Episode 52
Increasing Connection + Sensation with Adrian Grenier
So many of us have had the experience of nature, of farming, bringing us back to ourselves. Adrian Grenier’s story isn’t much different - several years ago he found himself disconnected and in a state of constantly numbing. Coming back to the idea of ‘chop wood, carry water’ he came home to a place after changing just about everything. Adrian and I talk about the nature of disconnection and the connection we can find in nature. We start with the idea that everything has to die - even versions of ourselves - in order to nourish our future, where we might even find ourselves in the infinite. One of Adrian’s philosophies is to constantly be increasing sensation and connection - so we dive into just what that might mean on a practical level. Adrian is an apprentice of the land and exploring what it means to live at Earth Speed.
Find Adrian:
Instagram: @adriangrenier, @earthspeed
Other Great Interviews with Adrian:
Adrian Grenier on the Meat Mafia
Timestamps:
00:00:00: Introducing Adrian and how we met
00:10:30: Spring sets some themes of death, rebirth, renewal, transformation
00:12:37: Finding future self in the infinite
00:18:30: Death of versions of ourselves
00:20:30: Chop wood, carry water - connecting to nature
00:26:35: Increasing sensation and connection
00:35:00: Connecting to intuition
00:41:00: Being an apprentice to the land
00:46:05: Living at the cadence of earth speed
00:55:40: Feeling at home in earth + our current isolation
01:07:32: Starting with small solutions
Books Mentioned:
Matter and Desire: An Erotic Ecology
Current Discounts for MBS listeners:
- 15% off Farm True ghee and body care products using code: KATEKAV15
- 20% off Home of Wool using code KATEKAVANAUGH for 10% off
- 15% off Bon Charge blue light blocking gear using code: MINDBODYSOIL15
Mind, Body, and Soil
Find Kate: @kate_kavanaugh
Podcast disclaimer can be found by visiting: groundworkcollective.com/disclaimer
Transcript
Howdy.
Kate:I'm Kate Kavanaugh, and you're listening to the Mind, body and Soil Podcast where
Kate:we're laying the groundwork for our land, ourselves, and for generations
Kate:to come By looking at the way every threat of life is connected to one
Kate:another, communities above ground, near the communities, below the soil, which
Kate:mirror the vast community of the cosmos.
Kate:As the saying goes, as above so below, join me as we take a curious journey
Kate:into agriculture, biology, history, spirituality, health, and so much more.
Kate:I can't wait to unearth all of these incredible topics alongside you.
Kate:Hello everyone and welcome to the Mind, body and Soil Podcast where we are
Kate:exploring the threads of what it means to be humans woven into this earth.
Kate:I am your host, Kate Kavanaugh, and it is such a pleasure to be
Kate:here with you each and every.
Kate:Here on the podcast, it is my pleasure to host such a wide range of guests as
Kate:we explore things that are sometimes related to regenerative agriculture,
Kate:to spirituality, to our experiences as humans here on earth as it relates to
Kate:death oftentimes, and my guest today, Feel a little bit out of left field for you.
Kate:So I wanna provide just a little bit of context at the front of this.
Kate:Back in December, I had the pleasure of going out to Fredericksburg, Texas and
Kate:doing a butchery demo with the folks at Force of Nature meets on Rome Ranch.
Kate:And it was a really incredible opportunity for me to share a little bit about
Kate:physiology and ecology and nutrition, all rolled into the sort of connecting
Kate:to ourselves through Earth Package that I liked to roll things into.
Kate:And one of the guests there at the time was Adrian Grier and we
Kate:connected there and enjoyed a little bit of back and forth after that.
Kate:And so I decided to have him on the podcast to talk a
Kate:little bit about his journey.
Kate:Now, as you might know, if you have listened to this podcast
Kate:before, I love to leave.
Kate:Where other people have really covered a guest and go off the beaten path.
Kate:And so I've included in the show notes a couple of episodes where Adrian really
Kate:talks about his background because you might be thinking, what does this have
Kate:to do with agriculture or with earth?
Kate:But the Adrian's trajectory is deeply related to that.
Kate:And his, his journey is something that he has been really gracious in
Kate:sharing on several different podcasts and exploring some really vulnerable
Kate:topics on how he sort of left his celebrity lifestyle to move to a
Kate:ranch in Texas with his wife Jordan.
Kate:And so I encourage you to check those out if you want a little bit
Kate:of background since Adrian and I really dive right into the deep end.
Kate:One of the things I feel like I'm continually noticing as I interview guests
Kate:on the podcast is that our connection and relationship to nature changes us.
Kate:It changes the trajectory of our lives.
Kate:It changes the way we view the world, and that is incredibly powerful and I think
Kate:that it is reflective of our return to our return to being in place in the ecosystem,
Kate:and we really cover in this podcast just how powerful that change can be.
Kate:This is a really special podcast because this marks the one year anniversary
Kate:of the Mind, body and Soil Podcast.
Kate:This is episode of 52 and we launched on March 29th, 2022, and so this is the
Kate:one year anniversary, and I just want to reflect what a wild ride this year has in.
Kate:For those of you that have been listening for a while, you'll know that this
Kate:podcast has been in my heart for many, many years, and it is, it has been.
Kate:The biggest blossoming and opening and unfurling for me to put this out
Kate:into the world, and it has challenged me in so many different ways.
Kate:It has challenged my very anxious nature and the anxiety I feel.
Kate:Every time I turn on this microphone.
Kate:It has challenged.
Kate:Me to grow and to grow past a lot of the perfectionism that I think held me
Kate:back in those years where I was dreaming of doing this without hitting record.
Kate:It has also gifted me with some of the most beautiful friendships and human
Kate:connections that I had not anticipated.
Kate:I have struggled my whole life with connecting with people, and in this last
Kate:year, I have found more friends, made more connections, and had the opportunity to.
Kate:Go in the deep end with people, which has really been, I think part of what
Kate:has held me back in my life is that I'm just not very good at small talk.
Kate:And so it has been incredible to share this journey with you, and that
Kate:is what I really want to highlight in this, that this has been a shared
Kate:journey of reciprocity as I have embarked on these conversations with
Kate:guests and gotten the incredible response and feedback and dreams.
Kate:From you listeners for this podcast.
Kate:It's my relationship with you that really drives my curiosity each week
Kate:for us to open up these doors and, you know, pure under these rocks and
Kate:peek behind the curtain together.
Kate:Thank you so much for listening from the bottom of my heart.
Kate:It, it has, it has changed every fiber of my being and I am so grateful to bring
Kate:you this podcast each and every week.
Kate:With that being said, I would love to invite you if this podcast
Kate:has made an impact on your life to leave a reading and review.
Kate:As some of you will know in exchange for your reviews, if you wanna send me
Kate:a little screenshot of your review on Apple Podcasts, I would love to send you
Kate:a handwritten thank you card so that we can connect here in the tangible plane.
Kate:And with that, I'm gonna read a really beautiful review that I received this
Kate:week that really just warmed my heart.
Kate:So Sammy Miller, thank you.
Kate:It's titled, truly Decadent Conversations.
Kate:I am finally sitting down to write this review, and perhaps the first
Kate:thing I should mention is that I'm actually not a routine podcast listener.
Kate:I've always been much more drawn to audiobooks and following long stories
Kate:that take me elsewhere, but this podcast has converted me and I really
Kate:look forward to the rich and decadent conversations, Kate Chairs each week.
Kate:What you, me to this podcast with Kate's voice is, I've heard it through Instagram
Kate:and the fact that the curiosity and interest she shares online have a much
Kate:more in-depth capacity in this form.
Kate:I've always been interested in agriculture and food nutrition and have worked on
Kate:and off in these industries, so naturally this was bound to be a fit for me.
Kate:However, I've been so pleasantly surprised and delighted at the
Kate:additional topics explored here.
Kate:Just when you think, oh, this episode will be about fat, or salt or joy,
Kate:you realize the journey is taking you to unexpected, vital and interesting
Kate:corners you'd never thought to explore.
Kate:I find myself thinking about the conversation often
Kate:afterwards and interested to continue exploring on my own.
Kate:In short, I can't recommend this podcast enough.
Kate:Every episode taps into so much more than what can be relayed through
Kate:a title, so listen to them all.
Kate:I'm so glad I have, and thank you, Kate, for sharing your thoughts,
Kate:questions, and passions with us.
Kate:Sammy, I can't tell you what this review did to my soul.
Kate:It was.
Kate:Like a light for me, and I love that you enjoy these rich
Kate:and decadent conversations.
Kate:I know that one of my concerns when I started this podcast was how long
Kate:form I wanted it to be, that I really enjoy diving deep with guests, and
Kate:sometimes it takes couple of hours, maybe more for those conversations to
Kate:unfurl, and so I'm so glad that that is resonating with so many of you.
Kate:I think that so much nuance and so much joy and so much depth can be
Kate:unpacked when we allow something, the time and space that it deserves.
Kate:I am always grateful to be here with each and every one of you.
Kate:There are some affiliate links in the show notes it, which is
Kate:one way to support this podcast.
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Kate:comforter or some red light therapy devices or some really amazing grass-fed,
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Kate:Those are the ways that you can support, and I just want to tell
Kate:you all thank you from the bottom of my heart for participating in
Kate:the Mind, body, and Soil Collective.
Kate:I am so excited to bring you this interview with Adrian Grier.
Kate:I hope you enjoy it.
Kate:So I didn't realize when we booked this, that we were recording on the spring
Kate:equinox, and as I was creating this interview, it felt really, felt really
Kate:fortuitous or auspicious that that was the case as I kind of dove into these
Kate:themes of death, transformation, sensation and rebirth and regeneration, and Mm.
Kate:Realized that this morning.
Kate:Yes.
Kate:Oh, this is perfect timing.
Adrian:Yes.
Adrian:Beautiful.
Adrian:Uh, I, yeah, I did not realize that either, but now that you
Adrian:said it, I, I, I, I felt it Yeah.
Adrian:It was in
Kate:the air.
Kate:Yeah.
Kate:Yeah.
Kate:A little bit of a shift.
Kate:Sort of a, it's the new year in, in more land-based traditions that this is
Kate:the, this is the beginning of the year.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:I am not that sophisticated as of yet here on the land.
Adrian:I, I did try to plant, uh, within the moon cycles, . Yeah.
Adrian:But that, that proved just to be a little bit, uh, too advanced for me.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:We don't, it
Kate:was too advanced for me too
Kate:. Adrian: We can't do that.
Kate:Yeah.
Kate:I tried though.
Kate:I did try.
Kate:I I can, yeah.
Kate:I contemplated it and I was like, oh, but that, that lands on a Tuesday.
Kate:I can't do Tuesday
Kate:. Kate: It's not convenient for me.
Kate:Yeah, I understand that.
Kate:We don't, we don't plant on bloomer cycles.
Kate:I have a quote for us to start off with, and it's actually something that's
Kate:been really resonant for me in my life, and I wonder if it resonates with you.
Kate:If it doesn't, just throw it away, start somewhere else.
Kate:But it's from Confucius and it's, we have two lives, and the second begins
Kate:when we realize we only have one and.
Kate:It's a great quote.
Kate:Yeah.
Kate:Yeah.
Kate:This was a really big quote for me.
Kate:I had a moment where I realized that I only had one, and that
Kate:the trajectory I was going down wasn't where I wanted to be.
Kate:And as I listened to all these interviews with you, I was really struck at
Kate:that moment for any of us where we decide to, to make a u-turn, where
Kate:we see that, that realization that we only get this one precious life.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:Um, , I don't wanna start out the podcast by pushing back on, uh, on
Adrian:Confucius, , , but I, I, you know, I don't know if I, uh, necessarily agree, I
Adrian:think there's probably a third life that we come into because I, I realized that,
Adrian:that I actually am infinite, that I'm an infinite being and that I have forever.
Adrian:To be creative, so I don't have to rush.
Adrian:I don't have to, I don't have to do it all at once.
Adrian:The, the thing that motivated me for the, my, I guess my twenties and my
Adrian:thirties was I need to eat everything, taste everything, do everything,
Adrian:have everything, consume as much as possible and accumulate because this
Adrian:is my one time and I need to do it all now, because when I die, that's it.
Adrian:So there was this nihilism baked into my personality and my,
Adrian:my perspective, my worldview.
Adrian:So there's a desperation and, and a, a fear of death.
Adrian:Mm-hmm.
Adrian:sort of baked into everything I was doing.
Adrian:And then when I realized that I like I can live again and that I will live
Adrian:again, I wanted to start making the world.
Adrian:Better for that me that gets to be born into the world in the future.
Adrian:So, and, and whether that's me in the ex exact form or if it's me embodied
Adrian:in my children, or it's just that collective conscience that gets to
Adrian:continuously come back and be reborn.
Adrian:Uh, I realize that there's a conversation to be had between the me that exists
Adrian:today in this physical form and that future self and, and Confucius is that,
Adrian:you know, look, it had a nice ring to it.
Adrian:I'm gonna actually have to workshop my one liner
Adrian:. Kate: Uh, I really liked that pushback
Adrian:this conversation that we're having with our future selves through this act of.
Adrian:Transformation.
Adrian:And I think one of the things that comes up for me a lot on the farm is this idea
Adrian:of transformation of energy and matter continuously into one another, right?
Adrian:That the, the soil and these rocks that are just, you know, stardust compressed
Adrian:by deep time are pulling up minerals.
Adrian:That's going into plants, that's going into animals that I'm
Adrian:eating, that I'm taking care of.
Adrian:And then eventually I'm going back into that same cycle.
Adrian:And I think within that there is that infiniteness that we are made
Adrian:up of particles, that were a part of the singularity of the big bang.
Adrian:And so there is no, there is no beginning and no end to us necessarily.
Adrian:And I think that that realization, and I don't, I haven't reached the space where
Adrian:fear of death still isn't present for me.
Adrian:But I think when we reach that, that space of understanding the infinite, it changes
Adrian:the way that we want to be in the world.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:Uh, you know, I, I guess my quote would be because life is infinite.
Adrian:It's never too late to make a change, you know, and I, I feel like sometimes,
Adrian:um, we sort of double down on all the tricks and identities that we've
Adrian:established at one time, and we're afraid to change because it feels hard or it
Adrian:feels like it's gonna take time or, you know, I, I feel like it's, it's always
Adrian:it to connect into that creativity and that spontaneity and that potential.
Adrian:You have to be willing to let go of all the things, all the mistakes that
Adrian:you've made are all the things that you've tried for a, a newer, better way.
Adrian:And if, if you have that time pressure and that anxiety, you
Adrian:may not give yourself permission.
Adrian:I mean, I, I see a lot of people my age.
Adrian:Who are like, oh, you know, I, I, it is like what a midlife crisis is, right?
Adrian:Like, uh, I like it wasted my life to me.
Adrian:I've just been born and I have now I, I plan to live at least another
Adrian:50, 60 years, so I can now enter into a whole new iteration of my life.
Adrian:But now from a more intentional, A more conscious place, like I'm
Adrian:actually making decisions for the first time in my life that are my own.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:I'm not, you know, listening to mommy, you know, when I'm a baby, I, you
Adrian:know, you do what your mom tells you or your, you know, your whole world
Adrian:is, or is your home and your parents, and then maybe you branch out to listen
Adrian:to your teachers to do your homework.
Adrian:Or maybe you're listening to your friends in high school to, you know, be cool.
Adrian:You wanna like be accepted and then you enter the workforce and
Adrian:now you're listening to your boss.
Adrian:And then maybe you finally find yourself in your twenties and you're
Adrian:really rocking and rolling, but you're just trying to be cool with the world
Adrian:and find your place in the world.
Adrian:But what happens when you finally release yourself from all the, the,
Adrian:the servitude of others, but you serve that higher purpose within you.
Adrian:And then that's where I feel like I am now.
Adrian:Like I'm, everything I'm doing is really aligned with.
Adrian:what my true purpose, what my dharma, what my reason for being is.
Adrian:And that's for the first time in my life really.
Kate:Do you think that there was a process of going through a death of self
Kate:of sorts, like your own death process to reach that space where you felt
Kate:connected to your purpose, to your higher
Adrian:self?
Adrian:Yeah, because that old self identity was getting in the way of newness.
Adrian:I had to let go of that, that ego identity, that the, the, the ego
Adrian:death had to happen in order for, to leave room for new possibility.
Adrian:And that was hard to, to, to let go and to fully not just let go,
Adrian:but fully let that part of me die.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:You know, it's like one of those horror movies where the, the , the monster.
Adrian:Keeps coming back, you know, one last time where it's just, is it quite dead?
Adrian:No.
Adrian:Like one class, one last shutter.
Adrian:It would not die.
Adrian:It was so well situated and just established in, in me, um, that
Adrian:it kept rearing its ugly head.
Adrian:And I was like, I don't know if this thing is really quite dead yet.
Adrian:It took some practice to learn the new me.
Adrian:Yeah.
Kate:I, I love that, that it took practice.
Kate:I think that's an important, like we have to practice.
Kate:It's not something that happens in an instant, maybe it happens on a slower
Kate:timeframe, and we have time for that to unfurl, for that, to unfold, for
Kate:that to die, for that to be reborn.
Kate:I have this, you know, listening to some of your interviews.
Kate:You have this moment where you've, you've moved into this little trailer
Kate:in Austin on a little piece of property and you're, I think you were chopping.
Kate:Wood and hauling water.
Kate:And
Adrian:as the old proverb goes, I, I, I don't think it's Confucius, but it's
Adrian:an old Chinese, uh, proverb, I guess chop wood carry water, meaning, I think,
Adrian:I think what it is, is, um, the whole quote is something like, you know, when,
Adrian:when times are tough, chop wood, carry water, when times are good, chop wood
Adrian:carry water, you know, the idea is do be detached from how the world is and
Adrian:just continue to keep your head down and
Kate:do the work.
Kate:Yeah, I love that.
Kate:Um, as I'm a big fan of hard work and I think that that work where you're
Kate:in that space that it's connecting you to, to nature is a really interesting
Kate:space and I think one of my questions was like when you were in that space
Kate:and you were connecting back to nature, stripping away all of the noise.
Kate:what in that space does nature teach us about connection to ourselves and maybe
Kate:to another, or teach us about love?
Kate:Because I know that this dovetails into this beautiful love story
Kate:that you have with your wife.
Adrian:Hmm hmm.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:I, I grew up, I guess, in the post-modern era, you know, where we're very
Adrian:self-conscious, very self-aware, media commercialization of, of images, and we've
Adrian:become consumers to the point where we're consuming ourselves almost like ABOs, you
Adrian:know, it's like the Snake Eden, its tale where we're projecting images and creating
Adrian:content, and then we're selling each other ourselves, and then seeing ourselves
Adrian:reflected like narcissus and being.
Adrian:Consumed in that hall of mirrors and indulged in.
Adrian:And as humans, we need re we need attention, right?
Adrian:I mean, that's, if a baby gets no attention or if
Adrian:it's not held, it will die.
Adrian:So there's something about our makeup, the way we are as, um, beans
Adrian:that needs to be acknowledged, needs the awareness of the other, and
Adrian:on, on some level that's healthy.
Adrian:It's a healthy ego, right?
Adrian:And it's a healthy awareness of self.
Adrian:But right now, and like our culture, we're so hyper aware of everything and
Adrian:we see ourselves reflected so many times because everybody's trying to sell us
Adrian:something or, or get our attention, or we're trying to get other people's
Adrian:attention that it becomes, I think, uh, on some level, unhealthy and dysfunctional.
Adrian:The thing about nature, It doesn't have an agenda to sell you anything.
Adrian:It's not looking for you for your approval.
Adrian:It's not trying to get you to do anything.
Adrian:There's no, it, it's like even a sign, it has a, it's, it's addressing you, right?
Adrian:Like a, a sign that says stop or go, or th that away.
Adrian:You know, the, it's telling you something and has a face aside that is looking
Adrian:at you and telling you something.
Adrian:And even that very subtle piece of media of, of, that's content, right?
Adrian:That's even that, even though it's a sign, it's supposed to be informational,
Adrian:it's still gives you the impression that it's telling you something.
Adrian:So on sub some subtle subconscious level, you feel addressed.
Adrian:But when you go out in nature, There's no tree that's asking anything of you,
Adrian:that's not addressing you in particular.
Adrian:There's nature is, is just this balance of forces, and you are, you
Adrian:are placed within it without that self-conscious, without that attention.
Adrian:And it's a humbling experience in which you are now part of everything.
Adrian:You, you know, it's, you're now on equal footing with the universe.
Adrian:And that can be overwhelming because it's, yeah, it's an infinite
Adrian:It's infinite, right?
Adrian:Look up in the sky and you're just like, whoa.
Adrian:You know, it's, it goes on and on and on.
Adrian:So it feels a little bit isolated and scary and dis dis.
Adrian:It's, it's sometimes dis disjointed, disconcert.
Adrian:. And so part of letting go of my ego identity and coming down to earth was
Adrian:very much getting comfortable with that.
Adrian:The abyss, the infinite, you know, uh, unfolding of time
Adrian:and space that wasn't about me.
Adrian:That where, where I wasn't the center, it wasn't an egocentric experience,
Adrian:it was more egocentric in which I was now placed in my proper place,
Adrian:which was not in my own narcissism and self-awareness, but was in now
Adrian:connection with something much bigger.
Kate:I have this, I didn't know if I was gonna pull this quote, but I've been
Kate:reading this book, um, by Andreas Weber called Matter and Desire and Erotic
Kate:Ecology, and it's very much about . Why am I not reading that ? I don't know.
Kate:You need to be reading this book.
Kate:Um, it's very much about our place in that ecocentric, that we are just one thread
Kate:in this giant weaving of the universe.
Kate:And I think that that experience with nature, and I mean just, just from
Kate:what I know of what I've experienced, I'll just read this to you and,
Kate:and we'll see what shakes out.
Kate:So this is his third law of.
Kate:The third love desire, however, holds the opposite.
Kate:It emphasizes that we must be close to other living beings in order to grasp
Kate:certain depths of our own nature, certain ways of our transforming power, and our
Kate:deeply imaginative and creative character.
Kate:The third love desire states only in the mirror of other life.
Kate:Can we understand our own lives.
Kate:Only in the eyes of the other can we become ourselves.
Kate:We need the real presence of the most unknown.
Kate:The owls mute regard, the silent nudes gaze.
Kate:Only it can unlock the depths in ourselves that otherwise would be sealed forever.
Kate:We need the experience of an inside unfolding in front of us,
Kate:displaying itself as a fragile body.
Kate:We need other organisms because they are what we are, but with this cunning
Kate:twist, they are that hidden part of us, which we cannot see because we exist
Kate:through this part and we see with it.
Kate:Viewed in this light.
Kate:Other beings are the blind spot of our self-understanding.
Kate:It's invisible center, which is the source of all vision.
Adrian:You definitely have to send that to me.
Adrian:That that deserves probably a reread . That was a, that was beautiful.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:What does that, what does that say to you?
Adrian:What does that mean to you?
Kate:I think that there's this experience that we've had, right?
Kate:We're so disconnected.
Kate:And you know, one of the things I heard you say at one point is that
Kate:one of your goals with, with life and one of your philosophies is
Kate:increasing sensation and connection.
Kate:And this really resonated with me because I think that we are feeling bodies and
Kate:at this point of Decart and Newton, when we sort of embrace this sort of linear
Kate:way of thinking, when we get out of the cycles of the earth, when we come home
Kate:to that and we come home to our cyclical nature, to our place within nature, that
Kate:single thread that is one thread, uh, one infinite thread folded over many times,
Kate:I think that we get to see these parts of ourselves that we have disconnected from.
Kate:in what it means to carry water or to chop wood, or to put soil
Kate:in your hands or to plant a tree.
Adrian:Hmm.
Adrian:Yeah, no, that's, that resonates.
Adrian:Hmm.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:I'm just sort of sitting with that.
Adrian:I, I don't know how much we as individuals can feel Hmm.
Adrian:How much we can, how, how ex, how much expansiveness we can actually
Adrian:hold within our physical limitations.
Adrian:There's something we're talking about death or, I mean, I think death is
Adrian:probably a theme of this podcast, right?
Adrian:Or in your life at least oftentimes.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:Often.
Adrian:Often, yeah.
Adrian:Often comes back to death.
Adrian:. Yeah.
Adrian:All of us.
Adrian:Right.
Adrian:So there's as, as much as we might fear death, there's
Adrian:something that feels inviting.
Adrian:And comforting about non-existence, ah, the, the, the sweet relief of not
Adrian:having to feel and do anything and you're just, just peace, nothingness,
Adrian:of course, per chance to dream, right.
Adrian:We don't know if it was so comforting.
Adrian:Maybe that'd be one thing, but maybe it's not.
Adrian:Maybe it's, you know, worse than, than, than we can imagine.
Adrian:But I do feel like there's something about not wanting to have to feel that I crave.
Adrian:And that's why we escaped in drugs, alcohol, or any other number of things
Adrian:to numb and to make us stop feeling.
Adrian:And I did that for most of my life.
Adrian:There was some traumas that I had as a kid that at a certain point I
Adrian:decided that I didn't wanna feel, I didn't want anything to do.
Adrian:Is that, so I devised.
Adrian:ways in order to design a life that would keep me from having to feel those things.
Adrian:And I constructed a whole, I mean, throughout my day I was finding little
Adrian:ways to escape or to numb or to not think.
Adrian:And, and sure I didn't feel the things that were painful, but also I wasn't,
Adrian:I, I was not completely present.
Adrian:I wasn't here.
Adrian:So I think part of our opportunity and our burden is to be present, to be here now,
Adrian:and to feel what it's like to be alive.
Adrian:And that means to expand into more feeling as scary as and
Adrian:uncomfortable as that might be.
Adrian:And I guess in theory, If we can increase feeling and sensation to the outer
Adrian:reaches of our bodily experience, our human experience, uh, we might be able to
Adrian:see and perceive the world and interpret the world more accurately, cuz you have
Adrian:more data points, more information.
Adrian:And maybe some of that information isn't intellectual, maybe it's
Adrian:not even through the five senses, but it can be intuitive as well.
Adrian:Like what are, what are the sensations that come up that
Adrian:aren't even being stimulated by anything in the physical world?
Adrian:Are, are there other subterranean levels of awareness that can
Adrian:be unearthed and unlocked?
Adrian:And as I pursue my spiritual expansion and awakening, I say,
Adrian:yeah, there is for too long I was.
Adrian:Corralled into, and I was limited by my five senses, particularly the,
Adrian:the five senses below the waist.
Adrian:was one big, the one big sense that, you know, tends to, you know, be distracting.
Adrian:I was, I was all in my head intellectual so smug with all my fancy thinking
Adrian:and such, and rhetoric just limited.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:Like a, in a box really of I was head and cock.
Adrian:I mean, that's really, that's what it is.
Adrian:Right.
Adrian:But I had no heart.
Adrian:I didn't, I wasn't feeling in my heart cuz it was too painful.
Adrian:I had no gut, I, I, I wasn't able to sense what was, you know, the world
Adrian:around me except in how I interpreted and projected my own thinking onto it
Adrian:or something was carnal and, and felt.
Adrian:Pleasurable desire and was just motivating me that wasn't even in charge of that.
Adrian:So my journey as of late has been, okay, if I am an an, an, an antenna , if
Adrian:I am an antenna and I am receiving information from the universe, from
Adrian:the world, how can I polish that up?
Adrian:How can I tune my frequency to pick up the, the important stuff in the world?
Adrian:Not just the noise, but you can create, you know, find
Adrian:the signal within the noise.
Adrian:So yeah, increase sensation so that I can fine tune my instrument, which is.
Adrian:, you know, we're, we're, we're sticking up for a reason.
Adrian:Right.
Adrian:We're like an antenna.
Kate:How have you gone about increasing sensation?
Kate:Because I love this and I also love, you touched on something I heard you
Kate:say in another podcast, that feeling is truth, the most real thing you
Kate:can experience, and you were talking about it in reference to allowing
Kate:yourself a greater intuition or finding that in, in connection in sensation.
Kate:And so how are you
Adrian:fine-tuning this?
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:For a long time I was, if, if I, you know, you, the, the whole, you have
Adrian:to see it to believe it mentality.
Adrian:Well, if I don't see it, this, you know, I can't vouch for it.
Adrian:Or if, if it hasn't gone through scientific rigor and scrutiny
Adrian:and it hasn't been proved out through experimentation, or if some
Adrian:authority hasn't told me that it's the case, then I can't believe it.
Adrian:I had no religion, I had no faith.
Adrian:I had no, um, sense of the intangible.
Adrian:It had to be here.
Adrian:Now I had to know it to believe it.
Adrian:And that's, that's a trap, right?
Adrian:Because there's so much that is true, that is beyond language, beyond words.
Adrian:And I think we as a culture are stuck in this, in this heady headiness, we've
Adrian:forgetting how to feel and connect into the truth, which is beyond the flesh.
Adrian:So I have been really just before, like I had to really take, make the effort
Adrian:to take the time to get outta my head and into my heart and, and drop into my.
Adrian:, you know, a deeper awareness.
Adrian:But these days I feel like I'm, now that I'm a lot more developed in
Adrian:my familiarity with those parts of me, I don't have to work as hard.
Adrian:I, my intuition is online now.
Adrian:And, and you know, there, there was, and I don't know if this is
Adrian:just a corny mean, maybe it is.
Adrian:I think, I think I saw this in what the bleep do, do we know, you
Kate:know?
Kate:Yeah.
Kate:You see that?
Kate:Oh man, I haven't thought about that movie in a
Adrian:while.
Adrian:But yeah, I don't know why it just came to my mind.
Adrian:But they were talking about how some indigenous peoples had never seen ships.
Adrian:Like the way when, so when the, when settlers came, when the, the
Adrian:colonizers came, they were coming from the ocean on ships, these big ships,
Adrian:and they'd never s the indigenous people hadn't seen ships like that.
Adrian:So they didn't have a reference point.
Adrian:So when they witnessed them with their eyes, they c they
Adrian:didn't actually see them.
Adrian:They couldn't see them Until you have, until you're able to reference it.
Adrian:Some, just think about all the things that you are right in front of you
Adrian:that you, that you can't even Yes.
Adrian:Make sense of you.
Adrian:You, you're not witnessing, you're not seeing, you're not, because
Adrian:it doesn't, you, it doesn't have any context in your, yeah.
Adrian:In your life.
Adrian:So all the things that were around me that I was not aware of because that
Adrian:part of me was offline and now the whole world has opened up where I can sense
Adrian:things, I can feel things I, I can relate to my wife in a, on a deeper level.
Adrian:I can understand her in ways that she, for so long was.
Adrian:Screaming to get me to understand and I just couldn't get it.
Adrian:I didn't get it.
Adrian:It's, it's the difference between rolling around like an ameba, like a toddler
Adrian:and standing up and clumsily walking through life as a, as a, you know, baby.
Adrian:And then finally standing and being able to, to move, move about the cabin.
Adrian:There's a difference.
Adrian:I, I, I meet people and I, and whereas before I'd say, oh, what a nice guy.
Adrian:And now I say, oh, there's something off about this guy.
Adrian:And I'm feeling the conversation That is psychic.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:You know, people come into a room and they bring their energy, their traumas,
Adrian:whatever, and they're just like smearing it all over the place and be, whereas
Adrian:before I, I just wanted their approval cause I just wanted to be liked,
Adrian:so I didn't really even take note.
Adrian:But now I'm like, Ooh, yeah, that guy's probably not gonna
Adrian:be right for me in my life.
Adrian:He's probably gonna be a wrong turn.
Adrian:I'm able to be more discerning, make better judgements.
Adrian:I can be more honest with myself.
Adrian:I can see the world more accurately because I have more
Adrian:data points, more information.
Adrian:Yeah, that's, that's in increase in sensation.
Adrian:It's increasing awareness.
Kate:I love that.
Kate:I think it's so important and a life that we often numb from.
Kate:You had a great quote, and I don't remember where I heard it, but you said
Kate:that the betterment of society starts with the transformation of the individual.
Kate:And I think in many ways we've been talking about that so far, but I think
Kate:that one of the things I find interesting is when we have these transformative
Kate:experiences and then we seek out this connection to nature and we see the
Kate:transformative power of nature through regeneration and maybe tap into this space
Kate:of regenerative agriculture, and we find ourselves in this cycle of transformation
Kate:that as stewards of the land or, uh, I've heard you call it an apprentice of
Kate:the land, which I really love, that all of a sudden we're opening ourselves up
Kate:to cha up and open for change as we're.
Kate:Working with regenerating land.
Kate:And so I wanna, I wanna get to Kintsugi Ranch, which I haven't
Kate:heard you talk about as much on podcasts and about slowing down to
Kate:the cadence of earth with earth speed.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:You wanna just talk about it generally?
Kate:I wanna talk about, I mean, first I think, I'd love to know what that moment
Kate:was that you realized that you wanted to be in nature and working with it.
Kate:Mm-hmm.
Kate:To be an apprentice of the land.
Kate:Why don't we start there?
Kate:Yeah.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:So I guess I haven't talked about consi as much because I'm trying to find that
Adrian:the right balance between being in the public eye and continuing to lean in and
Adrian:step into the public and keeping things a little bit more sacred and private.
Adrian:Before I was just, you know, I was out there and I just sort of, I was famous
Adrian:and I just sort of embraced that and just went all the way full, full hog.
Adrian:And now I'm really wanting to have sacred privacy and have and
Adrian:protect my family from the pitfalls of attention and, and fame.
Adrian:So I created earth speed as a way to communicate to the outside world.
Adrian:Whereas Kintsugi, which is our ranch and our home, it's, it's
Adrian:a little bit more private.
Adrian:Although they, they definitely, I mean, it's, it's hard to, to make a distinction
Adrian:cuz they're, they're ov, they overlap a absolutely, if not one and the same.
Adrian:But Kintsugi Ranch is, is our home in Kintsugi.
Adrian:is a perfect title.
Adrian:Title, A perfect name for , um, filmmaker and me.
Adrian:It is a perfect name for the the ranch cuz Kintsugi is the Japanese practice
Adrian:of mending broken pottery with gold.
Adrian:And that is a, a recognition that that which is broken can be made whole
Adrian:again and more beautiful by recognizing and honoring and revered the cracks.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:And bonding it bo bonding it back with gold highlights the cracks.
Adrian:So it actually is a story of anti-fragility and, and resilience
Adrian:and I think it's a beautiful story.
Adrian:Not only.
Adrian:A piece of pottery, to live again, a new life, but also for us as humans,
Adrian:to look at the parts of us that are broken and instead of spiraling into
Adrian:shame or regret or feeling inadequate, really looking at that as being part
Adrian:of what makes us uniquely beautiful and, and can make us stronger.
Adrian:It, there are very few things in the world that are anti-fragile and in humans'
Adrian:nature, we are anti-fragile because the more you throw at us, the stronger we get.
Adrian:Our, our muscles grow.
Adrian:When they tear, they tear repair, and they get bigger and stronger.
Adrian:So Kintsugi is the story of, of that, and of, of us as individuals,
Adrian:spiritually also a story of the land, how we can bring practices of
Adrian:regeneration and healing the planet.
Adrian:From the brokenness that it has endured at the hands of human beings.
Adrian:In many ways, we're repairing this land, making it whole again, healing some
Adrian:of the negative monocropping practices in the, the chemical fertilizers and
Adrian:pesticides that were here at one point, healing and Kintsugi in the soil.
Adrian:And then also my, my wife and I are a story of rebirth in that we,
Adrian:we were together for many years.
Adrian:We broke up, we spent two years apart, and then we, we got a, we,
Adrian:we got back together and, and so we are a story of Kintsugi as well.
Adrian:So that's a, it's just a, it's a sort of a perfect, perfect metaphor.
Adrian:Perfect word.
Adrian:Represents us.
Kate:It's a really beautiful metaphor, and I think it's a, it's
Kate:a really beautiful personal space, and we can leave that in the sacred.
Kate:I, I deeply understand that.
Kate:And transition into earth speed and yeah, this idea of living
Kate:at the cadence of earth, which I love because it's slow, right?
Kate:It's not, maybe it's not as fast as we're used to going.
Kate:And the cadence of a river as it carves a canyon over time is not
Kate:going to be what we think of as time in our, in our human meet suits.
Kate:But I would love to hear you talk about this a little bit, because I think
Kate:that this is, this is really beautiful.
Adrian:Yeah, thank you.
Adrian:It's, um, it's, it can be slow.
Adrian:It, it invites you to be slow, but it, it also, it can be fast too.
Adrian:The earth doesn't rush and yet everything gets done.
Adrian:Hmm.
Adrian:Right.
Adrian:And whereas humans, we always got, like, we had the time pressure, right.
Adrian:That, that the death, the oncoming death.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:So we had to do it all quickly.
Adrian:So yeah, when I got into the cadence of nature, I realized that I didn't have
Adrian:to, uh, move faster than evolution, you know, faster than your capacity to evolve.
Adrian:Sometimes you, you know, a lot of, a lot of times I see people out there,
Adrian:especially in social media, people jump into the fire before they're
Adrian:ready because they feel like they have to, you know, make a change or do
Adrian:something big or drastic in order to be relevant or to, for their lives to have.
Adrian:and, and, and they haven't taken that time to learn to work under a master,
Adrian:to be an apprentice, to fully mature, to go through the rights of passage,
Adrian:PA passages where they can become, come into themselves before they start
Adrian:trying to tell the world how to be
Adrian:. Kate: You said once that to mature you
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:and I think that so much of coming into first generation
Adrian:farming and, and life honestly, is
Adrian:that Yeah.
Adrian:It's first gen.
Adrian:Are you a first generation farmer?
Adrian:Yeah, I am.
Adrian:Oh, respect
Adrian:. Kate: Yeah.
Adrian:I mean, it's salty.
Adrian:You're, they,
Adrian:you're out there.
Adrian:I thought you're a professional.
Adrian:You, you're a professional In my eyes, I dunno.
Kate:I'm a professional butcher.
Kate:Uh oh, okay.
Kate:But I am not a professional farmer.
Kate:I am a, I'm a first generation farmer and I am trying to
Kate:figure it out as I go along.
Kate:But I think that those, that invitation to, to not rush and to not rush to know
Kate:and understand everything and to fail and to tottle and kind of flop around and
Kate:not knowing exactly what to do is, it's a transformative space and it gives you this
Kate:relationship with the land and this, this feedback cycle that you become a part of.
Adrian:Mm-hmm.
Adrian:. Yeah.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:I feel, um, yeah, I mean, just going back to that learner's mind.
Adrian:, right?
Adrian:That beginner's mind, I think that's what it's called, right?
Adrian:The beginner's mind where you, you know, you don't have like that arrogance of
Adrian:certainty where you're just making carbon copies of the thing, you know, as opposed
Adrian:to being creatively inventive and present for what is so that you can be, respond
Adrian:responsive to the world as it unfolds.
Adrian:And that's part, that's part of also the anti-fragile story.
Adrian:You know, if you're not, if you're not able to bend with and move
Adrian:with what is, then you know, you, you run the risk of breaking.
Adrian:So every day, I, I go out on the land and I try and not bring what I knew
Adrian:yesterday to the moment, but just witness and observe permaculture lesson
Adrian:number one, observe and interact.
Adrian:And that I, I don't think that ever ends.
Adrian:That's the first principle, because first you have to be in flow with what is, and
Adrian:you have to observe the world as it is, instead of it being what you want it to
Adrian:be, imposing your will upon the moment.
Adrian:And that's what modern cities are, right?
Adrian:You just, even the development next door that just come and clear, uh,
Adrian:clear out a bunch of old growth forest to, to pour concrete and put a shopping
Adrian:mall or something, you know, as opposed to saying, what is this land here?
Adrian:What is this space asking for?
Adrian:You know, how's the water flowing?
Adrian:You know, what, what trees are important to this ecosystem?
Adrian:What's important to preserve?
Adrian:But that would take, that takes longer, right?
Adrian:That takes patience.
Adrian:And our modern industry doesn't have the patience, doesn't want to work at the
Adrian:cadence of nature, wants to work at the cadence of ego and, you know, timelines
Adrian:and quarters and years and board meetings.
Adrian:And that's understandable.
Adrian:I get that.
Adrian:But is there a way that we can both be humans that are progressing forward?
Adrian:Because I think that's in our nature to, to build and create and create systems
Adrian:that are reliable and that, that uncouple us from nature to, to en enough that we
Adrian:can store food, you know, over multiple seasons so that we're not always at the,
Adrian:uh, mercy of the, the, the weather or the temperature or the crops that year.
Adrian:That's, that's our genius is that we can adapt and.
Adrian:and become more, we can overcome limitations, but at the same time,
Adrian:can we go back to be in that rhythm?
Adrian:Not, not, you know, go back, maybe not go back, but remember that we are part of
Adrian:that rhythm and the cycles and if we can plant in the moon cycles , if we learn
Adrian:that one day we might actually benefit because there are, there's technology
Adrian:that is non-human that has been developed over millions of years in nature.
Adrian:There's a design wisdom within nature that we, that would benefit us if we
Adrian:were to work with within, uh, and to paint using the palette that nature has
Adrian:created, would, I think, in theory, I, because I'm still a novice, I don't know,
Adrian:it's just an idea, , but would allow us to not only have everything that we, all
Adrian:the luxuries that we've grown accustomed to, but also do it so that we're,
Adrian:it's not at the expense of the earth.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:And so it's not extractive.
Adrian:Mm-hmm.
Adrian:, but it's additive.
Adrian:Mm-hmm.
Adrian:, because nature is additive.
Adrian:Nature by design produces no waste.
Adrian:It just is, it's just re regenerated.
Adrian:It's, um, recycling, composted, recycled.
Kate:In a literal way.
Kate:Like there, it, it is that recycling in the same way that you mentioned
Kate:the boroughs before, right?
Kate:That it is just constantly reentering cycle after cycle and
Kate:utilizing every, every piece, every mineral, every microorganism
Kate:inside of the soil to become again.
Kate:And I think that's, it's been a gift transformed for me.
Kate:Transformed.
Kate:Yeah.
Kate:And it's been such a gift for me to see that and to witness that possibility
Kate:within myself from moment to moment and to then interact with that transformation
Kate:at the level of going outside every day and becoming the observer, which
Kate:naturally I think pulls you out of that.
Kate:egocentric space.
Kate:You can't be an observer and not be, it gets you out of your head.
Kate:It gets you into a sense of being part of a place.
Adrian:Mm-hmm.
Adrian:. Mm-hmm.
Adrian:. Yes.
Adrian:And, and, and, and saying that, I think that's such an important
Adrian:benefit, is feeling at home.
Adrian:Feeling that you have place in the world, being human can be so lonely,
Adrian:and when you take the time to get into connection with nature, you
Adrian:realize that it's quite comforting, you know, that you are important,
Adrian:that you do have a role to play.
Adrian:There's so much mental illness and, and, and just human.
Adrian:Tragedy because people feel isolated and, and, and unseen
Adrian:and like they don't belong.
Adrian:There's so much shame and, um, an anti humanness.
Adrian:Right?
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:Especially in environmentalism, you know, uh, ironically under the guise
Adrian:of helped the planet, it's l you know, let's, let's, let's, uh, de depress human
Adrian:beings, you know, and make them smaller.
Adrian:Yeah.
Kate:Make them a blight on the earth too, which naturally builds that wall
Kate:of separation again, between us and nature, between us and our environment.
Kate:Not a part of it.
Kate:Right.
Kate:You're, you're
Adrian:the problem.
Adrian:You're the problem.
Adrian:You shouldn't be here.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:Your existence is actually a, a bad thing.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:And that does a lot of, I mean, just think about what, you know, what a kid.
Adrian:Here's what, what they must go through if you were to say
Adrian:that out loud to them, right?
Adrian:You are nothing.
Adrian:You're terrible.
Adrian:I wish you were never born, right?
Adrian:. And then you hear that echoed through environmentalism, that humans are bad
Adrian:and you know, you, you shouldn't be here.
Adrian:And you're, it's, it's because of you that the world is ending and
Adrian:that being, you know, destroyed.
Adrian:Whereas imagine the creative support that humans can be if they feel connected to
Adrian:the earth, if they feel like they belong, if they feel like they have purpose.
Adrian:We're just driving people into depression and into nihilism.
Adrian:And they want to escape and numb and they want to not feel
Adrian:anymore and they want to die.
Adrian:They want to not be here cuz they feel like everything is for not, they
Adrian:feel like the world is gonna end.
Adrian:And, and so they, they give up.
Adrian:. But if you connect with nature, if you, if you find your place at home in the earth,
Adrian:from the earth as part of earth, that's a to, there's a totally different message.
Adrian:The message is you are safe, you are home.
Adrian:You do have a reason for being here, and you're not, you're
Kate:not alone.
Kate:I wanna bring into that the idea of community.
Kate:One of the things I found in watching some of your Earth speed videos and kind
Kate:of exploring is this idea of community above ground is also as important as
Kate:the ways in which we build microbial and soil, food, web communities.
Kate:Below ground and that there was a video and it talked about this idea that
Kate:we're pushing self-care when what we need is community care and to bring
Kate:in spaces where we can be together.
Kate:And I think so much of what I just heard you say is in this isolation,
Kate:we are disconnected not just from nature but also from from other humans.
Kate:And you're doing some work to build community in Texas, which is amazing.
Kate:And I think that, that a lot of us that have kind of returned to this
Kate:lifestyle, have created these little hubs where we're trying to build community
Kate:outwards, recognizing that the nature of human is in collaboration, not
Kate:just with Earth, but with each other.
Adrian:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Adrian:We.
Adrian:. Yeah.
Adrian:I , I, I sort of have been loosely trying to develop this concept.
Adrian:Uh, it's, uh, like, uh, oscillation therapy because we have the
Adrian:capacity to, well, the world, the universe, everything is infinite.
Adrian:It's infinitely big and it's infinitely small.
Adrian:Mm-hmm.
Adrian:and every, and, and, and there's a dynamic between the polar.
Adrian:There's a polar dynamic.
Adrian:Energetically, everything's waves.
Adrian:Right.
Adrian:The high point of the wave and the low point of the valley of the wave.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:And where am I going with this?
Adrian:So we are alone, we are individuals, but we're also part of a community.
Kate:Yep.
Kate:We are paradoxes.
Kate:Right.
Kate:Light.
Kate:We are light is both a wave and a particle.
Kate:Yes.
Kate:And so our human existence is also paradoxical.
Adrian:Right.
Adrian:So I, I feel like the wave of evolution and.
Adrian:Human development is oscillating between self and community.
Adrian:Hmm.
Adrian:Right.
Adrian:So you're individual.
Adrian:I'm me and I don't, you know, I can like go out on my own and go carve my
Adrian:own path and push forward ideas that are maybe a little bit strange or odd
Adrian:and they haven't been accepted yet.
Adrian:And I can innovate.
Adrian:I'm an entrepreneur, right?
Adrian:I'm a creative force, but then I also wanna be accepted and
Adrian:and honored by the community.
Adrian:I don't wanna be so weird or so different that I, that I lose, I lose my cool Right.
Adrian:. Um, so I feel like we're in a place in human development where I think
Adrian:in all, all society, I think we on individuals go through those
Adrian:periods of individual individuation and then also where we wanna be.
Adrian:Accepted and close to community, one undeveloped community.
Adrian:And we as, as like a collective humanity, like society.
Adrian:We go through egocentric and then like communal centric periods.
Adrian:I feel like, I think we're craving community, right?
Adrian:We've gone through this hyper, you know, narcissistic time where everybody's
Adrian:a on needs to be an entrepreneur.
Adrian:Everybody needs to be Elon Musk and, you know, scale a business or
Adrian:you know, get all of the attention on TikTok, be a influencer, be,
Adrian:you know, insta-famous, whatever.
Adrian:I think society is craving what it's like to be in community.
Adrian:There's, there's a lot of.
Adrian:Sicknesses of isolation.
Adrian:And we need to re, we need to figure out how to treat our, the elderly better.
Adrian:Yes.
Adrian:Instead of pushing them off into homes where they're more likely
Adrian:to die alone, how do we bring them in and embrace their wisdom?
Adrian:And, you know, recog let them and recognize how important their wisdom is
Adrian:to our growth and our learning as young, as younger people, but also how it, um,
Adrian:gives them a sense of continued purpose.
Adrian:People without purpose, they die.
Adrian:Right.
Adrian:And so I think we're, we're a little bit out of balance, or maybe we're
Adrian:going through another period of now coming back to community and um, and
Adrian:that is also part of our return home to nature and coming back to the
Adrian:community of the microbes and the.
Adrian:Animals and bacteria and even the wind.
Adrian:The wind is uh, uh, part of our community.
Adrian:All the things.
Kate:You touched on something I really love, which is this idea that I, I like
Kate:that you called it oscillation therapy.
Kate:I'm, I'm a little curious how that would play out, but.
Kate:The universe expands and contracts, right?
Kate:And we see these cycles of culture where, where one generation kind of
Kate:pushes off the other, or one overarching narrative or idea kind of pushes you.
Kate:You get this highly individuated society and the counter to that is
Kate:going to be coming back into community.
Kate:And I think the, the key to that, and what I'm curious, sometimes how we cultivate
Kate:is, is a sense of balance of not letting the pendulum swing all the way over here,
Kate:but to come to this place of balance.
Kate:And I think that within the idea of that wave function where you're getting
Kate:these oscillations, if you can kind of decrease the amplitude or, or increase
Kate:the frequency, you're getting some of that balance within, within our
Kate:human spaces, on our human timelines.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:And I wonder if this idea of balance is even achievable.
Adrian:Yes.
Adrian:Or if yes, or if balance is simply that detached awareness, that spiritual
Adrian:observer that is within us, that is just, you know, just taking note, just watching.
Adrian:So that's, I guess, the idea of oscillation therapy is to be mindfully
Adrian:engaged with recognizing that we are both, and to know where you are, where
Adrian:you're operating from in that moment.
Adrian:Are you thinking of all the world's problems and how great and big,
Adrian:like, and complex all of society is, and how the environment is, you
Adrian:know, being destroyed in so many different ways that it's overwhelming.
Adrian:and that you just, you start to break down.
Adrian:Or are you so myopic and self-absorbed that you're, you've, you're not
Adrian:even participating in, in life or society and you're, you know,
Adrian:just simply consuming blindly, you know, or So which one are you in?
Adrian:And can you, can you observe a, uh, can you see the world at large a all the
Adrian:troubles and wars and, and recognize that without staying stuck there, and
Adrian:come back to the present small moment and then act and then take action.
Adrian:So I was thinking about, so when I was doing ocean work, I was
Adrian:looking at the plastic problem.
Adrian:10 million tons is estimated to make its way into the ocean
Adrian:every year, 10 million tons.
Adrian:So how big is that?
Adrian:Un unfathomable, right?
Adrian:Like, how do you even begin to tackle that?
Adrian:It's too big.
Adrian:It's too big.
Adrian:. So what happens?
Adrian:People just shut down.
Adrian:Either they get so riled up, like the world is messed up and that's like,
Adrian:you know, messed like, I don't know.
Adrian:They just try and be as big as that problem and they fail cause
Adrian:they're just like one human, right?
Adrian:Mm-hmm.
Adrian:, they may have a big me megaphone, but they'll never be as big or as
Adrian:loud as that mass amount of plastic.
Adrian:So how do we recognize that big challenge, but come down to earth and
Adrian:find something small and actionable?
Adrian:So that's when I created, for better, for worse.
Adrian:It's, it's controversial on some level, but I started the plastic straw movement.
Adrian:So I was like, well, I did not realize that.
Adrian:Yeah, , well people had, you know, talked about straws, but Sure.
Adrian:I sort of popularized it.
Adrian:So I, uh, I created Stop sucking, which was the, so, so the whole
Adrian:idea was to, to break down that big problem into a single unit of measure.
Adrian:One, one unit of plastic in the ocean.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:And so I was like, oh, the straw is like a perfect representation of that.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:Cause it's small, it's mic, it's practically microplastic.
Adrian:And it, it, it's like something that we can all take action on.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:So instead of worrying about the 10 million tons, just
Adrian:worry about the plastic straw.
Adrian:And if you can do that every day, you know, however many times a day
Adrian:that people wanna give you a straw, then maybe, maybe you can start to
Adrian:chip away at this bigger problem.
Kate:I love the philosophy behind that, because I think that one thing that I've
Kate:noticed, and then having conversations on the podcast, it comes up a lot, is that
Kate:oftentimes these problems feel so big, so insurmountable that we don't even try.
Kate:Right.
Kate:And there is this component of like, well, let.
Kate:Let's just try a couple of different things, even if it's
Kate:on a really small scale and just begin to see what's possible.
Kate:And so I think, I think that really opens up the door for that aspect
Kate:of let's just, let's try some stuff.
Kate:Yeah.
Adrian:And, and you can, I think you can apply oscillation therapy to,
Adrian:you know, all aspects of your life.
Adrian:You know, like what, what, what?
Adrian:And, and we're so thrust into because of media, the big problems of the world.
Adrian:Yes.
Adrian:Right?
Adrian:And everything seems so present and we have to, we somehow have
Adrian:to solve all the world's problems.
Adrian:All of a sudden we have to take the weight of the world on your shoulders.
Adrian:No, no one person can do that.
Adrian:And we all have, we're also ego, uh, focused that we think we're the
Adrian:ones that have to save the world as individuals like you, yourself are
Adrian:the one that's gonna save the world.
Adrian:Like, like, Not you, we like we together, right?
Adrian:So how do you work in harmony with others?
Adrian:How do you get out of your, your own feels so that you can, so you can get
Adrian:out of bed in the morning and activate, and then how do you do it with others?
Adrian:How do you come together with community in, in harmony and, yeah.
Adrian:So anyway,
Adrian:, . Kate: No, I think that's the perfect
Adrian:I think that's the perfect place to kind of begin to wind things down,
Adrian:because I think that taking it out of the individual and, and putting us back
Adrian:into nature and back into community is so much a part of a recipe for something.
Adrian:I'm not sure what it is, but it, it feels, it feels important,
Adrian:it feels salient back into wholeness, back into Kintsugi.
Adrian:You know, we're fragmented as a society and I think we
Adrian:can come back into cohesion.
Adrian:We're not at, I mean, I think in many ways, The divide between us politically
Adrian:and socially is largely a projection and manufactured, but it's not real, you know?
Adrian:And so we can actually start to come back together if we have the courage
Adrian:to get out of ourselves and recognize that we, we do need each other.
Adrian:We need to be seen, we need to s to to witness each other
Adrian:and extend, extend ourselves.
Adrian:I, I was, I was a New York City liberal, totally arrogant, and you know, I,
Adrian:I, I mean literally coast to coast, flying from one side to the other.
Adrian:over the flyover states, by the way, Texas, where I live now, being one of
Adrian:the places that I wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole , because everybody
Adrian:there was so backwards and how could they vote that way in all the things?
Adrian:And it was, it was actually the, the election of Donald Trump that
Adrian:I, that freaked me out so much.
Adrian:I was like, how could the, the, those people vote for someone like that
Adrian:because he's this and that and the other?
Adrian:And I was so stuck in my own perspective and what I believed that I realized,
Adrian:I, I, I decided I was gonna start to reach out and understand those
Adrian:people, quote unquote those people, so that I could make them change.
Adrian:So that I could save them.
Adrian:And the more I reached out and the more I really truly started
Adrian:to understand, their perspective.
Adrian:I started to realize there was a part of the hole that I was missing.
Adrian:There was something that I hadn't been seen.
Adrian:And, and ironically, , I was the one who changed . They
Adrian:were the one who changed me.
Adrian:And thankfully cuz I got to expand outside of my egocentric myopic liberal bubble
Adrian:into more wholeness and found so many great humans that are now, um, mentors
Adrian:and teachers and surrogate grandparents.
Adrian:So, ha, happy to ha, happy to have landed in one of the flyover states.
Adrian:. Kate: Yeah.
Adrian:There's something to be said for.
Adrian:I love what you said it, because politics is, I think in many ways
Adrian:there's, there's aspects of illusion to this and it's not real per se.
Adrian:And I think that when we live in the very tangible world, this feedback of nature,
Adrian:it somehow lessens that grip on us.
Adrian:And I always think that we come to know ourselves more when we seek
Adrian:out people that we feel are other.
Adrian:When we seek out those people, those other people mm-hmm.
Adrian:. Mm-hmm.
Adrian:that aren't us.
Adrian:Mm-hmm.
Adrian:, that is when we meet the parts of ourselves that we least expected,
Adrian:or that maybe we need the most.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:And it's back to, you know, what we were saying earlier is, uh, having the courage
Adrian:to step into that abyss, that unknown.
Adrian:And, and having the faith that that's where the medicine is.
Adrian:Yeah.
Kate:Well, I think that's the perfect place to wrap things up and that way you
Kate:can go be with your dogs and your wife, , tell everyone where to find you and
Kate:where to find, where to find earth speed.
Kate:I really enjoyed diving deep into the earth speed videos that are on
Kate:YouTube, so I'll put my call out to everybody to explore that, to explore.
Kate:You have some great mentors on there, Zach Bush, Jamie Wheel, uh, Ryan Engelhart.
Kate:Like there's some, there's some really cool conversations that are unfolding in
Adrian:those videos.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:Thank you.
Adrian:And you're next.
Adrian:We gotta get you . I appreciate that in the hot, hot seat.
Adrian:I would love that.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:So we're at, at earth speed and, uh, across all the channels, Instagram,
Adrian:YouTube, primarily, although we just recently got our YouTube channel.
Adrian:Reinstated because the algorithm ti Tyranny had us blackballed for, for some
Adrian:stupid reasons, mis or disinformation about the speed of earth or something.
Adrian:I don't
Kate:know.
Kate:Yeah, that's, that's how YouTube likes us disconnected.
Adrian:Right, exactly.
Adrian:So anyway, we just got that back and, um, starting to contribute there as well.
Adrian:So yeah, earth speed.
Adrian:And you can also find me as well at Adrian
Kate:Grier.
Kate:We'll have links to all of these things.
Kate:I wanna thank you and I, one of the things I really wanna thank
Kate:you for is sharing your story.
Kate:I, it's a, it's a vulnerable thing to do, and as I listen to some of these
Kate:podcasts that you've been on, that I'll, I'll link in the show notes.
Kate:I think that by sharing our stories, people have an opportunity
Kate:to have sparks and beginnings of their own transformations.
Kate:. And so thank you for doing that because it's, it's not an easy
Kate:thing to do and I, I do think it makes, makes a big difference.
Adrian:Thank you.
Adrian:I appreciate that.
Adrian:Yeah.
Adrian:For that acknowledgement.
Adrian:Thank you.
Kate:Yeah, it was a pleasure.
Adrian:Likewise.
Kate:Thank you so much for listening to this episode of
Kate:The Mind, body and Soil Podcast.
Kate:If what you found resonated with you, may I ask that you share it with
Kate:your friends or leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts.
Kate:This act of reciprocity helps others find mind, body, and soil.
Kate:If you're looking for more, you can find us@groundworkcollective.com
Kate:and at Kate underscore Kavanaugh.
Kate:That's k a t e underscore K A V A N A U G H On Instagram.
Kate:I would like to give a very special thank you to China and Seth Kent of the
Kate:band, allright Allright for the clips from their beautiful song over the
Kate:Edge from their album, the Crucible.
Kate:You can find them at Allright allright on Instagram and
