036: A Lifelong Quest For Health and Wellness with Paul Chek

If a lifelong quest for health and wellness is at your core, how do you stay committed to it and stay on your path? A man who knows the answers is Paul Chek of CHEK Institute. Paul has devoted his life to health and fitness: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health and true fitness. In today's show, Paul explains what those concepts mean and also tells us the path he took from his childhood farm to becoming a licensed holistic health practitioner and working with a professional sports team to creating the Chek Institute.

When Paul began his practice, he had traveled all over the world, studied with many great doctors, therapists, teachers, and had had enough clinical time to master and integrate conditioning practices like the Swiss ball. He had also developed his primal pattern movement system. He was ready to go out on his own and when the opportunity arose he took it and hasn't looked back.

Awesome Health Podcast Episode 36 cover Photo

Paul Chek, on a lifelong quest for health and wellness

Since then he's continued to study, learn, practice, and grow. In fact, his growth includes becoming a licensed medicine man and spirit guide, which means he can legally use plant medicines and facilitate healing ceremonies. He feels passionate about these offerings because plant medicine helped him grow more than any other book, video, training or workshop. He tells us more about those experiences, plus the knowledge and coursework involved in becoming a Chek Institute certified practitioner.

We also spend a lot of time talking about deprogramming our belief systems and the important impact this can have on helping us heal our bodies and our lives. We'll get into Native American practices, Celtic spiritual philosophies as well as the zero point field and the concept of "one mind".

At the heart of it all is Paul's six foundation principles: nutrition, hydration, sleep, breathing, thinking, and movement. But none of those are available to us without a healthy planet, we all need the Earth in order to survive. When we shift our focus in that direction we can see how much we need each other, and we can radically shift our thoughts and our way of living to a more sustainable and peaceful way of life.

Take this deep dive with us as we explore those topics and more on this edition of Awesome Health Podcast with Paul Chek!

Resources

Read the Episode Transcript :

Wade Lightheart: Good afternoon. Good morning and good evening wherever you are I'm Wade T Lightheart from the Awesome Health Podcast and I am, I can't tell you how excited I am today. I am interviewing my new found friend and really inspirational mentor. Mr. Paul Chek, he's a living legend. A few months ago we had the opportunity to connect at the Canfitpro in Canada where Paul was receiving a Lifetime Achievement award for the incredible contributions that he's made to our industry. And we had a nice connection. He invited me down to the Heaven house in Southern California, which is the heaven house for sure. I think we spent over 12 hours together the whole day we lifted rocks. We looked at how he charges his water, we shared some native American smoke then which was phenomenal. We broke bread together. We had a beautiful interview together and we had a really deep connection together and in a, in a way that I don't know if a lot of people experience in their lives, and I think it may be a throwback to maybe other times or other things when there wasn't so much internet connection and so much, you know, shallow connections, but it was an opportunity to be welcomed into Paul's incredible life. And you just get immersed in it for a day just to walk through his library to see how he'd come to some of the ideas that he'd come up with. And to hear this incredible history of what I believe is a true living legend in the industry and often times misunderstood, not understand, attacked, and then finally proven true. Wade Lightheart: What a great opportunity. Paul, welcome to the show. Paul Chek: It's my pleasure, man. I, I'm always excited to get a chance to connect to you and share some love. So thank you. Wade Lightheart: So, so let's just, we're gonna I got so many questions. One of the things that we're both, we're kind of free flowers. I'd like to see where things go and what happens. But let's talk about right off the bat, and this is a really loaded question. Who is Paul Chek and what is his mission in the world? Paul Chek: Well, you know, the truth is, the answer for who is Paul Chek is really the answer for all of us. And that is, I'm some kind of a unique marriage of earth, water, fire, air, space, and consciousness. But I think a more kind of direct answer is that, you know, when I think of who I am, I really feel like I'm somebody who has devoted their life to seeking truth and sharing what the process and the synthesis of gathering. You know, the many bits and pieces of scraps that you have to get in this quest for knowledge and truth. Two, test them and synthesize them into what seems to be universal. Principles are consistently reliable ways of perceiving and relating and engaging the world. And as you know, my, my life has been oriented around two things. Health, which includes physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health and what really is true fitness, what's, you know, functional fitness or baseline fitness, functional fitness, and then sport or activity specific fitness. And how do you get somebody from the state that they're at walking in the door to first physiological and structural balance to then build them up to be the person that their dream is requesting of them. So really that sort of an encapsulation of who, you know, I perceived myself to be. Wade Lightheart: Okay. And the mission through the Paul Chek, you have the Paul Chek Institute and I, and that's kind of a branch of expression for you. I think you're much greater than the Institute itself. It's kind of like, but let's talk about the Chek Institute because of all the industry professionals I've met and, and you know, I've, I've met a lot of the big names and all those, you know, been to the seminars and all that sort of stuff. You're probably one of the most, I would say, subtle influencers of movement concepts in the world today. In other words, if you kind of dig down into communities and cities or you go around the world, sooner or later you end up with the Paul Chek practitioner somewhere who figures out the unfit irritable. So tell, tell me how, tell me about the Paul Chek Institute. What that's about and why people seem to, what's interesting is is is so many, when I talk to Chek practitioners, what's fascinating is they kind of go on this journey of health and fitness and study and education and learning and they come from a sport or an activity or whatever it happens to be, or an institution or a profession and somehow they wind your way into the Chek Institute and then they just did. Wade Lightheart: They become Chukies. That's what the world knows. They become Chukies and they dive into into your world what is so powerful, a boat, the Chek Institute, the Chek principles and how that's just just permeated the whole world with some of the best coaches in the entire world. How did that come to being? Because that's an incredible accomplishment that I, that needs to be acknowledged and recognized. How did that happen? Paul Chek: Well, it happened. It happened really right in the beginning of my military career as the trainer of the United States army boxing team. And I didn't really realize how much that I had learned in my childhood. Both on the farm, my mother being a Yogi for, you know, 30 something years, traveling to India to do initiations, multiple times being raised in the self-realization, fellowship temple and teachings of Yogananda. Mmm. You know, being a child, there was a lot of stress in my family. So athletics was how I vented that and I love to win. I just really have as a young man, winning to me was important because I figured if you're going to do it then why not just go for it? And otherwise, why bother? You know, just no go do something that's non competitive. But so I, I was very immersed in sports from the first grade. Paul Chek: I started with wrestling and pretty much just played everything I could play any excuse to get off the farm so I didn't have to work, you know, shoveling piles of cow shit and cleaning pens and you know, all the work, working, working, working stuff. But you know, I was in a small Valley on Vancouver Island called Comox Valley and you know it, it's intense. You know, I have pretty heavy winters there at times. Our first year there we had eight feet of snow. So for a kid from Los Angeles, that was quite a shock. We had 140 acre sheep farm. It was a working farm. Mmm. So between my pursuits as an athlete and because the competition that was, there's just so many great athletes there. It was crazy. I mean, you know, growing up, one of my buddies became, he was my sparring partner for three years in our boxing club. Paul Chek: He became the world champion in kickboxing at the time in 86 I think 80 maybe 89 he became the world champion. Another one of my buddies that I grew up with in town owned pretty much the only gym in town at the time. He was mr Canada and bodybuilding in, in 1880 1989 I think as well. Two of my other buddies were nationally ranked motocross that I did a lot of racing with. Probably six or eight of my best buddies were black belts and multiple level black belts in various forms of martial arts. And we had our own kickboxing club where we could have weekly meetings to destroy each other. Paul Chek: And a lot of my buddies were elite skiers. So it was just like this hot bed of farm boys that all had this need to express their frustration and father's stress. And, and also we're also very motivated to win. And so it created this intense growth pressure. And so I began studying when I was 12, everything I could find on diet, weightlifting, bodybuilding, Mmm. And just apply, learn and apply, learn and apply. And so when I got to the army boxing team the strange thing was as I was also the Army's representative and triathlon and so the boxers and the team management were kind of baffled by the fact that, you know, we often train six hours a day on the army boxing team and I would be getting up early in the morning to do longer, more intense running like you know, 10, 10 K and half marathon type training fairly regularly. Paul Chek: Plus I would go to, when they went to lunch, I would go to the swimming pool and usually put a mile in and just get some food in me as quick as I could. And then after training I would get on my bicycle and go do anywhere from 2260 miles in the evening and I'd do a hundred miles on the weekends and they could not figure for the life of them how I could possibly, and I fought on the boxing team before I became the trainer, so they were watching how I was very good as a fighter, but I was also doing all this intense training. So when my company commander came to me and said, if you want to leave the boxing team and train full time to win the army triathlon, I will support that because I've got a lot of money to bet on you. Paul Chek: I need you to win. And so I went back and told the boxing team I was going to stop fighting and train full time for triathlon. And they said, Oh God, don't do that. We'll give you the job as as trainer because whatever the hell you're doing, it's working. You can fight hard all three rounds the way you eat, the way you train. We've never seen anything like it. How would you like to become the trainer and take over all the conditioning management of the gym and nutrition coaching for the for the boxers. And I said, you know, something inside me just knew that was what I was supposed to do. And fortunately for me, the team physician was an osteopath and he was quite open to discussing things with me. So I got a two year internship and how to care for acute sports injuries. Paul Chek: And we had plenty of them cause the boxing gym was also the headquarters for many army sports, such power lifting, track and field. And I was interacting with wide variety of athletes and there's 80 at that time there was 79,000 soldiers on Fort Bragg. So it's like being in a, you know, I grew up in a town of only like 16,000 people. So there was like being on Fort Bragg was like being in a big city on Vancouver Island. And so I really got to use my creativity, what I've learned about weightlifting, what I'd learned about diet, the first book I ever read in my life, I hated reading. But the first book I ever read, I finished it in the army on a bus on the way home from the Pentagon where we had just done a 10 mile inter military race, army, Navy, air force, Marines. Paul Chek: And it was nutrition and a holistic approach, but Rudolph Ballentine. So I had really gravitated toward these holistic principles because that's how my parents ran our farm. You know, everything we ate pretty much came off the farm. My mother being a Yogi was very oriented toward natural eating, which is heavy in Yogananda's philosophy. We bought, we bought food that we needed when we needed it from a local kind of hippy co-op where people got together and got good food and okay, so plus being raised on a farm, you know, my father was very intense ass kicker, get the job done, no complaints, do it or you won't like the consequences. So I really learned how to push through discomfort. I mean doing things like swinging access for eight hours straight and clearing land and you know, building and digging fence, post holes and, and a long, long string of endless stuff. Paul Chek: So I actually got in an extremely good physical condition. And so when I carried that into sports, it was already, like, I had a lot of preconditioning so I was almost a jump ahead of a lot of people. And so when I got in the army, it was really just, you know, without a depth of knowledge, anything even close to what I have now, it was really, and I'd also been trained by the monks to meditate. And how to con, you know, calm my mind and how to you know, find my center in the middle of a storm and, and how to understand concepts such as what the universe is or what God is or what space and time are. And so when you put all that together and you put me on an army boxing team where I become the trainer, I had the freedom to implement weightlifting and circuit training and I used to be an aerobics instructor before I joined the military. Paul Chek: So I used that knowledge and skill, begin modifying their diets cause they ate like crap and just ate crap and had a lot of problem losing weight and doing a lot of stupid crash dieting and just silly stuff using various too. It's accelerate kidney urine production to drop weight. The stuff that really costs them, you know. So when I put all this together and I, long story made short as a triathlete, I was in so much physical discomfort from the hard training that I needed the experience of my grandmother massaging. As a child I had asthma and none of the drugs or anything did anything like my grandmother's massage. And so when I came to the situation where I was training so hard, I was just really a need a massage. I asked my wife if she would give it a try and so she, I just got some like, you know, baby oil or something. Paul Chek: And even with no skill, the difference it made in my training was phenomenal. I was just blown away at how much it aided my recovery. And so I started reading sports, massage therapy books and everything I could find on sports massage therapy. And I intuitively implemented this on the army boxing team. So I became the first person ever in the entire history of the boxing team to offer massage therapy to all the fighters. And so between the massage, the diet, the designing, the conditioning programs, and I led the fighters through the workouts. I didn't point fingers, I did everything I asked them to do, which they loved and they hated because I was in good enough shape to really, you know, put it on him. And it just grew into this sort of excitement, this passion because the team doctor reported within about the first three months that the rate of injury was going down. Paul Chek: Like he'd never seen it and the athletes were performing far better. They were fighting way harder and longer through the third round where they were having problems with that before. Mmm. Just there was so many positives and my father was a guy that did not have the good job gene. So to be in the military and to be winning so many awards, I set many military records got two records in the obstacle course in different posts. I set the record for the most pushups in two minutes in the 82nd Airborne Division. I got many you know, army achievement medals for various things that I did. And so I was in this sort of like very inspirational hotbed with very highly motivated men that were, you know, really aggressive, get the job done, kick some ass, let's win. And then having that team, Dr. Charles Pitluck there, started opening my technical awareness and then I started reading books on sports medicine to understand the body from a medical doctor's perspective and how they treated inflammatory problems and tendons and Mmm. Paul Chek: And so that kind of triggered me to the point that when I left the army, I, I knew that I wanted to mix sports, massage therapy, postural awareness. I went to the sports massage training institute, which was phenomenal. And I got eventually got my license as a holistic health practitioner, which allows me by the state of California law to do anything holistic with any kind of problem, from psychological problems to health problems, to whatever. I can do, massage, I can do meditation, I can do plants and herbs, anything that's natural. So it was the perfect license for me because there was really like almost no barriers on it, you know. And I just continued to study and travel all over the world and learn from the very best doctors and therapists I could find no matter where they were at. And I put that all together. Paul Chek: And having left the army and starting my own sports massage business, I then got hired by the largest physical therapy clinic in San Diego. They had their own surgical center. So I had 13 orthopedic and neurosurgeons I was working with. I could go to surgery anytime I want. I ultimately did five cadaver dissections, two through the university of Oregon health sciences university, one through giveaway and multiple through the surgeons cause they did regular cadaver dissections to test new surgical techniques and just to review their anatomy. And then working with all these physical therapists and athletic trainers gave me a chance to share concepts with them. And they, the reason I got hired is because the owner of the clinic had had three knee surgeries and was about to have to have a fourth because her knee locked up and she had a frozen knee for the third time. Paul Chek: And the surgeon said, if I have to manipulate this knee, I may never be able to play golf or tennis. Again, both of which she was very active in. So I had rehabilitated a guy named Kevin Macquarie who was on Nike's running team. Then it was as a marathoner and he had bilateral Achilles problems that, you know, pretty much were ending his career and nobody could figure him out. I straightened right out in about a month and so he told the owner of the clinic before you let them operate on you, you got to go see this guy that I know. Long story made short, I got her more range of motion in one session than they'd been able to get for her in months. Then she asked me to come work for them. I was the first massage therapist in San Diego ever to be hired by a physical therapy clinic. Paul Chek: And because the physical therapists always thought of massage therapists like prostitutes. So it was a bit of a shock for them. And then she asked me to condition her cause I had got her range of motion back. But once I started working for her, she asked me to condition her and I, there was a lot of political tension because there was a lot of looking down the nose at me and there was also a lot of jealousy. Like how did this guy with no college degree figure out this woman when we couldn't figure her out? So there was a lot of kind of edginess, you know, and so I said, why don't you let them work with you? And if they give up or you give up, then I'll take it over because then whatever happens will be respected knowing again that they did their best. Paul Chek: And sure enough, after about three months, she wasn't getting better. She was getting worse. So I took her over, rehabilitated her got her strength back, got her where she could play golf and tennis again. And so that triggered off a level of mutual awareness and respect that led to me spending four years being treated pretty much as an equal because they had evidence that I was certainly able to do things they couldn't do with their degrees and their skills. And so that just catapulted me into a deep, deep exploration of everything to do with the body, the mind, the soul, the, the the glandular system, the organ systems. And I basically became famous for the guy to send medical failures too. And I had doctors from all over the world sending me cases. And I ended up working for many professional sports teams that did a lot of consulting for the Chicago Bulls and the Jordan era. Paul Chek: They were the first ones to take on my Swiss ball and my scientific core conditioning approach. And it spread wildly from there to other sports teams. The Lakers were the ones that picked it up next from them. But I've worked for so many professional sports teams all over the world and so many sports Olympic committee limit, Olympic committees, university teams militaries, you name it. And you know, the reason I kept getting results with jobs with these people is because I got results that they could not deny with an IVR. I've taken three elite athletes, famous athletes out of medical retirement that were forced into medical retirement, all of which came to me and I completely rehabbed them and got them in very good shape and they all passed their medical exams, which is extremely rare because if an athlete goes back after being forced into medical retirement, they can actually sue the team for falsely retiring them. Paul Chek: So Gary Roberts, I rehabilitated cause Charles Poliquin came to an impasse with them. He passed his medical exams, which I had to attend because the doctor was very concerned about letting him back with all the problems he'd had. But he ended up making 25 million more dollars before he finally retired. Mmm. Ricky Stuart, at that time, the highest paid rugby player in the world was forced to medical retirement. I brought him back and he played for two or three years after that. Richard Dunwoody, a famous horse jockey, horse racing jockey, was forced into medical retirement after 40 bad falls from horses racing and being trampled and all sorts of stuff. And he had some severe issues. But I rehabbed him and he went back and won the triple crown and wrote about me in his autobiography and, and sent me a beautiful big picture, which you probably saw on my wall and, and, and a copy of the autobiography to say thank you. Paul Chek: So really what kicked off the Chek Institute was, I, I, it was really Charles Poliquin, he was a friend of mine and I helped him get more known in the US he asked me if I could help him get a job with the bowls. So I inspired elver meal to bring them on and consult with them at the bowls. And Charles asked me if I would train his top two strength coaches in the approach I use for assessing core function and optimizing core strength and conditioning. And those two guys who are very, very experienced strength coaches said what I was teaching was just like so far outside of anything they'd ever seen or heard of that they really both felt I should start an Institute. And so at that time I had enough knowledge that also after I left sports and orthopedic physical therapy clinic, me and a partner started our own physical therapy clinic. And prior to that I was working for a chiropractor for two years who was one of the instructors in my massage school. So by the time I actually started the Institute, a two years training with an osteopathic position in the military, sports massage therapy training, holistic, a health practitioner training. I did my neuromuscular therapy training through the st John Institute. Mmm. I had, Mmm. Paul Chek: So then I worked for this chiropractor for two years who specialize in athletic injuries. Then I worked in a physical therapy clinic for four years. Then I owned a physical therapy clinic for three years. So by the time I actually got to where I was training people and starting my own institute, I had quite a lot of experience and, and, and you know, I did a lot of research. I published a lot of articles. I've published hundreds of articles around the world. I was involved in developing research studies. I had, I've got several patents of my own as you know, as, as an inventor and medical and an exercise equipment. And I come from a background of fabrication, building my own race cars and roll cages and building my own engines. And so I have the skill to, to kind of see where there's a hole and fill it. Paul Chek: And so the Institute was really me taking all the knowledge that I had from each of these different areas, be it nutrition lifestyle issues musculoskeletal issues. Mmm. I had to do a lot of work with people's mental, emotional state because a lot of the people that came to see me were in severe pain and had been for many years. And I found over and over again, there's a huge psychological component and chronic pain and they're all my assessments kept pointing to belief systems. Mmm. And so I kept running into issues where people's problems tracked back to beliefs that were related to their beliefs about God. Unfortunately, my mother, having been a Christian scientist and become yoga, gave Paul Chek: Me a chance to really heal a lot of that Christian programming. And be able to spend time. I spent my 15th year in summer camp with the monks where I could ask any question I want. And these guys were so enlightened and so clean and clear and precise in their answers that even as a 15 year old kid, I actually turned 16 in summer camp. I felt safe and I felt like I was getting real honest answers that carried me. It's through the rest of my life. And so the Institute really became the place where I took everything that I had tested for years and years. And I had a very, very busy practice. I mean, I got so busy in the physical therapy clinic, we had hire three other massage therapists to support the load. And I was, I was referring the largest physical therapy clinic in San Diego, 36% of their business just from people trying to come find me from all over the world. Paul Chek: So by the time I started the Institute, I had traveled all over the world, studied with many great doctors, therapists, teachers and had had enough clinical time to integrate, master the Swiss ball, develop the first conditioning videos in the world for Swiss balls, introduced them to the weightlifting industry. I'd develop my primal pattern movement system. Mmm. You know, so I, I had enough that I was getting encouragement from 360 degrees to teach this stuff. And I also read intense level of frustration with the insurance industry because they were ripping us off so bad that we couldn't run our physical therapy clinic and make a decent living because they kept sending us like $16 on $135 a building or 40 bucks. And so when the opportunity came to sell it to a large corporation, I took that money that we made because we made a couple hundred grand. Paul Chek: And I split that with my partner and use that money to start the Chek Institute. And so that really just became the basis from which I launched off in 95. And, and that's what I've been doing is just continuing to study, learn, practice, grow, work with challenging cases. Uyou know, and I've also got my license now as a medicine man and spirit guide. So I, I finally reached the point where when I started doing research on psychedelics and,udid a year of training with a doctor that uses him in his practice. Mmm. Penny felt it was very important for me to get federal protections so that I didn't,u get sued or anything like that. So I went through the native American council and got my medicine men spirit guide license so I can use plant medicines legally and healing ceremonies. And I've conducted over 400 healing ceremonies at this point. Uso, you know, the plant medicines also grew me more than anything. I would honestly say more than any books or libraries and helped heal,u Paul Chek: You know, potentially lifetimes of pain and also reinforce my meditation and Tai Chi practice. And I, I spent time with master Fong Ha learning from one of the top masters in the world, how to do Tai Chi. I took medical type qigong training and applied that. And I did a lot of that as research for my book, how to move and be healthy because I felt that people were so burnt out from working too much and exercising too hard in the gym that I needed to take exercise into its feminine expression. And so I hired master Fong Ha. We'll actually did it for me for free, but I offered to pay and I told them I want to learn the basic principles of Tai Chi so I can develop a system of movement that actually cultivates more energy per unit of time than it costs that allows people to pump, detoxify and vitalize their bodies, but doesn't require the memory of a lot of complex Tai-Chi movements. Paul Chek: Because I've met people that had been in Tai Chi for two or three years and still couldn't get out of their head. They still couldn't meditate. They were so focused on where their hands were, where their body wasn't. So I said, you know, that they've intellectualized Tai Chi too much. So after two years of working with him, I had developed what is in my book has zone exercises and through testing with my patients and students, they got phenomenal results with these very simple mindless techniques because they locked onto the very principles that really all the inner arts are based on, but allowed a person to move dynamically so that heady people could actually be engaged in the movement. So it was just enough for the ego to focus on, to keep it busy. And there was simple enough moments that the ego kind of goes into this half awake, half asleep state where the meditation bridge opens the doors. Paul Chek: And so kind of in a, believe it or not, that is a nutshell, but so that's what really brought the Chek Institute onto the map. And I've had so much success with elite athletes and sports teams that the word just spread. In fact, the New Zealand military sent two of their top guys to study with me for four years to revamp the entire mill, New Zealand militaries conditioning programs. The Navy seals sent three people in. Mmm. Two of which went back to rehab, Navy seal conditioning. You know, I've had all sorts of kind of unique opportunities like that due to the reaches of my articles and my successes. Incredible. So the Chek Institute will guess will be coming up on 25 years next year. Yeah. Which is pretty impressive. One of the things that strikes me is you live your principles and you're in incredible physical condition. Wade Lightheart: Not bad for an old guy. I mean we haven't revealed your age. I don't know if you reveal that or whatever, but you know, we went out and we're lifting rocks on your property. And what's very interesting I think is one of the unique aspects that I've noticed with the Chek Institute and what you provide is, and maybe this cause we kind of shared some stories about our past, which we grew in these environments where you're not sitting in these wonderful linear planes that are familiar in most gyms that people go to or exercise programs. Is this a functional level of strength in a, a functional level of movement that you have? And, and it translates not only into your physical condition, but your capacity to move, particularly as you age. I doubt there's most 20 year olds could do the things that you do now. Paul Chek: So a lot of them try, but they, they soon find out that the old man's got a surprise for them. In fact, one of the most common things I get accused of is using anabolic steroids. And I look at him and say, you obviously know nothing about steroids cause I'm 170 pound guy. I have no indications of steroids and said, you know, the steroids, I use your chicken, carrots, broccoli, real food. And yes. So the, for the listeners, I'm 58 and, and I still regularly put it hard on young professional athletes that seek my coaching and even guys that can lift more than me in the gym when they come out to the stones with me, they can't get things off the ground that I can stack chest high. Yes, they all go, hell, the friggin hell did you just do that? And I say, well, you first got to connect to the stone. And and ask it if it wants to take a ride with you. Wade Lightheart: So one of the things, and there's a promotion a bit of, we'll probably put a link to it as well. I think that was really good. That's kind of summarizes your journey. And I thought something that was pretty unique that you mentioned is that your, when when you coach or train a Chek practitioner, you have like a five and a half years for them or I believe you mentioned on it. Can you kind of, can you talk about what it is to be a Chek practitioner and maybe the levels and what happens when, you know, how does a person become that? How do they move through it and what is the foundational components that being a Chek Institute practitioner is what, what does that mean as opposed to say, getting a degree from university of California or taking an international certification course or provincial course or a state course. What is the difference between what you do and what other people do? Paul Chek: Yeah, well the difference really is a bunch of things. One. Paul Chek: My Institute is multidisciplinary. So we have many medical doctors, nurses, chiropractors, osteopaths, physical therapists, physiotherapists, naturopaths from Scandinavia. We've got housewives, we've got people that, you know, used to be truck drivers who had checked professional, rehabilitated people of all walks of life. And they go, Oh my God, I've got to do this, this works so well, I've got to do this. And so, you know, if it's out there and there's probably there's over 10,000 Chek professionals now. So my only criteria is that you can pass the prerequisite courses. I don't care if you're a truck driver, a lager or a surgeon. And I don't make any ex exceptions. I've had many people say, can I skip this prerequisite cause I studied this and this in school. And every time I've let someone do that, they turned out to be a royal pain in the backside in class because they were way far behind what should be known. Cheers by the way. Some nice tobacco and herb can help. Wade Lightheart: Can you talk about that right now? Cause it's kind of a good segue. We've got to try, I got to experience some of your smoke concoction, we'll call it. What is it that you're doing and why are you doing it if that's okay. Paul Chek: Well, I think it's interesting. This is a bag of vaporized herb, so there's no fire it actually just, it's a copped up food to hut be hydrated. It was invented for medical marijuana delivery, you know, many years ago. And it pushes hot air through a little basket that contains herbs and I, I use clean tobaccos that are not grown with chemicals, so I don't get poisoned by them. The grand majority of which are or certified organic. And then I use a variety of herbs. So any tea that you can drink, you can vaporize and it does the basic same thing. So if you drink a sleepy time tea and you vaporize it, it'll, it'll make you sleepy. If you drink a gin Singh and it warms your body up, well if you smoke it, it'll do the same thing, but a lot faster. Paul Chek: Within three seconds, it'll be superior delivery system right here. It's a rapid delivery system. But you know, what happened is I research all this because I'm very interested in all aspects of holistic health. And so when I went through my midlife crisis when I was 50, I realized I had given so much of myself away that I was dying from a lack of, of pleasuring myself doing things just for me. And so I made a promise to myself, if I couldn't make my work enjoyable to me, then I wasn't going to do it anymore. I was just going to retire and go do something else, like paint a rock gym and but you can use vaporize herbs to modulate your biochemistry just like you can use any kind of supplement. Mmm. And so I typically, because I do a lot of writing and a lot of coaching, I used things mostly that bring me more into a sort of a meditative state where I'm walking the line between cognitive engagement and intuitive reception. Paul Chek: So I'm listening behind the words and I'm connecting to the person's soul while I'm coaching them. And if you're busy or if there's a lot going on, sometimes it's hard to shift into that balance point just like it's hard for people to stop everything and meditate. And I found using the herbs that I can choose the right herbs to create the environment. So I basically, in modern parlance, I'm biohacking in a very natural, organic, holistic way, not using gadgets per se, but using herbs. And because you're using a vaporizer and there's no fire, you're getting IS estimate only about 30% of the nicotine. So I smoke these things all day long as you know, and I can go off of them cold Turkey and I'd basically just feel tired for about a day. Like I'm jet lagged. And then after that, there's no symptoms whatsoever. Whereas if you were smoking tobacco, you could get very addicted to nicotine. Paul Chek: So I also use it as a transition tools for people to come off of various drugs. Cause I work with a lot of addicts from crack cocaine to cocaine to, you know, pain pills to you if you, if there's an addict out there from gambling to sex to exercise to work. I've worked with them. And so I find this approach is, is such a much healthier option and it allows a person to use something to modulate their biochemistry and create states that helped them realize that there's much safer ways to create state shifts. Because what I've found working with thousands of people is most people are actually suffering from a lack of meaning and being caught in the capitalistic you know, money wheel where they're just running all day to make money, overspending on credit cards, trying to pay for kids' colleges, whatever it is, and they don't have any chance to live. Paul Chek: So they, I ended up getting addicted to things that help them cope with that stress. And the deeper, you know, our culture has lost its myth. So everybody's kind of like wondering around in the great abyss of the world without really having a sense of why we're all here, what we're all doing. And what's it's all for. And then you, you know, you have consumerism has taken over as the myths, so people are spending so much money trying to find this connection that we've lost by being too disconnected from nature. So this allows me to take nature and put it right in my bloodstream and celebrate and worship, you know, this is a ancient as you know, a practice of ceremony for native Americans and natives all over the world. And you know, I sort of live my life in a state of worship. I really, each day is sort of a living prayer for me. And, and so I Paul Chek: Use these herbs as, as a vehicle for deep connection, state shift and just to create the sense that I'm not working so hard, I can stop, go smoke a bag, work. Right. it just brings me a lot of joy. Wade Lightheart: Yeah. It's you know, I was my first time to share in that when we were, when I was down there and it, it is remarkable how it is. We say as a state modulator, I think it's pretty fascinating and it feels great. I'm pretty intuitive about myself. It doesn't feel like taking something bad into the body. There's definitely a positive enhancement and a cognitive enhancement for sure and a state enhancement that I experienced. And I think it really translated also in our podcast as well. When we were, we were talking there, I noticed there was differences in my voice and how I sound and it's, it's fascinating to pay attention to these things. Going back though, we, I know we got onto, we got a little sidetracked here on this and cause it's just, that was an interesting segue, but let's talk about these preliminary courses that you have people to go through before they get to maybe the more advanced training and why that's so critical as a foundational piece and the Chek Institute system and philosophy. Paul Chek: Yes. So when I began the Chek Institute, there was four levels of training. I grossly overestimated how much people can handle. So I used to have, you know, veteran physical therapists and chiropractors breaking down in tears in my class and just throwing their hands in the air and walking out or writing me letters, they would just disappear and leave me a letter saying, you know, I'm so embarrassed that I, I just don't feel, I feel like I'm so far off the mark. And I had no idea there was exercise professionals anywhere in the world that had this level of knowledge. And so I realized I had to break the course material up and build prerequisite courses to get them ready for it. And the, you know, there's a fair bit of technicality. There's a lot of goniometric assessment, joint assessment, neurological assessment. I mean it's a full proper orthopedic assessment, cranial nerve assessment. Paul Chek: I mean, I really want to identify what's causing a person's problems, not just do allopathic palliative care cause it just doesn't really work. Obviously we look at the state of the world. And so originally the plan was, would take four years because I designed the system. So you'd take a blog, a training, then you have to go spend at least six months applying it and you have to turn in. I used to require 10 actual case histories with names and phone numbers I could follow up on which I graded myself and I wouldn't let anybody go to the next level if they couldn't meet the criteria to demonstrate that they were applying the practice, the, the assessment techniques, the program Paul Chek: Design techniques and all the factors I was teaching them and I was heavy into the diet stuff. But there was so much to teach in the science of corrective and high-performance exercise that what happened is after a few years I kept having all these students consulting with the cases that they were having a hard time with. And almost always it was some kind of glandular visceral or diet and lifestyle problem that they were overlooking, which I already did but couldn't put into the program cause it was just a massive other field of study. And so ultimately I decided I had to start my, what was then the nutrition and lifestyle coaching program. So I put together a one week intensive course, which you know, sometimes the classes would go 10 hours a day cause there was so much to teach them. But I found that almost everybody that was coming to the classes were very, very unhealthy people that wanted to go out and tell other people how to get healthy. Paul Chek: And then I put together the next level, which is now the third level and they would show up again looking just as bad yet they'd spent months telling everybody else what to do. And that goes completely against my philosophy. So I said, okay, that's enough of that. So I took out the most basic elements, what was in my book, how to move and be healthy plus a few other more practical application concepts. And I built holistic lifestyle coach level one which is specifically designed to teach all interested people how to achieve baseline health. And it's the prerequisite to get into HLC, to holistic lifestyle coach level two which is my holistic lifestyle coaching program to teach you how to do it professionally. And HLC three is the advanced training program where I go into much deeper issues such as infant development, a much more comprehensive approach to glen and organ reflexes. Paul Chek: Medical dowsing. I take them through a system of maps I developed to show them what the life processes and how to identify where a person's at in their stage of life. What are the challenges with each stage of life. I show them how to do a personality profile so they know how to better coach people. So it's a very comprehensive course. But once I started making people do HLC, one I noticed they would show up much healthier. And I mean I've had people lose 90 pounds between taking HLC one and HLC two and I've got loads and loads of, you know, mind-boggling case histories and then they were ready because you can't coach people effectively if you're not actually having visceral knowledge of what it's like to kill parasites or do heavy metal detox or colon cleanses, liver cleanses, kidney cleanses you know, all the things that they were prescribing to other people. Paul Chek: These things can be quite intense and there can be, you know, complications. I remember one time for example, I was, you know, years and years ago I was, I had a guy who was a, a medical drug salesman and he had a bad case of parasites and his intestines were very badly blocked up. And I had put him on a colon cleanse product with anti-parasitics and all of a sudden one day I got a phone call in the clinic, I can't remember his name, but they said, you know, so-and-so needs to speak to you right now. And Oh by the way, he's quite upset. So he's calling me on his mobile phone and this is right back in the very beginning of mobile phones. And he's like, what the hell, man? He says, you didn't tell me what was going to happen to me, but what are you talking about? Paul Chek: He goes, I'm actually sitting in traffic right now and I just shit my pants and I'm on my way. I'm on my way to a very important meeting. And he says like, I've got a whole seat full in my very nice and BMW convertible. I am sitting in a pool of shit. And he says, I thought I was just going to fart and this happened. He says, why didn't you tell me? You know? And I, you know, I had had experiences like that, but I only highlight that because if the practitioners don't realize what they're getting a person into, they don't know how to pace them. And there's a tendency to throw everything in the kitchen sink at people. So you've got people doing this to drug those, herbs that supplement in there, like they don't know what the fuck's going on. And so I really felt it was very important for people to do everything to themselves that they were going to prescribe to other people. Paul Chek: And then I would, you know, I was trained in functional medicine testing and I worked with one of the giants of that in the, in the world who actually invented salivary testing. And so having done a lot of this on myself and realizing, wow, you know, you go too fast with a heavy metal detox, your life will be very shitty for a few days. I can completely sidetrack you. So what happened in a nutshell was I grew that the corrective and the high performance exercise program, and I built a lot of prerequisite courses to make sure whoever walked in that classroom had the anatomy, the physiology, and the basic sciences down and it was graded tests. And then they found that they can digest the information much better. And through constantly seeing all these people failing with diet and lifestyle factors, I realized I had to build that training program. Paul Chek: And then because there was so much mental, emotional factors, right? The diet and lifestyle factors will, when you say, well, why do people keep doing that? Right? You ask people, I ask people in large audiences all over the world, mostly doctors, therapists, and strength professionals. How many of you right now, no, you're either over exercising or under exercising, but keep doing it and almost every hand goes up. How many of you know you need to get to bed earlier than you are, but you keep staying up late at night and it's costing you almost every hand goes up. How many of you know you're eating shit that messes your body up but keep doing it? Almost every hand goes up. How many of you are doing jobs that aren't making you happy, but you're telling yourself you've got to do it for money and it's causing problems in your own sense of self and in your relationships. Paul Chek: Almost every hand goes up. So the point I'm making is, and this basically is based on my four doctor model, Dr happiness, Dr diet, Dr quiet, Dr movement, which is the encapsulation of a living philosophy. If you don't have those four doctors, believe me, you will be spending a lot of time and money on medical health. And so what I showed my students, cause they're the ones too that I would ask these questions, is you all are aware intellectually of what your challenges, but you keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Which means you have to look at the beliefs that are driving your behaviors. All actions are the result of some kind of belief, most of which is unconscious, right? This is this, this is the tricky part. But yes, we'll get caught in this. So yeah, so what happens is, you know, think of how many times you know yourself or myself or anybody reaches for a food but they know it's going to cause them problems. Paul Chek: But do it anyhow. (Sorry, I got a little dry smoke in my lungs.) So then I say, okay, well why do you keep doing that? I look at myself, why do I do that? Well, I can tell you for me, again, it's almost always because I spent so much of my life helping other people. I need something that is gratifying, something that's out of the box. And paradoxically because it's taboo either, even if it's your own taboo. If I eat that, it's gonna make me itch or it's going to give me pimples, or it's gonna make me feel like shit, but I'm going to have real fun eating it, or I'm right. I'm going to drink that, I'm going to get drunk, even though I gotta go to work tomorrow, I'm going to, I'm going to drink and I'm going to drink till I don't fucking care anymore, or I'm going to smoke or I'm going to do this, or drugs or whatever. Paul Chek: And so what you see is that there's an unconscious cage that's been built and that's been built largely out of mom's ideas, dad's ideas, the educational systems, ideas, all of which are built on religious ideas, right? So without going into a long exposition, which I could easily do as you know but the reality of it is 85% of the people in the world claim religious affiliation. That means 85% out of every person you're ever going to see as a therapist, coach, doctor, trainer, whatever, has religious programming. Usually starting right from childhood when the mind is wide open and has no defenses. And so what you see is the so-called commandments turn out to be perfect to pit you against your instincts, your sexual instincts, your instincts for food. Religions have real restrictions on sex restrictions, on food, restrictions, on dance, restrictions, on music, restrictions on clothing. Paul Chek: I mean, the list is long and so everybody's got this idea in their head that they have to follow these rules because this is what God wants. And if you don't do it, you're going to burn in hell or whatever the story might be. And so at the, at the basis of all this and this sacrifice yourself, give everything up. Jesus gave everything away. You know, these kinds of themes, especially in the Abrahamic religions, which is Islam, Christianity and Judaism. So I kept running into all this over and over and over again. So I would ask people questions and I would, each question would lead to another question. Okay, why did you do that? Because of this? Why did you that? Because this, why are you staying in the relationship when you're unhappy? You've been married for 20 years and you just told me you weren't even happy after the first year. Paul Chek: Oh, well, because in my marriage vows, it's till death. Do you part? I don't want to burn in hell. So, okay. So you think God wants you to live in a relationship where you're not capable of sharing love when your own religion says God is love. So what I found over and over again is that the root of all these unconscious beliefs with large, with a small amount of exceptions, are religious ideas. And I get atheist and say, well, that doesn't apply to me. I never, I don't believe in all that. I go, yeah, but you're raised in a school system that's based on Christian ideology, your road names, your holidays. Almost everything that you do in your life is linked to Christianity in this country or in Europe. Wade Lightheart: And I've found with a lot of atheist as well. Many who I think are, are in extremely integrous people in my experience, but their beliefs are actually a reactive response to that programming and they're caught in the trap again because they're still out of tune with them, their essence, essential nature. And not to jump the gun here, but how is it that you've been able to kind of Wade Lightheart: Move through not just a, an an exercise philosophy or a way to live or kind of a way with, you know, 40 Living I believe is what you, you turn that the four doctors strategy. How is it that you've been able to kind of deprogram that spiritual kind of misdirection that people find themselves caught in and synthesize that in their physicality? Because as you know, at the highest levels, when you really get to the end of the story, it breaks down to these subconscious, you know, archetypes and programs and patterns and behaviors. And when you change that, then everything else just seems to me. How did you get to that point? Because it's very rare that people in the exercise game, if you will, or the fitness game or the performance game, you know, in their career actually go out there on a limb and speak so forthright about those and how they fit. And that's, I think one of the key aspects that makes you so unique is that you're not afraid about making these statements. You're not afraid of talking about great spirit. You're not afraid of talking about the psychological components of how you move and how that translates. How did you get to that particular place? Paul Chek: Well, quite frankly, I had to go through it myself. You know when my mother became a Yogi at the time I was 12, but she'd been going to a Christian science church and I found it absolutely confusing and scary because here I am as an eight year old kid be told, being told God loves you, talking about angels and heaven. And the next thing you know, we're singing onward Christian soldiers marching off to war with the cross of Jesus going on before. And I'm like, wait a minute, I'm really confused here. And every time I would try to ask a question, I would just get told to be quiet or you know, treated like a prisoner of war or some damn thing. Wade Lightheart: I'd have to say, I have to say I had the, sorry to interrupt, but it's so interesting cause I had the exact same realization when I went from Sunday school to the big church and in Sunday school it was Jesus loved me and everything was great and I thought this was a great thing. And then I go to the church and the guy said, well if you don't do this, you're going to be thrown into the pit of fire and burn in hell forever. And I was like, what happened to the loving God? I remember having this conflict, like this is crazy. Somebody got this picture wrong. Is he a, is he a psychopath or is he a hell, like why is there a dichotomy? And it drove me crazy and of course the yogananda help resolve that for me. He had a beautiful explanation about that. And of course he influenced your life as well. Continue on though. I just, I just had to make that little segue cause I share that same realization. Paul Chek: I totally appreciate that. And it's a, it's as common as white bread out there, especially for those of us that have enough self esteem to say, wait a minute, I've got to take charge of my own inner life. Because, you know, waiting for somebody to fix me is really dangerous. It's obviously not working for everybody else to do that. You know, the only answer you get is, Oh, you have anxiety or you have depression or you are a bipolar. They come up with all sorts of fancy names to push you into a box and give you a drug. And, and you know, usually it's downhill from there. But you know, really for my own journey and which is like I said, my style is to really penetrate myself and try to find what is it that I've got to heal. And, and once I've healed that, then as I'm sure you know, once you heal something inside of yourself, for example, if you heal your stuff, gluten intolerance, the next shopping mall you walk through, you see everybody's gluten intolerant. Paul Chek: You see it everywhere. If you heal yourself from a sacroiliac joint injury, you know what it looks like, then you see them everywhere. So whatever we heal creates vision. And so as I spent time with amongst and learn these concepts and saw the stark contrast between Christianity and yoga, I'm like, wow, this is like gnarly. How, how lost and confused people in these Abrahamic religions are and how their model of God is really so far from God. It's, it's scary really. And it starts wars. It's, you know, religious differences are the number one cause of wars, which is the number one cause of death on this planet. And so a couple of steps happen. One, I had to work with myself too. After my first marriage of 17 years. We were together from the time I was 16 my son was born when I was 18 he's 40 now. Paul Chek: I realized I could not be in a monogamous relationship because the pain of wanting to cheat, to get laid, and have the ability to share intimate connection and love with females, get being, not able to do that due to religious ideology and preconceived notions of, you know, our, our marriage vows. And she was in the same boat. We discussed it a lot. So after I got a divorce, I said, okay, I can't be in a relationship with a woman that wants me to be monogamous. So I spent a lot of time exploring and being very forthright with women saying I'm not cut out from an origami. I did it for 17 years and it left both of us in a state where we didn't feel whole or complete. And I remember I was a young person, so you know, my son was born when I just turned 18. Paul Chek: We were together since I was 16 so I didn't really have time to go out and kind of so my oats and play the field. So I had that part of my life missing. So when I, long story made sure that when I met Penny, I just said to her, you know, when it was obvious that we were, you know, serious together, I said to her, I can't be in a monogamous marriage. I, I, it doesn't mean I don't love you. It just means that I have to have the freedom because I never want to be dishonest. I, I, it's, my heart hurts too much to tell lies to somebody that I love. She was happy with that and she's European, so, and she doesn't and doesn't have kind of a lot of these shackles on her that a lot of people do. And so we just basically made the agreement that we stayed together and live in love in ways that worked for both of us. Paul Chek: And our marriage agreement was, as long as we're happy together, we stayed together. But the day that we realized we don't want to be together anymore, then we move on. So Penny and I gave each other the freedom to be who we are. And that allowed me to explore intimate friendships. I would call them, cause I really ever never had any intention of leaving my wife. I love her way too much. And and this process allowed me to actually find out then I still had a lot of Christian programming alive in me that I didn't realize. For example, I'd be making love to another woman and all I could think of is, Oh my God, I'm cheating on Penny, you know, and, and all this stuff would come up like, where's this coming from? I'm, I'm being completely honest, I'm not going behind anybody's back this, you know, but I realized I had all this programming in me. Paul Chek: And so I had to really work on that. And then when I began my training in the use of psychedelics in 2006, Oh my God, many injuries just brought all sorts of this childhood programming up and I had to come face to face with it. And so what ultimately this process led me to was one I bought, Carl Jung's collected works maybe 20 years ago, 25 years ago. And I've been studying it ever since. And I studied many of the great minds in psychology, depth psychology, Ken Wilber's works and many of the Sufi masters and Mmm. What I, what I did, I studied Joseph Campbell for for many years and still do. I actually began to understand what an archetype was. I studied Carolyn Myss's survival archetypes. I studied the shadow in psychology and so I also studied attachment syndromes, infant attachment, infant attachment and how we develop a secure bond with our parents and what drives an insecure bond. Paul Chek: I studied Dan Siegel's works and I studied how to use an adult attachment interview and I developed my own adult attachment interview so I could identify when there was attachment problems in the beginning of a person's childhood. So I studied world religion extensively for years and years and years, so I could understand each of the kind of mindsets and ways of relating to the world. I studied Houston Smith extensively and so what synthesized out of that was a system of analysis that I teach Chek professionals where we look at your attachment history, what was your early childhood like? And we have a comprehensive questionnaire that shows us where there's problems. We look at, I created a system called the big eight archetypes. So we look at the Mago day, which is the image of DD, what do you believe God is and how is that helping you or not helping you? We look at the mother. How was your relationship with your mother, the father, how's your relationship with your fa

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