at some stage. The problem is is that you need

stage. The problem is is that you need your blind spots revealed and you need people who have more access to help guide you into new choices and new ways

of being. You need something from the

of being. You need something from the outside to help you see what your blind spot was. Mhm.

spot was. Mhm.

>> Like very very often you need something to offend your own pattern or your own blindness and help you see it in a different way and then you bring those awarenesses to the group and then I

think hopefully what starts to emerge out of that is there's what the relationship wants to be for

others and ideally it should turn into a place of service not just for your direct family but for the larger community where you start to know we have something unique to give to the

community. And I think when enough

community. And I think when enough people start to take that up, that's where you could see like systemic models for change.

>> Mhm.

>> But I think men masculine essence needs other men to liberate itself more. And

same with feminine essence needs other women to liberate itself more. And then

to bring those two together with more awareness becomes part of the the funness of the game, I think.

>> Look, you know, I'm a junkie for personal development stuff. So, I'm kind of like I feel like I'm in an AA meeting for like personal development addicts.

I'll tell just a brief story. So, on

this Montana trip, keeping in mind I keep using that example because it's most recent, but this is I'd say at least three or four times a year, there's a trip of some type with guys.

And in this case, small group, it's like four or five guys. And at one point, we're sitting around a fire at night just rapping and talking and talking and talking. And then one of the guys said,

talking. And then one of the guys said, he's like, "I just figured out why fire is so important for guys." And we're like, "Why is that?" And he goes, "Because we don't have to make eye contact. We just look at the fire and we

contact. We just look at the fire and we can have all these really deep conversations." Whereas in most

conversations." Whereas in most circumstances, like if you're staring deeply into another guy's eyes, it's kind of an aggressive, it's just this ingrained kind of aggressive defensive dynamic.

>> If you stare in someone's eyes, you're going to make out or kill each other.

>> Yeah. Right. So,

>> you know that old joke like you say to your buddy, "Hey, do you want to go and sit by the lake and talk for 6 hours?"

It's like, "No, it's like, do you want to go fishing?" Yeah, let's do that.

>> Yeah. Right. Exactly. Hearkening back to what you said about like don't try too hard.

>> Yeah. the like knowing and this is more an open question, but as I get older and as I see some of the trappings and weaknesses or insufficiencies that both

the necessity of and the insufficiency of direct head-on personal work.

>> Mhm. I wonder what the ratio is between sort of deliberate like microscope work so to speak and like the indirect work, this is going to sound really crass,

which is like building a raft and going fishing, which we did with like handmade lures and all this stuff while telling like fart and dick jokes, right? It's

like it doesn't seem serious. Like no

one would put that in a book and be like, "Okay, step number one, like come up with three of your favorite dick jokes." It's not going to be in any

jokes." It's not going to be in any self-help book, but nonetheless, it seems to do a lot of lifting.

>> Yeah.

>> And there's the bonding. And the older I get, the more I think that it's like, okay, we can look at the 27 different options for improving ourselves. And

ultimately, what is all that? Why are we doing that? Well, it's probably to

doing that? Well, it's probably to achieve like some emotional state to improve the quality of our quality of life and the quality of life of say our family members around us. Okay.

Well, like having in the case of these trips that I'm describing, right, some guy time where you're not necessarily I mean there is some goofing off, but there's generally shared projects and

like shared suffering of some type and a lot of exertion like you said. It's

like, yeah, let's sit by the lake and talk for 6 hours. No thanks, but let's go fishing and by the way, kind of do the same thing. Okay, great. Let's do

it. that the answer is like is the relationship stupid, right? And the

content is is secondary to like the spending of time in a particular way.

>> 100%. And you don't have to work hard.

>> Yeah.

>> Like once you get there, the only thing that I would say is a little bit of context to it. If you have a few guys in the group who have done the work of developing a little bit more access and

have and can make reads, then you don't have to club it. You know, you can mostly be talking [ __ ] floating down the river, but then occasionally with a little bit of context, someone can say,

"Hey, here's what I see you being blind to.

>> You can tell me to [ __ ] off. You can

take it on board. You can It can go any way, but here's here's how I notice you show up. Do you know that you do that?"

show up. Do you know that you do that?"

Now, if you just try and weigh in on that, it's like, "Fuck you. Leave me

alone." But if you've had some time together doing some real stuff, like there's an opening there that I found the rate of download to be incredibly high.

>> Yeah.

>> And everyone, the community piece is that no one has all the answers.

Personal development work for personal development work's sake is just [ __ ] self-indulgent.

But once you add in the dynamic of relationship, as you said, then there's love and then there's care. And it's

like, you know, I'm what I'm saying to you is coming out of care. It's coming

out of a piece of my journey. And what

you find is everyone has a piece for everyone. Then the community is more

everyone. Then the community is more intelligent than the individual. And

that's where the the major unlocks start to have where someone who's not even in the role of facilitator or leader says, "Hey, you know, there's a way in which

you show up that makes me like not feel like I can trust you." Mhm.

>> And I'm just telling you that by way of feedback. I don't know whether you want

feedback. I don't know whether you want to take that on board or not.

>> You know, things start to happen.

>> And if you've rafted a river together, you tend to take more than than you would just jettison.

>> With the example that you just gave, there are lots of ways to communicate that. Yeah. Right. I mean, you might

that. Yeah. Right. I mean, you might just be like, "Hey, man. I could be making this up as a story, but like, have you ever considered A, B, or C?"

>> 100%. Because if you're going to use the language of say the 15 commitments of conscious leadership, you better [ __ ] make sure the other person has an idea of what the hell you're talking about.

Amazing toolkit, but you kind of have to agree on the language beforehand.

>> Yeah, >> we're coming up on roughly time, but I want to make sure that we do perhaps two things. One is maybe add one more story

things. One is maybe add one more story and then cover anything that you'd like to touch on that we haven't covered.

What do you think is a good kind of bookmark story here? I have lunch the baboon down.

>> Let me tell you about lunch.

>> Okay.

>> Lunch was a baboon that picked up the nickname lunch because he started showing up at lunchtime and he started causing absolute havoc around the camp.

>> Yeah.

>> And lunch even worked out how to break into the kitchen. And I remember once being in the kitchen and the chefs had barricaded one of the doors with some rocks and the door was literally

vibrating. Gaga and every time it was it

vibrating. Gaga and every time it was it was being forced from the outside every time the rock would slide and the door would open a little bit more. And then

this furry hand came in and gripped the handle and then lunch burst into the kitchen and he walked across to the counter where there was a cake and he picked up the cake and walked off on his

hind legs holding the cake in his hands.

And just for people who don't have a picture of a baboon, I mean, I find those things pretty [ __ ] terrifying.

>> A baboon is a formidable. He's like a three-foot muscular hairy dude with long canines.

>> Yeah.

>> There's this thing in animal intelligence, and you probably even know this better than me, but there these modes of awareness. There's I know, then

there's I know you know, then there's I know that you know. So it's like the first awareness is just, you know, I'm aware of you. Then it's I'm aware that you're aware of me. That's like higher

level. So sometimes I would walk through

level. So sometimes I would walk through the camp and lunch would be like involved in some kind of mischief. He

would be breaking into a guest's mini bar and then he would see me and he would know that I knew that he was up to mischief and then he would kind of pretend to just be like loiting around.

Nothing to see here, just being a baboon in my natural environment. I remember

the other day I was going through some notes on my desk and I found a a minute from a meeting and the literal minute was like we need to get new crockery and

cutlery for tree camp. Land Rover number eight needs to be repaired.

His troop needs to fear our troop. And

basically it was like someone deciding that they needed to try and scare Lunch out of the camp. And so for a period of days I decided I was going to like chy him out of the camp. And listen, it was

elaborate cuz every time I tried to chase him, he would hide. He got into the mini bar. He drank some booze. I

found him sitting in the pool one day.

He was just like causing general chaos.

I had a little BB gun that I decided that I would shoot him with. And the one day I found him, he was sitting on a guest's Audi that was parked in the car park. And when I aimed the gun at him,

park. And when I aimed the gun at him, he just lay flat against the Audi like, "I dare you." So he was up to no good.

Anyway, the one day I'm sitting in the office and the phone rings and my sister picks up the phone and she starts talking in that very intent way. She

really I can't believe that royalty.

Yes, of course we can. And everyone in the room was like eavesdropping cuz it sounded so intense. So she hangs up the phone and she says, "Boy, a prince is coming to Londoi."

And this is like a tremendous amount of excitement. And there's like months and

excitement. And there's like months and months of prep and setup to the arrival of the prince. There's like endless amount of logistics. A satellite dish has to be put up so that the prince can

stream certain sports games. There's a

special chef that has to come in.

There's a whole lot of things that need to come into the boutique so that there can be unique shopping experiences. At

one stage there's talk of lengthening the runway so that a jet can land. We're

going backwards and forwards and you know you leers with these kind of like entourage liaison. So there's like just

entourage liaison. So there's like just it's all happening and eventually the day arrives that the prince is arriving and we were quite pleased with ourselves cuz we were on top of all of the

logistics. A special face cream had been

logistics. A special face cream had been flown in and I remember the first three or four planes that landed were just entourage and luggage. And then

eventually the prince was coming into land and Bronwin said to me, my sister, she said, "Boy, you need to run down to the room. Final thing we need to do and

the room. Final thing we need to do and you need to put these cold face cloths in the room." So I grab my radio and I run down to the suite. And as I'm running down, the walkie-talkie is going

off. The prince is 10 minutes out, 10

off. The prince is 10 minutes out, 10 minutes out. Prince has landed. He's now

minutes out. Prince has landed. He's now

8 minutes out. 8 minutes out. And I get down to the suite and I open it and it opens into a kind of living room and then you go through a kind of a lock

area where there's a cupboard into the main bedroom and then into the bathroom.

And as I get there, I notice that the door is slightly adjacent. So I think to myself, it must just be that the housekeeping have left the door open. I

walk through, I come through the bedroom and as I get to the bathroom, standing at the bathroom counter with a bottle of

papaya hand lotion in his hand is lunch.

And as he sees me and I block the doorway, he starts downing hand lotion.

He starts chugging it into his mouth.

It's like, you know, mango papaya hand lotion. He even gets a streak of lotion

lotion. He even gets a streak of lotion across his top jel. And then he realizes that he's in a confined space. And he

drops the jar of lotion, stands in the glass, cuts his feet a little bit, and launches himself in a full dive across the bathroom at the giant panel of glass

across the bath where you can look out onto the river. He smacks the glass. His

hands come down. He puts a bloody handprint on it. He pushes back off the glass. He flies onto the ceiling. And

glass. He flies onto the ceiling. And

now he starts to make baboon noises. Bow

bow. And at the same time, he starts to use the patented baboon technique for getting out of dangerous situations, which is to massively release your

bowels. And so, for a few seconds, this

bowels. And so, for a few seconds, this baboon bounces around causing absolute chaos, knocking over bath salts. He's

standing on the faucet. His hands are bleeding. There's lotion. There's crap

bleeding. There's lotion. There's crap

everywhere. He's barking at me. B. Then

he turns and he comes at me. And Tim, I remember I let out a little scream. Ah.

And I leaned back and he flew in slow motion past me and in midair he turned and he looked at me as he went past and he had like a look of like savage glee

on his face and lotion like down across his jaw. He then he landed on the bed

his jaw. He then he landed on the bed and he bound it across the bed with these bloody handprints, released another massive turd and then ripped the

front ver doors open and dived off the front ver like a stock broker in a recession and the whole time you still see B and he disappeared into the river. The

room as I looked around the room like I cannot tell you what a what a baboon in a confined space does. The room looked like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It is

blood and [ __ ] and lotion and baboon hair. There's a turd on the pillow. It

hair. There's a turd on the pillow. It

It smells strongly of baboon. And then

it looks quite humanlike because baboons have very similar black paws to humans.

There's like a bloody handprint on the wall and like someone's grabbed the faucet with a like so it looks like someone's been murdered in there. The

walkie-talkie goes off. The prince is now 5 minutes out. 5 minutes out. I

called my sister on the radio. I said,

"Bro, you've got to get down here with the housekeeping team. This is an absolute [ __ ] show." So, she comes down with a group of of chambermaids and house housekeeping ladies and they start

to go ham on this room trying to get it back into working order. Meanwhile,

a massive pantomime breaks out on the main reception area of the lodge as the staff of Londoi try and delay the prince from coming to his room. Hello, your

majesty. Could we offer you a quick wine tasting? He's like, "No, I just arrived.

tasting? He's like, "No, I just arrived.

I want to go to my room." We would like to take you straight out on a safari right now. There's a leopard with a kill

right now. There's a leopard with a kill nearby. Uh, that sounds good, but I'd

nearby. Uh, that sounds good, but I'd like to go to my room. Okay. What about

the ladies choir who like to sing songs and do traditional dancing? He's like,

"No, I'm going to my room." And what saved us, Tim, was in the middle of this elaborate faulty towers pantomime, a hippo walked out into onto the rocks in

front of the camp in the middaylight and the people of Londoi acted like they had never seen a hippo before in their lives. People started screaming, "Oh my

lives. People started screaming, "Oh my god, a hippo. We never see hippos out of the water. Someone go and fetch a

the water. Someone go and fetch a spotting scope." Someone brought a

spotting scope." Someone brought a telescope down and that brought us about 15 minutes while the prince took in the the hippo. Staff were acting like the

the hippo. Staff were acting like the hippo was the most amazing thing the world had ever seen. Anyway, eventually

we can stall him no longer. He comes

down to the room and literally as he comes in the room, the chamber maids slip out of the sliding door in the bathroom and they get into the long grass around the suite and they've got

mops and buckets and baboon [ __ ] in their hair. And as one, they just drop

their hair. And as one, they just drop down into the grass. They just like disappear and lie there in absolute possum status. And there's this

possum status. And there's this incredible moment where the prince comes into his room and it, you know, smells of room spray and everything's clean and the mirror has been put straight and he walks out onto the front ver and he

looks out over the river and a hippo calls nearby. Oh. Oh. And it's just

calls nearby. Oh. Oh. And it's just everything is quiet and he's like, "Wow, it's so good to be out here alone for thousand miles of every direction." And

he turns and walk back into his room and 12 chamberlades rise up out of the grass around his suite. And that is the day that lunch really got us.

>> Lunch the baboon.

>> Lunch the baboon.

>> Holy [ __ ] What a story.

>> This is another true story. One day we were out, bunch of guides talking about a bunch of guides out together and we drive out and it's like an afternoon we've all got off, we're drinking some beers and there's like a rocky outcrop

and that the rocky outcrop is is like a small hill and it's silhouetted against the skyline and we see lunch literally silhouetted on a rock up against the

skyline and he's with a lady baboon and he's doing some very naughty things to her and I swear Tim when he saw us he put his one hand up in the air like this and gave That's like kind of a high five

look.

>> Oh, London Delozi, protector of all things. There have to be moments when

things. There have to be moments when you're like, h, just want to could we just blast him off that rock and be done with lunch?

>> No, it's amazing to live amongst the animals. The other day, I mean, the

animals. The other day, I mean, the other day I was sitting watching a warthog. He was grazing up on the runway

warthog. He was grazing up on the runway and then he to I literally saw a thought occur to him and he turned and he began to walk. He walked like two kilometers

to walk. He walked like two kilometers down to the camp and I followed him the whole way and he made his way to where a woman was washing some clothes and she was hanging them on a washing line and

the water is dripping off the clothes onto the ground and it's making this little flush of green grass and literally he knows that's a good place to go and get some green grass. And so

there's this thing about living close to the animals like that that you notice there's an intelligence to it. And it's

almost like your community expands to include the trees and the animals and these unique personalities that you get to know. And it's not just

a random baboon, but it's like that's lunch. And it's not just a random

lunch. And it's not just a random leopard, but we know this leopard. She

allows herself to be seen. We have a relationship with her. And that's a very very deep and and beautiful way to live.

>> Yeah. And just to underscore what you just said about leopards, like if you see a leopard, that leopard is allowing you to see them. And if they want to

vanish, even in short grass, snap of the fingers, they are gone. It's just beyond incredible to see that happened where you're like, "Okay, they couldn't hide themselves if they wanted to. Like, that

grass is too short, da da da." and then they turn back and they're like, "Eh, had enough of you guys." And boom, they're just completely invisible. It's

It's remarkable to see. Boyd, anything

you'd like to say before we wind to a close? Where can people find you? Where

close? Where can people find you? Where

should people go to learn more about all things Boyd?

>> Yeah, thanks Tim. People can go to boyd.com to find out about retreats and books.

Cathedral of the Wild and Lion Tracker's Guide to Life. That's the best place to figure out if you want to come on a safari or if you want to come to Africa.

That's also a good way to do it.

>> Boyd B O Y D V A R T Y.com. Good to see you, buddy. Thanks for making the time.

you, buddy. Thanks for making the time.

>> Good to see you, man. Thanks so much for having me on.

>> Yeah, absolutely. And everybody

listening, we will link to I'm not sure exactly where we're going to link to.

We'll link to some names and other things. We'll link to the the highlight

things. We'll link to the the highlight reel of Lunch the Baboon. I'm kidding.

We'll link to all things mentioned that can be linked to in the show notes as always at tim.blog/mpodcast.

If you just search Boyd Bod, both episodes will come up. This is episode number two. Definitely, if you enjoyed

number two. Definitely, if you enjoyed this, also listen to episode number one.

And until next time, as always, be just a bit kinder than is necessary. Why not?

It doesn't take a whole lot of extra effort and the payoff is enormous.

Kinder to others and also just a tad bit kinder to yourself cuz it goes both ways. And uh you can work those muscles

ways. And uh you can work those muscles on both sides. And thank you for tuning in.