Episode 6 – Josh Trent, the Founder of Wellness Force Media and host of Wellness Force Radio, joins Leslie to discuss his health and wellness journey and the importance of health freedom.
Leslie: Hi everybody, Leslie Manookian with Health Freedom Defense Fund here with another edition of Conversations On Health Freedom. And we are going to have a great talk today because we have my friend and a real wellness pioneer Josh Trent, on the show. He’s an amazing young man who’s created a bunch of different kinds of businesses, pioneered breathing techniques, and other ways to wellness, and has had a ton of interaction with a lot of experts in the last couple of years, something I really want to dig into with him. Josh, it’s great to have you here. Welcome to the show.
Josh: Leslie, it’s so cool that I’m on the other side of the table. You’ve been on my podcast twice, and they were so popular, and I’m hoping I can do justice to your platform.
Leslie: I’m sure you will, Josh. I think we’ll have a really interesting discussion, but maybe less about the science and things like that and more about these issues that I try and talk about on Conversations On Health Freedom. I don’t know every single thing that you do. I know that you are a seeker of truth, that you are a seeker of wellness, that you are on your path through finding your own truth and finding what works for you, and expanding your own health and wellbeing. But can you share a little bit about what are your businesses? How can people find you, and what exactly you do in your mission?
Josh: Yes. Well, I’m a human being, which, first and foremost, we all share that. And I think that’s easy to forget when the narrative makes us try to believe8 that that’s real. So first and foremost, I’m human like y’all, but I’m an entrepreneur. I’m a father. I have a one-year-old son. I’m the CEO and Founder of a company called Wellness Force Media. And within Wellness Force Media, it’s this umbrella. It’s like the lane that I walk in this world has many different outlets. One of them is the Wellness and Wisdom Podcast, which you’ve been a guest. One of them is civilizedcaveman.com which is where men and women can go to get recipes and tips about keto and paleo and healthy living. And then also I’m a Breathwork practitioner. As you know, we’ve breathed together, and that’s at breathwork.io. There are over a thousand students in that program. It’s a global program. And so those are the ways in which I serve in the world. They’re all really unique. But I would say the one that people know me the most for is being the host of the podcast. But I’ll tell you, Leslie, as everything in our world has changed. So has my life with a son. My son is one year old. His name is Nova, and oh my gosh, like it makes me just value and love freedom so much more than I already did. It’s almost like it; it carved a new space in my heart for an understanding of what freedom actually is when I’m responsible for the freedom and the sovereignty of my son.
Leslie: And his wellbeing. I have to tell you, for me, it was the same thing. My son’s 19, almost 20. And when he was born, I started thinking about all the things that I wanted to do for him and with him, but also how I wanted to protect him. And it was one of the motivating forces for me in making my movie about vaccines, The Greater Good, and also founding Health Freedom Defense Fund because I want him to have, I want to be free to make those choices for myself as a parent and for him to have the freedom to choose how he wants to live his life. And so I think I’m so with you parenthood is such a serious changing dynamic. It’s a critical factor in the thought process, I think.
Josh: It’s a threshold that I don’t think anybody could ever intellectualize. You have to live it through experience. Like you have to be a parent. There’s no way that somebody could say, oh, well, freedom means this to me now. And it means the exact same thing after I have children. I just don’t think that’s possible. Like once you go through that kind of threshold, life takes on a brand new meaning. There’s more gravity to things. There’s a way of being that I have in the world. That’s just different now. It’s a fundamentally different shift.
Leslie: Yeah, it is. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about what health freedom actually means to you?
Josh: I think to be free is to be able to decide that I can behave in a way that benefits my life and doesn’t hurt anyone else. That’s it; there’s no borders. There’s no barriers. I behave in a way, my actions are inspired in a way, and I operate in the world in a way where I do what I choose, and I don’t hurt other people. I think that’s the ultimate definition of personal freedom. Now that’s on the I space, on the we space, the society freedom definition, and the definition of what freedom means to the world. Oh my gosh, that’s probably a lot more nuanced, you know, it’s funny. I haven’t really thought about this, but you know what’s really happening for me when you ask me that question, and you say, what is freedom? I think of personal freedom, and I think of freedom for others. And I really actually think it’s the same thing. The challenge is for me to define freedom for the world or for society. I think that freedom needs, I think that freedom can’t be expansive and that not everybody can be completely free about every single thing in the world. In other words, energy without borders tends to dissipate. So to be free means I’m expressing my energy in the world. It means I’m expressing my enthusiasm or just expressing my being as a unique point of consciousness in the world. Like there’ll never be another Leslie, there’ll never be another Josh, and that’s so beautiful, but at the same time, like you and I can’t do whatever we want, when we want all the time, otherwise, we would probably just be eating chocolate cake with like a needle in our arm and 500 pounds, you know there’s gotta be some limits to freedom. So I think freedom has a few ingredients. I think one of them is discipline, and I think the other one is awareness, and then I think the last one is expression. So if we can combine those three things, those three ways of being, and also in a way that it doesn’t hurt anyone else. You know, my actions don’t physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, or financially hurt anyone else. Then I’m doing a great job. I’m living my life well. I’m living my life free.
Leslie: So what about when it comes to health? It’s very interesting; one of the things that’s been employed in the last couple of years is a lot of guilt and societal responsibility. How do you think about health freedom? Because you’re someone who chooses your own path and the way that you keep yourself well, and the way that you grow, the way that you maintain health.
Josh: I have a different take on this. In my world for the past seven years, really, it’s culminated this year. I really feel like we, as a human being, we have five things that we have to manage. We have what I call the wellness pentagon, and the wellness pentagon for me and you it’s all the same and health is in there, but I actually think it’s all the same, because just like on a house if you take out a wall, a floor or a ceiling, It doesn’t work well, right? So we’re the same way, and if I could draw a pentagon for everyone, there’s physical, there’s emotional, there’s spiritual, there’s financial, and then there’s mental. All of these forms of health are in the question you asked me. They’re all about health. So every single one of those aspects of the pentagon, they must be a barometer for our own health, because if any, one of those Leslie are failing, like if you and I are broke, we’re not going to be able to buy healthy food. But if we have beautiful relationships and loving connections, but we’re kind of like emotionally depressed or emotionally anxious, then we can have all the relationships in the world. But if we don’t feel good in ourselves and we’re not healthy within ourselves, then that’s a beacon for change. That’s a trigger. That’s really an invitation to be changed. So when I look at the word health, most people think of physical health, like, okay, what does it mean to have physical health freedom? Well, obviously, I have say over what goes in on or inside my body, like that I have say over all of that, and I get to choose from a sovereign place. All the things that go in my lungs, on my skin, in my blood, everything. So that’s like end stop, period, end stop. Now what I said before, though, with this pentagon, there’s many aspects to health, because if any, one of those are lacking, they actually start to pull life force energy. They start to pull chi from the other aspects of ourself.
Leslie: That’s such an important thing to understand, and I feel so often people think only about physical health.
Josh: It’s important, but it’s not the whole thing.
Leslie: No, it’s not everything. And they also only think about, many people in the health freedom movement are just about, well, I don’t want to take this drug or I don’t want to take this injection or, I want to have access to supplements, and it’s so much more than that, right. Because it’s also the, I guess one of the things I’d say is it’s I have this conversation with people all the time that will I’ll just get an exemption, but that’s upside down, right? Because if we’re truly sovereign, if we’re truly free, we don’t have to ask anybody permission. We own our bodies, we own ourselves, and that’s the way that it should be. And our declaration of independence says that, that our rights come from our creator. It’s just that our nation has really lost its way in the last couple hundred years, but it’s such a critical component to, I think, unpack is this idea of who owns us and who doesn’t. Also that it’s not just about whatever you physically put into your body, but how do you think? Are you being bombarded with negative messages in the media and all these things, right? If you live in a toxic family environment, it’s so important to recognize that we are a composite of all these different factors in our life.
Josh: Allow me to wax poetic for just a minute here. This is like a philosophical lens for me. Because you know, I think about the phrase and the constitution; all men are created equal. Where were the women? This is 200 plus years ago, right that the constitution was created. There’s so many things about the constitution that need an upgrade because the world is just a different place. Like women and men need to sit at the table equally. But also, this is key; we need to see each other as uniquely different as well. You’ll birth children I never will. There’s nothing you could ever say that would allow me to birth the child through my body. It’s just not how nature intended. It’s not how God intended it. So there’s unique differences that we must honor as men and women that have unique aspects of health and unique aspects of freedom. And there’s also a way that we can all sit at this table of health freedom together and say, great, let’s make the decisions as one. It’s not that all men are created equal. It’s that all human beings, all beings, are created equal, men and women, both. So that’s the,
Leslie: But you don’t- but do you think that people really interpret it that way? And, I mean, I think it’s really important to not look back with a lens, you know, look through the sociopolitical cultural lens that we have today and value or judge the way that people were hundreds of years ago. And, you know, our founding fathers were very, very clear that their women were behind them, right? It’s just that it was a different time. I mean-
Josh: That’s what I’m saying. It was a totally different time.
Leslie: It was a different time. And so I don’t take any umbrage at the fact that it’s, it says all men are created equal because that’s just the way that it was, and it’s not like I’m not being treated equally. I don’t feel that I never had any experience. Now, I shouldn’t say I never had any experience. I was sexually assaulted several times by teachers and men in positions of power or sexually harassed. I should say attempts at sexual assault. Many times in my young adult life and even as a teenager. But when it came to work, I never ever felt like I couldn’t get ahead because I was a woman, and I feel that our culture is as- sure there are issues. There are always issues, and it can always be better. But in general, I mean, I’d say that we have the best culture in the world for women.
Josh: No doubt. I’m right there with you. And you know, my comments aren’t to shame the forefathers. It’s not to shame the constitution. It’s actually just saying, wow, this is so beautiful that this framework was put in place for us. That so many parts of it are right on point. And I would say probably the majority of it is right on point to where we live now. It’s just that the construct of how you and I operate it’s fundamentally different because of technology. How amazing would it have been if our forefathers had a crystal ball and they knew that AI was coming, they knew that all these different things were coming down the pipeline? They might have if they had that awareness at that time. They might have written it differently. So me saying that we need to rewrite it isn’t a knock on them. It’s really just an honoring of what they created for us. My grandfather was a four-star Brigadier General Marine Corps, and I’m sure that if he was alive today, he would probably look back on things that he did or how we showed up and go, yeah, Josh, I could have done that differently, right? And so it’s not about shaming anyone from the past. It’s more about saying. How do we take what we’ve learned from the past? And this is the key, Leslie; how do we make our wisdom not clouded by our wounding?
Leslie: Mm-hmm.
Josh: That’s really it. It’s like all the wisdom from the past, leave the wounding and then take that wisdom and bring it to now. And then, you know, in a hundred years, people will be saying that about Leslie and Josh.
Leslie: Let’s hope so. I guess I’m just saying I don’t feel that I’ve been slighted by the fact that they wrote it as all men are created equal. I just think it was just customary at the time. And so, and thankfully, we’ve moved on. It’s just like, I look at the enlightenment. I look at John Locke and Immanuel Kant and these, I mean, brilliant men and brilliant thinkers who really helped formulate the idea that each and every individual life is important and that it’s valuable in and of itself them against the utilitarians who believe that the collective was more important than everybody than any individual. And from my way of thinking, it’s the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but also, you can never, ever, ever help another by hurting another, right? If you hurt one, then you have hurt the group, and it’s never, it’s never kind, it’s never ethical, it’s never appropriate to hurt one individual in order to help the whole, and these were ideals that were discussed and really unpacked by these philosophers during the enlightenment. And there was a lot of tension there. Now they only talked about men, but I mean, what they were talking about was coming from the dark ages, coming from serfdom, coming from, you know, all of these changes. And so I just think it’s so that I think we need to be very careful that we don’t judge them by all of the wisdom that we have today. That’s all I’m saying. And that there have been so many leaps forward in the last 400 years, and I applaud them. And when it comes to our founders, our founding fathers, oh my gosh. I thank God for them every day, Josh because we would be Canada or Australia or Germany right now.
Josh: Yes.
Leslie: Italy. We would be in a very different position if it weren’t for our founding fathers who had the genius to try and separate power between the federal government and the states, and so anyway, I just want to just say that I think it’s important to not judge them by our own lens through today. But I want to ask you something-
Josh: Well, do you think that by me saying that we have an open invitation to change some of the language, do you feel that that’s a judgment?
Leslie: No. But when you said, they said all men are created equal.
Josh: Yes.
Leslie: That, that should be changed. Sure, it could be, but it’s like, mankind versus humankind. If you’re super sensitive to that, then you need to change it. But I don’t really care that its mankind.
Josh: Well, because you have the understanding. Yeah, I think because of the landscape we’re in where, and I’m not a fan of this, like the gender dysphoria campaigns and people thinking they’re girls when they’re boys and vice versa. I’m not saying we need to go that far with it. I just believe that there’s so much wisdom in the middle way and it’s not even mine to own. It’s actually, Lazu. It’s Carl Young. It’s Jordan Peterson. It’s all the people that I respect, and they find this middle way. And that middle way changes through millennia. So 200 years ago, the middle way. You know, I really do think that the forefathers did the best they possibly could, and we have a lot to be grateful for about that, for sure. But I just think that whether we change the verbiage or not, there’s that middle way that continues to shift for us as we move forward as humanity.
Leslie: But I think a lot of the ideals are as important today as they were back then, and I wouldn’t
Josh: Well, the second amendment is just as important, if not more. I mean that,
Leslie: But what about the first amendment?
Josh: The first amendment as well.
Leslie: What about the 10th?
Josh: But really like that second amendment, like people don’t realize that when we talk about freedom and health freedom like I own an AR-15 and a 9 millimeter, right? I’ve had training, of course, I can get more training. I’m not that amazing of a shot, but I own the firearms. Not because I’m in fear, but because I know that by me exercising that right that was granted to me by my grandfather’s service and so many people that came before him that I’m actually part of history in that way. And I actually protect without violence without hurting anyone else. My own freedom, me owning a gun, is actually me being free. I could go my whole life and never hurt anyone with that gun. And I would be a thousand times more free because I had the ability to own it and the ability to use it.
Leslie: A hundred percent. I just went to the shooting range with my husband last week. We have licenses. You can actually, in Idaho, you can conceal carry. It’s constitutional carry. There’s no permit or anything required.
Josh: That’s amazing.
Leslie: And I think it’s important.
Josh: You just have to like tell the officer like, hey, I’m concealing, or how do you do it if you get pulled over?
Leslie: I don’t think you have to do anything.
Josh: Amazing.
Leslie: Yeah, you can take it almost anywhere in the state of Idaho, and it’s because it’s your constitutional right.
Josh: Yeah.
Leslie: And I think it should be. But anyway, I think that there’s so much more in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. I mean, think about this, okay, there is no other political system on the planet whose founding documents say that our rights come from our creator, no other one. And why is that so important? Because it means that no government can take them away and that they are yours by virtue of being born human. That’s one of the most radical revolutionary ideas ever conceived. And so I just applaud them in what they did. I really do. I think, unfortunately, our statutory system and our judicial systems and our whole system has been really bastardized in the intervening 250 years. But what they came up with was brilliant. It was truly brilliant.
Josh: At its core. And I find that there’s always like some kind of atrophy and attrition in nature. You know, as we’ve been talking here, I’ve just been feeling like there are so many laws of nature that if we would just live by those laws, we wouldn’t be in this situation we’re in right now, like the constitution and the way that our forefathers designed it and everything that we came from, there’s a pureness there. There’s a, well, really, it was like a Christian faith, right? There was the belief in God that made the constitution what it was. Whether you believe in God or not, there’s purity there. There’s a wholeness there. There is an understanding that we are given these rights because we’re alive. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be alive. And I think if we look at nature, like in nature, high pressure always seeks low pressure, and water always runs downhill. There’s no such thing as good vibes, only 365 days a year in nature. Like, if we can just get out of trying to make the world and make each other exactly what our minds think it should be. Start following more the laws of nature and what we somatically experience and what we see from nature. I think things would be very different. I think greed would not even be a thing. I think there would still probably be, like, you know, territory wars and skirmishes and stuff like that. But I think right now we’re honestly sick. We’re intellectually sick. We’ve become drunk on our own hubris and our mind, and especially the people that are in power that are essentially just at this point, Leslie, I feel like they’re wounded children that haven’t healed their trauma that need to breathe, and they’re just like flexing their power on all these different continents, completely ignoring the laws of nature that the constitution itself was built from in honor of the creator.
Leslie: Yeah, well, they’re using- they prey on us through fear, right? They use fear in order to get us, to buy their drugs in order to get us to buy a product in order to get us to do anything and everything. And so they’re focused on money and power and control, and they’re controlling the masses through fear. And so, so much of our society and economy revolves around that. But I want to say something you just mentioned, and I think for me, it’s something that resonates so deeply, one of our founders, and I can’t remember who it was; it’s bumming me out that I can’t remember, but he actually said that we only have a system that works for a moral and educated populace. And if you look at literally the destruction of our social fabric in recent decades, the last five decades, I think.
Josh: Yeah.
Leslie: You know, I don’t usually watch the super bowl, but a few years ago, I did, and Jennifer Lopez was on, and she literally came into the super bowl show, and she was 50 years old. It was around her 50th birthday with her eight-year-old daughter, and there were hundreds of millions of people watching this. Millions of children, lots of eight-year-olds, lots of six-year-olds, lots of 10-year-olds. And she comes in on a, what do you call it? Like a stripper pole. And she does her routine on a stripper pole dressed almost barely, almost naked. And all of these celebrities were applauding her for showing what it means to be a strong 50-year-old woman. And I think how misguided are these people that they think that is what it means to be a strong, healthy 50-year-old woman. And what message are you sending to all the six and eight-year-old girls and to the six and eight-year-old boys about what they should expect in a woman when they grow up?
I mean, are you sure you want to open this can of worms? Because I have so much to say about this. I really do. You know, it’s interesting; I noticed when you were describing it, I felt discomfort in my body. And the reason I feel that discomfort isn’t because I’m here to say that something is wrong and something is right. I’m just here to say that I think, naturally, nature-based, we have a repulsion to pornography. We have a repulsion to perversion unless we’ve been taught, and this is the key unless we’ve been taught that it’s normal. We’re taught that something is normal.
This is my point. They are destroying the moral fabric of our society. That’s what they’re doing. And it’s not an accident in my view.
Josh: It’s not an accident. There’s quite a deep story behind it, and okay, I’ll go into that. The feeling I had in my body is normal and natural, and healthy. What’s really sad and when you know that the frog has been boiled in the water slowly and now is dead is when people stop feeling that reaction, every human being, especially all parents, just all people actually should try their very best at all times to protect the innocence of a child. I mean, when an innocent- like it makes me wanna cry, I get that cry, feeling when I just talk about it, you know, when the innocence of a child is stripped away, you cannot get that back. You cannot get that back. It’s the same that if you jumped off a cliff, you die. When you take away a child’s innocence through perversion, you cannot give them back their innocence unless they themselves go on a Breathwork, plant medicine, or spiritual journey to return home. But most people don’t do that. So I think what you’re really bringing up here is so big because the forces and the layers are so deep. If you look at what’s going on in the CCP and how the CCP is owning major parts of Hollywood and how the CCPs agenda is to dismantle the American family and also in Hollywood, there is also a gender dysphoria campaign that is part and parcel funded by not just the CCP, but the gay Jewish mafia. And a lot of other things that you people may call me a conspiracy theorist for, but it just takes a quick search from anyone that has any intelligence to know that there are so many energies and so much darkness against specifically the family and children. Because those energies know that if you poison the well at the bottom, you can drink the water from the top, and you die. That’s what this is all about. When you get to kids first, then they grow up, and then they never have that reaction like you and I have. When we look at a stripper, when we look at children being cheered on to put dollar bills inside of transgender strippers, inside of strip clubs, I mean, what world are we living in? Like, it makes me feel the way I feel because I have a moral compass, and I think what’s going on is because of the financial interest and specifically the CCP. In the infiltration in Hollywood, which has already had dark energy for a while. I think that’s really what we’re seeing unfolding now. And unfortunately, I think there’s gonna be a big bifurcation where there’s people that feel things like you and I, we feel, we’re somatically connected. We understand that it’s okay to feel the way we feel. We don’t need to mash that down, drug it down, video, game it down, pour it down, whatever. And then there’s gonna be people that plug into the metaverse, and that’s where they want to live, and they just want to live in there, and you know what, if that’s what they want and they think that makes them happy, by all means, go for it. But I’ll be damned if I’m not gonna speak about it, I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let it happen to my family or my community.
Leslie: Yeah. A hundred percent. It’s really interesting when you take that and you apply it to the last two and a half years because what is most egregious is this intent, this intention, and this intensive pursuit of masking children. And I think it’s the essence of it is exactly the same as exposing them to porn and all this other stuff. Children should not be sexualized. They should be innocent and pure and shouldn’t be taught about any of this stuff until their parents are ready to teach them, in my view. But the same concept is at work with respect to masking these little kids because those little kids become accustomed to them and then endure. They don’t even know that it’s a problem it’s normal for them. And those children who’ve been indoctrinated in that way are good servants for the rest of their lives. They will be compliant. They will submit to authority. They will do as they’re told, and it is so insidious. It is truly heartbreaking. It’s one of the motivations for me doing what I do because I’m so disgusted by what they are doing, and I’ve spoken out about it so much, and it horrifies me. I’ve spoken out to our local school to the point where I think I really irritated the heck out of ’em a lot, but I don’t really care, you know, but anyway, what do you think about the masks and these other things? I think it’s just the same ideology being implemented on two-year-olds as sexualization. It’s the same thing, the same idea.
Josh: Yeah, there’s a phrase that’s been, I don’t know who actually’s the phrase it is, but it’s been scripted by many authors over time, and it is never let a really challenging time go to waste.
Leslie: Never let a good crisis go to waste. Yeah, Rahm Emanuel said it, but it’s actually-
Josh: So many people have said it.
Leslie: Winston Churchill said it.
Josh: Yeah. So never let a challenging time- never let a crisis, a good crisis go to waste. The crisis that we’re in right now is a crisis of the mind. That’s really what’s happening. And I know you, and I have heard this before, but I want everybody to just like really connect with their heart right now. The crisis of the mind isn’t because we need to shame anyone or make anyone wrong. We actually just need to be humble and just take a knee and just admit that we’ve gone in a wrong direction here as a society, but we don’t want to do that because we’re also swept up in the house of cards that we don’t want to fall down, cuz all the dysbiosis is connected to one another. So the masks, the masks are just a symptom of a way deeper problem. Now obviously, when you put a mask on a child, there’s so much psychologically that’s going on. If you look at the polyvagal theory in Stephen Porges’s work, we have all these micro muscles in our face, and when a child’s not able to see the full musculature in someone’s face, they’re not able to practice safety and security mechanisms that are hardwired to their amygdala, so that’s the first thing. We are literally robbing children of their primal need to make sure that from someone’s face that they’re safe. So that right there should be enough, but the rest of it goes on and on. Because if you look at most of the research about carbon dioxide and the way that we’re able to breathe and what happens from the lung capacity in breathing, it’s funny. I had somebody ask me this; they’re like, oh, you’re a breathwork practitioner like, why do you think it’s so bad that we wear a mask? What about doctors and nurses that wear them all the time? And I’m like, and we’re not doctors and nurses. We’re not in a secure environment where we’re wearing them for an hour or five or a day because we’re with a patient. We’re human beings out in a park. It’s literally comparing when you compare putting a mask on a child to putting a mask on a doctor. It is the most egregious example. Like, I can’t even see how people could say that that’s an example. It’s like saying, oh, you didn’t put the toilet seat up. Oh, you cheated on me. There’s just absolutely no logic or no connection between the two things. Yes, they are the same, where both a human and a child might put on a mask, but the ramifications psychologically to a child are so profound. They’re so terrible, just from Stephen Porges and the polyvagal theory and also from respiratory function. There have been studies of lung volume and decreasing posture that has to correct because of the mask being worn. But also, I think it’s a lot more deep and a lot more sinister. The deep sinister part of this is that when you put a mask on a child, you’re literally silencing their voice. So now, not only are we having a generation of children that grow up to think that it’s okay to not check out if people are safe or not. So they’re more susceptible to danger. They’re not gonna express themselves either. We’re gonna raise a generation of children that are not speaking their truth and don’t have the ability to see the truth in others, and that is exactly the kind of population that is easily controlled. So it goes way deeper than just should I wear a mask or not? Obviously, we know there’s no reason to wear them at all. There really isn’t unless you’re going into an environment where they’re designed for. That’s why they were designed, right? For these specific medical environments, but not outside of those environments.
Leslie: Even doctors who wear masks, they’re really a splash guard. They are so that if they’re in surgery.
Josh: Right.
Leslie: And they don’t want to cough in an open wound, and they don’t want anything splurting up into their faces; that’s what it’s really for. There’s nothing that is protecting any viral or bacteriological pathogen. That’s not what the purpose of them is, and of course, in an operating room, it’s a sterile environment. So it’s so different. But I want to turn, if we can, a little bit to the kinds of people,
Josh: You got me fired up
Leslie: What’s that?
Josh: You got me fired up.
Leslie: Oh, good. That’s good. No, I think it’s great, Josh. I love it. What I want to talk about a little bit is who’s been the most controversial person that you’ve ever had on and what happened as a result of that to you in your business, what impact did it have on you?
Josh: It was actually a tie for three. It was Leslie, Zach Bush
Leslie: Me?
Josh: Yep. You, Zach Bush, and Greg Anderson. Greg Anderson was a police officer that when 2020 lockdowns and mask BS first started happening, he was the very first officer to go public and say I won’t enforce these mandates. I won’t enforce these masks. He became a national icon for freedom because Jay Inslee, the governor there, had him fired because he went against quote governor’s orders, but he became this voice for truth. And it’s, he’s like this tatted guy, he’s like an MMA officer, not the kind of person who you would think would be a spokesperson for emotional intelligence, but he said something so profound that both you and Zach also said, he said, if you just take away all of what you’re seeing and all of what’s going on with the media and you just take a breath, and you just take a look of what’s going on in your community, you can feel in your body that something’s not right. And just that simplistic comment from a police officer it speaks so much more on a megaphone than any research study that masks don’t work or any research study about jabs. We try, and this is what I’m saying, what I talked about earlier, Leslie, we are drunk on our own intellect. We’ve lost the ability to like, feel things in our body, feel things with each other and take an honest look at our community because we have been- we, you, and I have been trained. I’m still unlearning some of the stuff that I learned throughout my life. I’m still to this day, like, oh yeah, I’m not. I don’t need to be hyper-vigilant. I struggle with hypervigilance. So I’m still unlearning that I don’t need to be hyper-vigilant. So anyways, it’s a long answer to this point of like, who’s the most controversial person? It’s been anyone that’s trying to get us back home. It’s been anyone that’s trying to get us back in our bodies, back in our hearts, to say this is what’s really happening in our world. But I would say you and Zach, and obviously Zach with his medical background, and he’s been very outspoken on his views with what’s been going down, and then, of course, you with the jab and all the research that you’ve presented there as well.
Leslie: So what kind of pushback did you give? What, why was it so controversial? Tell me what happened, and importantly, what impact did that have on you in your own journey?
Josh: Yeah. It just, honestly, it made me think it made me know I was on the right path. I had people, the interview with Zach went viral, and there are actually some pretty strong comments on our YouTube videos and on our media as well, and then, of course, with Greg. You know, anytime that someone’s safety is threatened, they’re gonna revolt, even if that safety is actually incorrect. And so people that are writing the negative comments, I had people email me, they found my email address and they were like cursing and swearing. I’m not even gonna say it here on your show, right? Just like the worst things ever read. And it was actually something where my own father, we don’t speak. It’s not even because of this issue with masks and jabs. There’s a deeper story there, but he actually wrote, and he was part of the vitriol that said, you know, you’re this, you’re that, you’re hurting people, blah, blah. And I thought to myself; this is how I know I’m on the right path, because if I’m getting this strong of a reaction, you know, as a content creator like me, the worst thing for us is when there are crickets, there’s no reaction at all, then you know that you need to rethink the authenticity or the heart message about what you’re doing. And so I actually welcomed it. I mean, no, some of the things weren’t easy to read, and we actually had to delete a lot of the profanity and whatnot, but it actually gave me more fuel for the fire because I was excited about it. I was like, okay, people are actually upset. Good. Good. Let’s be upset then because, from that upsetness, there can then be some resolve. But if we don’t talk about it, which is exactly what” they” and when I say they, I mean the five oligopoly media companies that run everything on this planet, and then also the pharmaceutical, the agribusiness, and the medical trifecta that also run the world. All three of those industries are multi mega billion trillion dollar industries. So they’re slanted combined with the five companies from the media. It’s not a conspiracy. You can actually go on Wikipedia right now and type in who owns the media. They’ll give you the five companies. Same thing with the other three, the trifecta I mentioned. So for me, it didn’t really bother me. I’m sure there was like a little bit of discomfort from time to time, but it didn’t like to make me stop. And if anything, it made me more excited. To be honest, we did, however, have to be very specific in how we posted content because we were shadow banned so bad on YouTube, we used to get thousands and thousands of views on our YouTube channel, and now it’s like a blip of what we used to get. And the same thing on Facebook. Podcasting has been great because I’ve actually seen us grow on audio, but for the rest of the channels, it’s like good luck.
Leslie: So, has it changed all of this, the last two and a half years, and your experience with it? Has it changed your worldview at all?
Josh: The most authentic answer I can give you that’s not canned is, absolutely, it has. I mean, I wish I could sit here and say, nope, Leslie hasn’t really bothered me at all. Or, you know, nope, not really. It’s like I’m an HSP. I’m a highly sensitive person. And so, being an entrepreneur and an HSP is already a lot. And so when I look at what’s going on in our world, and I really feel the pain and the suffering of what’s happening for others. And I see honestly, without judgment, the stupidity, and I say stupidity cuz I’m not being judgemental. I do think there are stupid people in this world. I do, and I think those stupid people breed, and I think they breed more stupid people. And I think the whole agenda here and really everything of what we’ve been talking about is to get people as stupid as possible so that they’re not educated. Like you mentioned, one of the authors of the constitution, right? If we’re not educated, and we’re not morally sound, then we’re not gonna be able to take in information that has wisdom. And so yeah, it bums me out. It makes me sad. I do experience waves of sadness at times. I do experience just waves of emotion about what’s about the collective world. I wish things were different. I’m doing my little part in the grand theater to make sure that I at least leave the planet, knowing that I did all that I could to make it different. But I also don’t need to sacrifice myself. You know I don’t need to be a martyr for this thing, either.
Leslie: No. What’s really sad is that so much of this deterioration of our educational system and also literacy in the United States, in particular, is deliberate in a long-term agenda. Most people think that public school transformed things in a positive way, and the truth is that before we ever had public school, 98% was our literacy rate. When we only had private little houses that all the families got together and paid for the little school mom, 98% literacy rates there’s a-
Josh: That’s fascinating.
Leslie: There’s something else that’s interesting that I was very, very concerned about education and where I was going to allow my son to be educated outside of our home.
Josh: Yeah.
Leslie: And so I did a lot of work around this, and there’s a book, and it’s called Dumbing Us Down, and I highly recommend you read it.
Josh: You mention this to me.
Leslie: You should read it as a new dad. Because it is a huge and eye-opening insight into public school education and what the actual intentions may be, and what all the kind of parasite lessons are that are being taught. And he doesn’t say this, but another educator that I met, a guy named Michael Menza, he wrote Magical Parent Magical Child, and he is now an advocate for unschooling. He says that in the original ideas. One of the original ideas that they had when they created the public school system, was to break the bond between mother and child. And their reasoning was that the industrial revolution had broken the bond between father and child and that public education would break it between mother and child, which is quite sinister if you really think about it, right? This is the way that so many people in our society today think is that, that the schools and some teachers and some systems should be deciding what your child is taught. And I mean, this is really, I think one of the most pernicious, kind of countercultural or it’s not countercultural, unfortunately, it’s become the culture, right?
Josh: Yeah.
Leslie: And those of us who are going against it are resisting it are the counterculture. But the point is that this stuff is really harmful to us as a system, and it’s something that needs to be addressed, but I want to come back to something else with you. Thank you so much for sharing that because I really appreciate that we can talk heart to heart, and not everybody can, right? And so many people who are in this health freedom arena, it’s very much a fight. And I fall into that very often, too, because I see that things that are happening actually require some resistance and taking a stand and some offense and lots of things. But one of the things that I’d love to get your perspective on is you talk about that we’re one, and you talk about the educational issues and coming together, and that you also said that you think that there are people who are stupid. Do you think there are people who are truly evil?
Josh: Absolutely. And of course, I do, because there’s a phrase in the Bible that, you know whether you’re religious or not, this phrase should ring true. And it’s Isaiah 45:7, and it goes something like this, depending on what version you’re reading. I, the Lord, create dark and light and good and evil. I, the Lord, do all these things, and I’m not a religious man. I’m a spiritual man. Okay, so I’m not a Bible-thumping dude. I’m not saying that y’all need to go read the Bible, but there’s something in there. There’s something in there, right? Because if literally, the word of God translated into many different versions is still saying essentially the same thing that God creates everything, that means that light and dark good and evil high and low is God, because we are all made in the image of God. And we’re you, and I are a unique point of consciousness. So yes, of course, like there is evil in the world. I don’t even need to read it in a Bible. I just see it all around, and you know how I know it the most, because that evil lives in me, like, look at what the word live is, rearrange the words of live and it’s evil. It’s in living, it’s literally in the etymology of the word live that there is evil if you rearrange the words. So come on-
Leslie: So can I just say the reason I ask it is because so many spiritual seekers think that if you do good and if you’re good and kind in the world, then that’s all you’ll get back. And the only problem is that they’re wounded people, and I think that there are some people who look, I don’t think there’s any evil baby, and maybe it is all wounding, but I think there is some serious darkness, and I think that it is reckless if we disregard it. There are so many people think, oh, we’re just all one, and we just need to get together and hug and meditate, and everything’s gonna be peachy. And I’m like, I don’t think so.
Josh: Well-
Leslie: Have you ever heard of Bridget Gabriel?
Josh: No.
Leslie: Incredible woman. She’s Lebanese American, and she gives this incredible speech I can share with you, but she talks about how it’s not the peaceful majority that directs and commits atrocities. It’s the evil minority.
Josh: Sure.
Leslie: I think that’s what’s really at play right now.
Josh: I think what people say when they say all is one, I even think they’re right when they’re including the evil because if we are all one, going back to what I read from Isaiah 45:7, if that’s the truth and whether you’re religious or not, you know that there’s something you can feel from some people at times that isn’t loving and that is really dark, and also we all know, let’s be honest Leslie we’ve all had thoughts like, man, I wish that person would die. Come on, to be a human being is to sometimes have evil thoughts, right?
Leslie: Totally.
Josh: Where do those evil thoughts come from? They’re not just coming from us; they’re coming through us from somewhere else. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be the quantum field. There wouldn’t be the hundredth monkey effect. There wouldn’t be this like quantum entanglement theory. There wouldn’t be supercomputers if, and it goes back to what I was saying again like if you and I are made in the image of God and God is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, then really at all of this, it’s philosophical, mental masturbation where you and I are trying to define God. We’re trying to define something that actually has no definition. What I’m saying is we need to honor the mystery of this whole thing, there is no one way for anything, but yes, we are all one. And that’s the ultimate paradox. I don’t know if that’s too philosophical for our conversation about freedom today, but I think it’s really, really important because inside of all of us being one, there’s also everything that makes us human. So they’re right when they say we’re all one, but being all one doesn’t mean we’re all love.
Leslie: And it doesn’t mean we’re all the same, and it doesn’t mean we all have the same path or the same experience or the same journey in this life.
Josh: Yes.
Leslie: I like to say that we are spiritual beings having a physical experience. It also doesn’t mean that we disregard the physical. I think that’s something else that’s so important, right? We have to find out how to integrate the two, right? How to live as spiritual beings in this plane.
Josh: You know what the Indian culture tries to do. Do you know where I said the phrase honoring the mystery? The Indian culture brought up terms like karma and dharma, and karma is supposedly like a credit card; it’s where we pay our spiritual debts from this lifetime or others, and then dharma is the Indian culture’s definition of your purpose, your calling your path. But there’s also this concept of free will, and so I think for us to be truly free since we’re on a freedom conversation right now, we have to include free will, and sometimes free will is God experiencing God’s self by evil, by terrible things, and that’s a hard pill to swallow. It’s how I’ve made meaning of the mystery. Leslie, I don’t know if I could ever be at total peace as to what life is all about, what’s the purpose of life and where we go when we die. And I don’t think any of us ever should go down that path as long as you go down that path and it’s not gonna consume you cuz it could. But I will say that like the way I make meaning of the mystery of all of this is, the only thing I could imagine is if God wanted something a certain way, then so it is; otherwise, it wouldn’t be. God wanted you and I to have this conversation. God is not a man or a woman. I think God is an energy that we try to put female and male archetypes on, but the love of God and the presence of God is so profound and so mysterious that at our very birthright, we are free, and also that means we are born with free will and free will it takes in the dark and the light, the love and the hate.
Leslie: It was very beautiful, Josh, and I couldn’t agree with you more.
Josh: Thank you.
Leslie: I think we should actually wrap it up there because that’s such a great place to end.
Josh: Let’s be free y’all.
Leslie: Yeah, let’s be free, and maybe we can just say one thing. What would you encourage listeners, and viewers to do in order to exercise their rights and become more free? What kinds of things do you advocate for? Would you advise that our audience try and implement it in their own lives in order to live that freer life?
Josh: I was doing it when you were speaking to me right now. So this is, we’re doing a video and audio video interview, and I know that all of you can see like in my face there’s no, there’s no squinting. I’m not trying to hide. I’m not trying to be something I’m not. I’m just like, my face is relaxed. And when my face is relaxed, my jaw is relaxed. And when my jaw is relaxed, I can close my mouth. I can bring it through my nose when I can breathe through my nose. I can breathe through my belly. When I can breathe through my belly, I can start shifting my nervous system, but there’s a pathway there. It’s like, I’m being real with you. I’m not trying to be something I’m not. My face is relaxed. My jaw is relaxed. My lips are relaxed. I’m breathing through my belly. That’s what we can all practice, and I’m just as much a student on this as everyone else. When we see media or see something that triggers us when we’re dealing with a family member, that’s like triple masking their children and making them wear plastic bags on their hands. Whenever we’re seeing anything in all in this world that we know on a deep somatic level is an antithesis to freedom. The best possible thing we can do is just do a quick scan, and this comes with repetition. I’m not saying that it’s gonna happen right away, but over the years, right? I would say probably two years. I think if you really practiced just this one skill for two years, it could shift the way you live forever. And that is relax your face, relax your jaw, breathe your nose with you know, very loosely purse lips and breathe like a be breathe through your belly. So your belly goes in and out. We talk about this at breathwork.io. That’s the breathe program, that’s a three-week journey that I guide all my students through that I myself have done and that so many people are giving me feedback on that it really gets them out of that primal brain that, that autonomic nervous system sympathetic fight or flight and of course this is my own medicine. Cause I already shared that I have a hypervigilant tendency, and so that’s my awareness to unravel that in my lifetime. So if I’m hypervigilant, then what is my medicine? It’s for me to relax. It’s for me to relax my face, my jaw, my lips, my breathing, and then from that place, I can really feel what’s going on, and I think if we did that as a society, we wouldn’t be on our phones or shopping or pornography or all these other things as much. I think they wouldn’t be as intoxicating cuz we’re all just looking for the- (deep inhaling). We’re all just that’s what children want. Children just wanna hold their parents and breathe. You know, my son just, I was holding him today, and all he did, he just put his head on me, and he was just breathing. And I’m just like- there’s no amount of money that could give me that, you know? There are certain things in life that just deserve so much sacredness, and the freedom of us and the freedom of our kids is like the most sacred thing.
Leslie: So Breathworks, is it breathwork.io?
Josh: Yeah, breathwork.io.
Leslie: And where else can we find you?
Josh: And then you can have the Wellness Wisdom Podcast on dial on your phone. Speaking of the device that triggers us, there’s a double edge sword. Like this device can help us too. So if you’re in the car or if you’re about in life, and you’re really wanting some inspiration, you can just go to wellnessforce.com/podcast.
Leslie: Awesome. Josh, thank you so very much for coming on the show with me today; it’s been a real treat and a really fantastic conversation about some very important issues. I’m so glad that we got to share this.
Josh: Me too. I’m giving you a digital hug right now. Thank you for having me. Bye, y’all.
Leslie: Bye, everybody.
