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The Smoke Trail, hosted by Smoke Wallin, is a journey into awakening consciousness, weaving authentic stories and deep discussions with inspiring guests to unlock high performance and perfect health. Each episode delves into spirituality, leadership, and transformation, offering tools to transcend trauma and find your bliss along the way. It’s a reflective space for achieving peak potential and inner peace in a distraction-filled world.
Episode 42, I'm super excited about. My guest is my good friend, Travis Soot. Travis's daughter, Piper, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis in 2011. He was already building businesses, chasing his dream, and everything he'd built became kinda meaningless overnight. Most people would call what happened the next the crisis, Travis calls it, an initiation.
Smoke:This is the story of what a broken heart builds when you let it lead. Travis is a social impact entrepreneur, conscious leadership coach, founder of Piper's Angels Foundation, and the crossing of cystic fibrosis, a dedicated lung function program combining breath work, free diving techniques, Qi Dong, and yoga for cystic fibrosis communities. He's also a certified Qi Dong teacher, karya, yoga teacher, riki practitioner, and psychedelic assisted therapy guide. Travis and I go back further than this recording. Three years ago, we were in a ceremony together in North Carolina.
Smoke:He held space for me through one of the most intense clearings of my life. And I didn't know him, but I was experiencing, like, a real, really dark moment. And it was now in retrospect, it was a ton of energy coming up. It was emotional energy hairballs I had stuck inside that were being cleared. And all of a sudden, this guy was right next to me, and he pulled me close, and he held me in his arms probably for an hour of me processing this stuff.
Smoke:And he's like, it's just energy. Just let it process. Anyway, it was a very loving and touching thing for him to do. It's not something us men do a lot with each other, and it was profound. And so I'm super excited to have Travis.
Smoke:We have a great conversation about life, about spiritual journey, and he shares some really great learnings and techniques along the way. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. It's with great pleasure that I welcome. Alright. Travis, Suit, welcome to The Smoke Trail.
Travis:Thank you. It's wonderful to be here.
Smoke:I'm super excited to kick off season two. This is my my second season. I I did 40 episodes in season one, and then I took a couple months off at the beginning of this year just to kind of recalibrate. I was finishing my my manuscript for my book and and just decided to take a little break, and you're my first guest of the of the new season.
Travis:Alright. Well, I'm excited to kick it off. Thanks for having me. And, looks like you're in a beautiful location.
Smoke:Yeah. Well, this is, as I said earlier, you know, it's like CGI, but it's it's actually this is actually my back patio. So it's it's pretty special place. We're very blessed and lucky to be here.
Travis:And Looks like the energy there is pristine.
Smoke:It's pristine. What well, you know, what what I tell people is have you been to Sedona ever? No. Yeah. So Sedona is one of those, you know, energy vortex kind of places.
Smoke:It's like Mount Shasta and the Giza Plateau, and, you know, there's other places around the world that have this, like, energy flow. And I almost look at it like the Earth's chakras. You know, it's like the places where the energy is kind of comes to contact with the the surface. And whatever is going on with you will be accentuated. Right?
Smoke:So if if if, you know, if you're in a really good place and things are you're you're feeling really good, like, this will, like, you know, bounce you up to super abundance. And if you're if you're facing some shadows and dealing with some stuff and, you know, having resistance, it will it will accentuate that too. So it's a it's a powerful location, which is pretty cool.
Travis:And how long have you lived there?
Smoke:It'll be three years in June. We moved out here. So I I've been coming here for decades to hike and just visit. I'd always loved it. I love to hike, so this is one of my, like, the greatest places to do that.
Smoke:And I did my YPO president's retreat when I was chapter chair here. So I brought, I don't know, 35, 40 c CEOs here, and we did a week long well, not a week long, but I stayed a week. We did a a consciousness retreat, which was a new topic for most most of them, but it was great. We had a really good time. But I I got to spend a whole week here.
Smoke:And when everybody left, I had I had a my own stash of psilocybin mushrooms, and I went up on the vortex and with a lawn chair and a blanket and a snack. And I, you know, had a a journey on my own. And about four hours later, I I literally felt like I was Moses walking down the mountain, like, with with, like, with all this, like, stuff that I had downloaded. And I called up Anitra. She was on a sailing trip with her girlfriends, and I said, hey.
Smoke:What do you think about what do you think about Sedona? He's like, okay. You know, I'm willing to give it a try. I love it there. So we moved here, and we we we did Airbnbs for about fourteen months on purpose just to get to know the area, make sure we wanted to actually live here, and, know, get to know the neighborhoods and figure it out.
Smoke:And then, literally, I was riding my bike, and I found this house. It wasn't on our list because it had a a different room count and a little bit It was just off the radar, and I was like, that looks pretty cool. And we went and saw it and, you know, made an offer that day and, moved in here in August. So we're super excited to set roots here.
Travis:Yeah. An awesome journey to discover a a sacred place and home.
Smoke:Yeah. Well, my kids are all you know, when my kids went out to went to college, the youngest, we moved to California. So we were empty nesters, and we were like, you know, I was running a company out there, and and we had a great run there. It was cool. We and we had a good place there in the in during COVID, we moved up to Ventura, and I was up in the hills so we could see the Channel Islands.
Smoke:And, you know, we did a lot of beach hikes, but there's something about the energy, and I was just like, you know, we were thinking about different other places. This is the you get to look forward to this at some point because when your when your kids are, like, actually out of the house and, you know, they're not teenagers anymore, I I I can't remember exactly how old they are, but you guys get to, you know, figure out what you wanna do as a or or you as alone? Like, you're not married, are you?
Travis:Yeah. No. I'm married. Yep. Married, and we have four kids.
Travis:So we're a blended family, but we have two 18 year old daughters, one 15 year old son, and a four year old son. So
Smoke:Okay. Okay.
Travis:We the were about to shift out of that chapter, and then we recommitted.
Smoke:Yeah. Okay. Well, you know what? Awesome. Yeah.
Travis:We came back to the well.
Smoke:That's great. Well Yeah. Well, look. I'm super excited to have you, and I know you've been on your own spiritual journey for better part of a decade or more. And I love the work you've done with with your foundation.
Smoke:I love you to kinda just, you know, maybe maybe share a little bit with, like, what what got you there? What what was the the catalyst that got you kind of recalibrating your life? I know you were had a successful career in business, and then and then you had, you know, his health issues came up with your daughter, and and that really shook your world. So what tell tell us a little bit about that journey and how it how
Travis:it's evolved too. Yeah. Thank you. Well, I've always had this drive to be an entrepreneur since my junior year of high school when my student government teacher, Mr. Sabin, he had a class and he shared about entrepreneurship.
Travis:And I'd really never been introduced to it before. And when I heard the word, I said, what does that really mean? And he said, well, to be your own boss, to create your own path, to build your own business. And I thought, Man, that sounds really exciting. And I ended up following that path and took a track through entrepreneurship and business at UCF and was really excited about the big world out there and what I could do and what could be created.
Travis:I started with producing events. I had a production company and I was hosting and creating a different series of events, branded events, a lot of music based events, and that's where it started. And I ended up finding a business mentor along the way and working with him. He started a content investment company, which I went to work for. And so I had the production company, was working with him.
Travis:And along the way I had my daughter Piper. And Piper was this beautiful angel of a little girl, blonde hair, blue eyes, amazing energy, but she was sick and she was sick all the time. And it was apparent that something was not right. And over a period of a couple of years, was on and off antibiotics over and over and over. And, you know, she would get these lung infections and these sinus infections that would just keep raging back and they seem to be getting worse.
Travis:And then she ended up with pneumonia and that's when the doctor suggested that she be tested for other things. And that's when her diagnosis of cystic fibrosis came along. And ironically, sister Leanne had been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis a year before, but she was diagnosed at 40. She was a late in life diagnosis, misdiagnosed, and she was from my dad's first marriage. So we didn't put two and two together right away that it was a genetic disease and that it could be something that was in the family.
Travis:And so it was devastating. I mean, to learn about Piper's diagnosis really was the dark night of the soul for me. It just it it stopped me in my tracks. I was ripped open. I mean, I I couldn't go a day without being emotional about it.
Travis:And I felt really broken. And my my vision and this enthusiasm and spirit I had for life was just shattered. And I was doing my best to navigate that, but I was young. I was still trying to make everything work and piece everything together. I was failing.
Travis:I was having a really hard time keeping going in the direction I was going. And it brought me to this crossroads where it was, okay, do I keep pursuing these entrepreneurial dreams and chasing the bottom line in these areas? Or do I focus on what's right in front of me? And that's Piper and this illness. And these families that I was discovering with this rare disease needed a lot of support that they weren't getting because it's a rare disease.
Travis:So there's just not a lot of people out there advocating for it. And that became the new solution that my entrepreneurial heart really desired to solve for. And it was that, I wanted to be the best dad that I could be for Piper. I was learning about this whole new world of rare diseases, chronic illness, and everything that comes along with that. And also trying to rebuild my dreams with a broken heart.
Travis:And that's what really launched me into the creation of of Piper's Angels Foundation and the crossing for cystic fibrosis.
Smoke:Yeah. It's really beautiful work. And so how rare is it? Like, what what how many how many people have this in, like, say, The US or in the world?
Travis:It's an estimated one out of fifty thousand people in The US. I'm sorry. There's about fifty thousand people in The US who have CF. But it's one out of thirty four Americans are carriers of the gene. And after Piper's diagnosis, my sister and I were diagnosed as well, but we have a rare form of CF with a nonsense mutation that there's only even been documented a couple people with it.
Travis:And we have very light symptoms. We would have never even known that we had both genes if it wasn't for Piper and my sister, Leanne. So we have four people in the family who have different spectrums of the disease expression. And they say there's an estimated one hundred and eighty thousand people around the world with CF. There's a lot more that are just undiagnosed.
Smoke:There's a
Travis:lot of people in The US walking around, just like my sister and I would have been, you know, maybe they have light digestive issues, they have some sinus issues, they think they have seasonal allergies and they have cystic fibrosis and they don't know it.
Smoke:Yeah. Well, it's interesting. I think with there's so many advances where medicine is modern medicine is making incredible leaps with ability to target various genes and various specific things at a level that never could have happened a decade ago. So I imagine that there's progress on that front evolving.
Travis:It's immensely optimistic. My daughter Piper, I like to say that cystic fibrosis is one of the greatest success stories in medical history. Children were still dying in infancy in the 1960s and 70s from CF in The US. Now they have a life expectancy of 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond. And Piper's on a life changing drug that she started when she was 12.
Travis:She was very sick up until she was 12. She spent a couple of years on a feeding tube. She was in and out of the hospital for weeks at a time. It was a rough ride from one to 12. And she started this new medication and it's changed her life.
Travis:She's only had one hospitalization in six years. Her lung infections and sinus infections have dramatically decreased. She's regained lung function. Her digestive system is functioning better and she's gotten to live a really normal high school life. And that has been such an incredible gift from where we came from to where we are.
Travis:But what that creates no doubt is two things. One, when you live longer with a chronic illness, the question becomes, or a progressive disease, the question becomes what's the cost of buying more time? And then the second thing that creates in the wave of this huge success is that there's a lot of people in the world that don't have access to the same resources that we do here in this country, and they're being left behind.
Smoke:Yep. Yep. Well, that's that's such a that's such a great story in terms of improvement. And, you know, what a blessing that she's been able to to live a much more of a normal life. I know, you know, when I started my journey, and I know you you've gotten into energy healing and a lot of other alternative, you know, approaches.
Smoke:And, you know, and I in my discovery, you know, I've I got to the or at least my current understanding is, you know, we're all physical, mental, and spiritual beings. And in in reverse order is the power of that. Right? So we all have genes and physical manifestation, but that's really the output. Right?
Smoke:It's the output. It's the printout of what's above. So I I just wonder, you know, have you with the Ricky and some of the other work you've you've gotten into, have you seen any any results, or have you tried different things on in that front with her along the way as well?
Travis:Well, she's definitely, I mean, through our organization, we have implemented several different kind of holistic modalities like breath work and meditation as an offering to the cystic fibrosis community. And without a doubt, when you have this potential existential distress about a rare disease or chronic illness, procedural anxiety, white coat syndrome, just constantly being inundated with different inputs from the medical system. And it's overwhelming financially, physically, mentally. And so the opportunity is that there are these tools that are more grounded in our own abilities within ourselves to transform and transmute some of the pain, some of the stress, some of the disease burden. And I really believe that, you know, although cystic fibrosis has this genetic aspect, which we are, I do believe we'll see a cure for in terms of all the genetic research going on in the world right now, the holistic practices can't be understated in terms of their value and importance.
Travis:And even how crazy is this? In a respiratory disease community, something like breath work, right? Where we have many different cultural paths and traditions have used the breath as a very conscious tool over the ages. You know, my daughter, somebody with CF, they go to a clinic where there's a respiratory therapist. There's a whole team of doctors that's there to support them.
Travis:But when they leave that hospital, there is no conscious breath work. Is no There is no, how are you increasing your lung capacity on a daily basis? And so like one of the program offerings we created, we basically took all of the different practices from big wave surfing to free diving, to yoga and Qigong, and we combined it all into an offering for people with CF to help them improve their lung function because that's what they're fighting for.
Smoke:Yeah. That's yeah, that's great. Well, I I just know from my experience and now I've, you know, I've had a lot of, what would be you would call them miracles, but I just call them like, that's just what happens when you when you're evolving and you see things. Right? But, you know, I I cure I had, you know, a couple dozen chronic things that were evolving.
Smoke:Now some of them were lifestyle based. Some of them were trauma based, but, you know, I had gout and all kinds of things, and gout was disabling when it when it would hit me. And all of it resolved. Like all of it resolved in my journey, in my process. And I, you know, I'm 59.
Smoke:I take no medicine. I have no symptoms of anything anymore. And so I just know the power of this process is real and it works. And I've had lots of, you know, crazy experiences I could talk about of different types of energy healing with other people, and I'm seeing, you know, incredible, you know, miraculous cures that that you would never I would never have even been aware of. Right?
Smoke:So so I'm younger in my journey than you. Older in life, but younger in journey. And and, you know, mine really, you know, started about, you know, a little over four years ago and with a a trip to Nepal and the Buddha's birthplace, and I made a prayer. I wasn't religious or anything, and I asked for peace and love, and I got this incredible lightning strike through my back. And, you know, I I realized that I was, like, probably kundalini energy going up.
Smoke:And I was like, what was that? And everything unfolded from there. About a year and I so I did a lot of medicine, a lot of plant medicine. I worked, and I but I I just cracked me open. So I I like you, I did a deep dive on learning.
Smoke:Right? I just I I I had to understand it more. And probably my entrepreneurial background, my, like, logical mind, ego mind was like, you know, I need to know everything. Right? So I was like, I'd spent the first, you know, year couple years, like, just deep diving, learning, reading everything, absorbing everything, read probably 400 and, you know, just trying to understand.
Smoke:And and then about a year into it was not even a year into my, like, real journey, I got to join you and and Mati at at we were up in North Carolina, right, at that retreat, and we did that with with Shuma ceremony. So I I would like, I look at it now. Like, I thought I was pretty far along at the time, and I was like, you know, a neophyte in in now to my understanding. Right? Which, hopefully, in a year from now, I'll say, I'm a neophyte today.
Smoke:Right? It's like, you know, it's it's constantly evolving. Right? It's like, every time I learn something, I learn I get another understanding. I realize, oh, there's so much more I don't know.
Smoke:Right? But I do know what more than I did before. So we we had this journey. It was really a cool ceremony, but some things came up that, you know, some of my trauma that had still not been uncovered. I thought, like, I'm clear.
Smoke:I'm good. I'm just gonna do this. It's gonna be fun. And then, like, I I I got some some pretty deep trauma that came up in that journey. And I remember having, like, the severe pain and being buck buck like buckled over and just like shaking and having all this like pain in my stomach and then these arms wrapped around me and pulled me back to them and and it was you holding me And it I think it was I don't know how long it was, but it was quite a while.
Smoke:I was just shaking, and you were like, it's just energy. It's just energy. Let it let it go through, and I didn't really have an understanding of that like I do now, but you helped me resolve it at that time. And eventually, it did resolve, and and that was that was actually when I quit drinking. I I I really quit for the next almost three years from then.
Smoke:I I've reintroduced a little wine with dinner, but I basically have been alcohol free for a couple years and that's after forty years of heavy drinking. So it, that was that that was the moment.
Travis:That's a big step after forty years. Yeah. Well, it's it's one thing I've noticed too along this path is the purification process. And, like, in Christian mysticism, in in theosis, like, which is the, you know, divine union with God, which it seems like all mystical paths are pointing to, that the process of purification is the beginning and it's huge. And that definitely was that way for me.
Travis:I mean, I was using substances, alcohol, marijuana here and there. I mean, I wasn't, I didn't have an addiction, but I was using them in a way that were, they were definitely detrimental to my health and my mental capacity. When I was deep in the pain of Piper's diagnosis and really feeling broken and lost and confused, the first invitation I got to a plant medicine journey and the first time I really tried psychedelics was life changing and it put me on a path of purification. I really, this day, I mean, I'm very sensitive even about touching caffeine or anything that is going to affect my clarity because I just appreciate being a clear channel feeling good and feeling good because I feel good, not because I need something to feel good. Yeah, thank you for sharing some of your journey and we haven't gotten to have too many deep conversations, but I've read a lot of your blog sharing and I love what you write.
Travis:You're masterful with your words Thank what you. Yeah, you're When I read what you write, I'm like, wow. I mean, you can you, it's really a transmission of, of a really powerful creative intelligence. And I appreciate that so much because not everybody can put these experiences into words. And I think the way you do it through your poetry and how you are expressing yourself isn't in and of itself like a it's a clear indicator of of divine expression having found its way through.
Smoke:Yeah. So Right. Right. I I was I was a stubborn one. I needed to be, like, beat the heck out of a lot of different ways before I before I got there.
Smoke:And I look back. I'm like, I had so many there were so many things that, like, spirit tried to help me, and and I but I was pretty stubborn. I I had a I had a very deep ego ego mind shell that had been built. You know? And and now in retrospect, my separation was deep, deep trauma as a child, a a pedophile grandfather and grandmother was in on it, and adults wouldn't listen, and, you know, I I couldn't I couldn't get no one would listen.
Smoke:And I looked you know, fast forward, I'm like, oh, yeah. Well, that that's why I have a podcast. That's why I speak. That's why I learned how to communicate, you know, really well because my separation was that. Right?
Smoke:So I had to, like I built those abilities to get away from that, to protect myself. And now that I've kind of come back to source, and I'm like, okay. I'm not in trauma anymore. And I'm like, okay. I'm I'm in this place of, you know, like, those abilities still exist.
Smoke:Right? Like, they grew out of out of the well, it's the it's the wounds where the light goes in. Right? So it's the it's the where the deeper the trauma, the more room there is for, the light and love to to to fill that gap. Right?
Smoke:And and I'm experiencing that now. But thank you for noticing, and I appreciate it. I I for a while, I I I couldn't express it in other than poetry. Like, for a while, I was just writing poems because that made sense to me. I could I felt like I could capture what I was experiencing in those little poems in a way that I just couldn't write about it.
Smoke:And then what's evolved is over the the last year, I've been able to, like, actually turn it into I've been able to kind of reintegrate and be able to speak to it in in more of an essay form. And my wife, Anitra, says, no one's gonna read that. It's way too long. I'm like, you know what? I'm bringing back long form long form writing because you know what?
Smoke:We need we need that. We need that. And I don't care. And I'm like, I don't care. It it's for it'll find the people who want it, who need it.
Smoke:It's not for everybody. And so I'm not you know, I don't care. It's not I'm I'm it's like if if they don't read it, you know, okay. And it's finding the people that, you know, that it needs to find. And so, you know, I still do the poetry, but I've I've been able to now kind of do more essays and more commentary and more more things that I couldn't do early on.
Travis:Well, you weave it together really beautifully, and I appreciate it. And I read it, so keep sharing. I I like the longer form as well. And and, yeah, thanks for reflecting on the where we met. That was a profound experience and ceremony.
Travis:And that's one of the things I love about ceremony is that it it creates a sacred container for people to come together and connect in a way that in this world, and at least especially in the Western societies is very often not possible. There's lots that can be said about psychedelics being used as a tool or being abused and different things like that. But in my experience over the last decade, I've only seen positive results for ninety nine point nine percent of people. And it always creates the necessary revelations that are meant to be revealed, especially when, you know, I feel like it basically, no matter what kind of medicine, plant medicine you ingest, it always uncorks the subconscious. And and sometimes it does that in a gentle way, sometimes in a more intense way.
Travis:But Yeah. What's meant to come up will often come up. And, yeah, I was I felt blessed to be sitting next to you in that ceremony and, you know, we had an opportunity to just connect. And I remember, you know, really being with you and and looking into your eyes and seeing your presence. And for me, everybody's always living in a very fast paced world, very left brain dominated.
Travis:We're very much in our minds. We very rarely slow down and just look into each other's eyes and appreciate what's looking through and what's seeing us and what's seeing them. And so to have those moments is I think it's one of the most precious things that we can do, you know, is just to be in each other's presence in that way. Ed, yeah, you did great. You were clearing some stuff out and I was just happy to be there and hold space.
Travis:And, know, that's been what I've seen over the years is when you as we go through this journey of purification and illumination and we become more clear, the field reveals more to us. I 100% agree. Like, I am blown away, like shocked by the consistent revelatory process that life is. And it's like, you know, what I used to think was paranormal has now become my normal. Yeah.
Travis:You know? And and what was what was normal is now kind of abnormal to me. I'm like, that's you know? And so I I appreciate these the I just look at life as one big mystical experience at this point.
Smoke:Yeah. And and it's it totally. And first of all, I it was I I'm grateful that you were there in in that moment because it was like that was a really hard moment for me, and and I needed I needed that. Right? Like, you held space in a in a way.
Smoke:I'm actually going up to Vancouver not this weekend, but in a the next weekend to hold space for my teacher, Yvonne, and he's got a a group of men that he's helping them through a three day weekend, and I'll be there as an angel to help. So I did it once last year, and it was pretty cool. And and I, you know, I I learned a lot, you know, just kind of being in that side of it and and just trying to help and be be present. And, you know, he said to me, he said, you know, I because I did at one point, I went into a meditation in the room. Something just told me to just meditate and send healing energy to everybody just to just to be present for them.
Smoke:And I had a really deep meditation, and he said and I and I felt like that my energy was going out, and it was, like, holding them all. But I couldn't necessarily see it. Right? I got Beautiful. Right.
Smoke:I didn't have the all the skills that or the you know, everything turned on that would let me know it. And, Ivan said after, he said, you know, you're a healer. He's like, what you did in there was affecting everyone. Your that energy was going into them and helping them process their the stuff they were trying to process. So it was pretty cool feedback.
Smoke:Yeah. That's amazing feedback.
Travis:And you are a healer and we all we're all healers you know and that's great I'm so happy to hear that you're holding space in that way and and it's such a deep practice and refinement of our faculties and of our awareness and everything we bring into that space. And one thing I've learned over the years that I spend a lot more time doing nowadays is when I do my morning meditations and practices, I'll sit sometimes for very long periods of time in prayer and I'll pray into the space before I ever get there. And I'll really, so let's say I know that I'm gonna be sitting in a sacred space two months from now, a month from now. You know, every morning I'll go in visually and I'll set up the protection in the space. I'll honor the cardinal directions.
Travis:I'll call in that Christ consciousness or cosmic consciousness or light, and I'll flood it through. And I always use the heart because I just look at the heart like a vortex. And I imagine just like what you just said, I flood it through into the space. And I imagine, you know, through the quantum field that, you know, outside of the relative sense of time and space, that that light and energy and intention is organizing and manifesting itself in a way that is touching those people in their hearts. And so that way, by the time I arrive and sit, my nervous system is so well acclimated to the space, the medicine, the facilitators, the environment, the people, my intention, that it's just then I can just sit and drop in and be present.
Travis:And my intention is always just to be a mirror of unconditional love. I have found that practice to really be so effective in supporting myself in the way that, you know, I come in service for sure. Yeah, that's Like the preparation, because a lot of people are always talking about integration, But the the preparation is as important, if not more important than anything else. Yeah.
Smoke:No. That that makes perfect sense to me. And and, you know, my I've gotten the in I've I've gotten much more exposed to and and experience with embodiment in the body, say, the last year than than before. Right? So, like, I was very cerebral.
Smoke:I was very much, like, you know, in the you know, in meditating and really focusing here, and it was, like, too much yin, I guess. Yet yang, whatever the aggressive the the the aggressive side is, like, pushing.
Travis:The yang. Yeah.
Smoke:Yang. Right. And I've really benefited a lot from some of these practices that are that are all about embodiment and getting in the body, getting into the hips, getting into the feet, getting into and I my understanding is that as we put our attention, like, on our core and we, we we we're activating those, in that intelligence that has been dormant. Right? It's it's been there, but it's been dormant, and we weren't aware of it.
Smoke:And the more time we spend on it, it basically is putting photons of light into that area. And over time, it's like it's like the mist in the at the at a giant waterfall. Right? It forms into something. Right?
Smoke:So the more time we spend on it, the more time it collects, and it starts to actually form and embody. Right? That so that's the experience I'm having right now. And I imagine that that works the way you're doing it too with thinking about a space and intention and an upcoming ceremony and event. And as you're putting that attention on it, that's the way it works.
Smoke:The the quantum is you're you're putting, like, light to it, and the more intentionality and the and the more consistency you hold that as you leak get into it, you're actually forming you're you're bringing spirit into that room, into that space. So I like, that's my rudimentary explanation of what I think I heard.
Travis:Brilliant. I think that was well said. Yeah. I I like to call it a bridge of light. That's how it's been revealed to me.
Travis:It's like a bridge of light, and there's there's it comes and it goes. You know, there's a bridge of light that that a soul, a baby comes into and think about that, right? That soul has to come into the womb just like you just described. That's what I was thinking when you were describing the photons coming in. It's like, well, that must be the same path as the soul, right?
Travis:And and it comes in. And then and then when we when we leave our bodies, you know, we drop the body with the that same bridge of light, you know, we get to go back across.
Smoke:Yeah. And our mission, should we accept it, is to bring that soul body of light into the living form. I I really love Siri Ara Bendo. I don't know if you've read any of his stuff, The Life Divine, but No. I've got I got on a kick of of him.
Smoke:He's awesome. And, you know, he was Indian guru who, like, you know, originally was kind of part of the independence movement in India and in, like, the early nineteen hundreds and then, they put him in the British put him in some prison. He was in solitary confinement and he had an awakening. And so then when he got out of prison, he was like, well, I'm I'm not gonna fight for the revolution anymore. I'm gonna focus on spirit, and so he he became this spiritual teacher.
Smoke:But his whole thing is the life divine. The intention the the a lot of his writing is about bringing spirit to life in the form of humanity, in in the human body, and he calls it the superhuman or whatever, but it's like the it's the re it's when our when our souls go into that womb and, like you said, the bridge of light and we go splat, we it's like a very big shock for our soul, and we forget who we are, and a bunch of our our light gets scattered. And then we have separation and trauma, and more of it gets scattered, and we create the ego to get make up for it. Right? So the journey is bringing all that light back in.
Smoke:Right? Bringing it all back together and doing it while we're still alive. So we can do it. It's doable. I think more and more people are doing it today than ever before.
Travis:Yeah. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. I'll definitely do some research because I love discovering new teachers and and readings. Yeah.
Travis:And it definitely I think that what you're describing to it that like photonic process, I was I had a revelation one time where like the energy was moving in a way where it was clear to me that when we put, like they say attention energizes and intention organizes energy. So in Qigong, like the in there's a principle called Dao Yin or in Dao Yin, which was an ancient practice that predated even Qigong, it means to guide and direct energy. And so using our breath, using our body, using our mind, using our awareness, using our heart, we have all these faculties for guiding and directing energy, but most people just aren't conscious of it or using all the faculties or tools. And I do believe that what you touched on earlier about the gathering or almost the condensing of the photonic energy is why over time the field will reveal more of itself to these latent faculties that I believe we all have. We can all see energy.
Travis:We can all see light. We can all see the magnetic resonance around somebody's body. And early in my journey, I would get glimpses and I would question myself like, did I see that or what was that? And then like you said, you know, you're feeling that in the space, but you might not be seeing it. But the feeling is what ultimately leads to the scene.
Travis:And the more we put our attention in, you know, even on our hands, which are like these magical wands. Right? It's like incredible what what will come through and and the power of our hands. But I do think that our our eyes and our brains will rewire themselves and to be able to see more. And I call it reading the field.
Travis:It's just like there's indicators and you're, it's like, like you're in a sports game or you're going fishing, you know, and you're looking for, you know, a bass to, you know, pop on the top of the water over here, you're looking for movement or, you know, you're looking, you're reading to see what's coming in. And just that awareness alone, I think kind of kickstarts a very receptive state. And then, so it's like when we go in with the intention that we're gonna read the field from the place of neutrality, it's like, then more information starts coming in.
Smoke:Yeah. Totally. I I I I'm resonating every with everything you just said. I think the you know, when we drop our judgment, right, it's like judgment blinds us. Right?
Smoke:In an in an argument, but but in anything. Like, if we're coming in and whatever we are expecting through judgment is what we're gonna see. And when we drop our judgment, like, literal really drop it. Like, so you really are coming at it as awareness and neutrality, as you said. Your the the ability to notice so much more of what the whatever the situation is or what's happening, I think, comes forth because it's not drowned out by the judgment.
Smoke:Like, it's like the subtle energies. Right? Like, I I I got into gird off gird off for a while in the fourth way, and, you know, and I I and that was helpful for a while. Like, yeah, like, I it it was an interesting approach, but it's all about purification and stripping down our gross energies, which is like emotions and thoughts and, you know, the these, like, base animalistic things that we all start out with. And we have to learn to balance our mind in a way that we are not blinded by those animalistic gross energies to be able to observe the subtle energies, right, which is all these higher, more high vibration, much more subtle energies that we can't perceive when we're angry or we're judging or, you know, we're in our, like, mechanical animalistic mode, which unfortunately, seventy five percent of the human population is in.
Smoke:They're in they are still in an op an animalistic mode of operation, meaning they they have no free will. They're just responding to stimuli. Right? They're not in a in a position where they can separate from it.
Travis:Yeah. Yeah. And, two things come to mind when you say that is one, I have a Kriya yoga teacher. He's one of the best I have found. His name's Forrest Nutson.
Travis:Great YouTube content, great teacher, weekly satsangs and he's huge on he has bridged the gap for me between the yogic science and modern medical neurological science. And for me, I'm a science geek. So when when he started talking about neurological drivers to shift out of the left brain into the right brain and how simple and easy it could be when you talk about the judgment getting in the way the left brain from how I understand it is our linear brain. So it's where a lot of the thinking occurs. There's such a simple technique for shifting into the right brain and that's to get into the right hippocampus.
Travis:There was this great study. I find it amazing. It's like there's a study about taxi cab drivers in New York City. Have you heard about this study?
Smoke:No, no, tell me.
Travis:Okay. So they studied them over a long period of time and what they found was that all of these taxi cab drivers had enlarged right hippocampuses. And the reason was because when you jumped in a taxi, especially back in the day before GPS, you'd say, take me to 5th Avenue and whatever. And people would jump in the car and the taxi cab driver had to go into their mind, into spatial awareness, and they had to map out in the city what was the fastest way to get there. And doing that over and over and over on a daily basis was a neurological driver from shifting from thinking in the left brain, the linear mind, into spatial awareness, into expansion, which is one of the yogic master keys for going into expansive states of absorption in Samadhi is to get into the right brain.
Travis:And so that practice of getting into the right hippocampus is as simple as going into the peripheral vision here and being able to look forward, but hold the peripheral here. And it automatically dilates the pupils. And if you practice this, it is like the greatest, simplest, most powerful tool that I have found as a neurological driver, both in meditation, in everyday life, and under plant medicine, that if you just, you downshift out of the left brain, you go into expansion here and you stay there. It dilates the pupils, you become more receptive, you're bringing in more light, more information, and you go into expansion. And the expansive state in the deep right brain will hold presence.
Travis:And it'll that's so he he has a teacher the that the deep right brain is where we Google God. So it's like, okay, how do we get over there and stay over there? And and that technique, man,
Smoke:it is That's fantastic. I can't wait to to try that.
Travis:I'll send you a couple videos. Yeah. The it's the Hakala technique from the Kahunas in in Hawaii.
Smoke:I love it. And that makes me think, like, okay. So we've got all this technology. You know, AI is like I just I think you read my article. I left I was at Cornell last weekend for the entrepreneur board meeting, and I got to hang out with some, like, badasses who are using, you know, using AI, you know, just, like, very, very successful companies.
Smoke:Right? Like and and they're using it everywhere. And I, you know, I I see it as neutral. Right? I think there are good uses of technology, and there's bad use of technology.
Smoke:And, you know, unfortunately, it's easy to be lazy and use this stuff, and that's a bad use. And, you know, there's lots of there's lots of dark scenarios percolating out there, but I'm I'm an abundance guy. I think it's amazing. I know what how much impact it has, like, the things that just the tools that you can do. Like, I built a model for, you know, Mati's, you know, business that we're talking about, you know, helping him a little bit.
Smoke:And I built a model that is a 100 times better than any model I've ever built in my life. And I built a lot of models for my own companies. You know? I know finance. I I, you know, I I understand it.
Smoke:I could never build something like this. The like, it's so good. It's the coolest thing I've ever seen. And I like, and I I've got every scenario, and you can do acquisitions, and you could do this, and I did it myself. You know, it's a 100 x factor, but I know how to build models.
Smoke:I know what assumptions I wanna make. I know I know the logical flow of what I want, and AI wouldn't have given me that because I had to I had to teach it. I had to I had to go back and forth a lot. I think about this map thing or the taxi thing. Yeah.
Smoke:You think about, you know, even normal humans used to have to figure out directions. And, you know, so everyone was using that part of their brain to some degree. Right? Like, I used to know how to get around everywhere just because I was good at it. But I would, like, remember, if Google Maps goes out, like, it'll be think about it.
Smoke:Like, no one would know where to go. Chaos. So nobody uses that part of their brain right now. Right? I mean, it's like I mean, it it doesn't they don't because, I mean, why would you not put it in?
Smoke:I I, you know, I put my I put where I'm going in my Tesla, and I say, I don't even drive now. Like, I just it just drives me. Right? Like, I mean, it's the greatest thing ever, but I'm not using that part of my brain. But I do meditate while I'm sitting there, and now I'm gonna meditate with the peripheral vision thing, you know, because I don't have to drive.
Smoke:I'm just sitting there. I just I just have to keep pointing it forward because they won't let you look away. But, you know. It's a powerful practice. And when you
Travis:go into this next group that you're helping to support, carry it with you and and you'll see that it's clear as day that you can And I mean, when we're in kindergarten or first grade, imagine if they gave us just some basic tools to help us understand how to use our brains better, right? But like the fact that we can actually toggle between the left brain and the right brain and strengthen that connection. I've seen it work miracles to some degree. It's that powerful and simple. Well, that's
Smoke:that's awesome. Well, one of my, prompts was to ask for a practice. That's a good one. But you had did you have something else you wanted to, take us through or anything?
Travis:Good question.
Smoke:It's up to you. It's up to you. I mean, that that's that's an awesome, like, teaching tip right there. Just just what you just shared.
Travis:But Yeah. One of my favorite I love to share with everybody from Qigong and and with kids is one called monkey washes the fruit. So you bring your, you can bring your hands up and you can rub your fingernails together. So a lot of the stagnant energy accumulates in the body, in the hands. And so what we want to do is energize attention and awareness on our fingernails, The fingernails in that first knuckle and you rub them together and you let the energy build there.
Travis:Then you take a deep breath in and then you discharge with a breath. You discharge through the hands. So let's do that two more times. So you just rub the fingernails together. Imagine accumulating all that stagnant energy in the body right here.
Travis:And then take that deep breath and shake it out. One more time. And our fingers like little antennas. You'll see. Deep breath in.
Travis:Shake it out. And then just close the eyes for a moment and just sense and feel the energy in the hands. Relax the hands, relax the shoulders, relax the elbows, relax the face, the head, neck, shoulders, and just sense and feel the energy that just charges that activated chi right there in the hands. And I mean, you just supercharge your hands in like sixty seconds. Yeah, I felt it.
Travis:And because all those meridian lines are flowing through, it's like, you know, we accumulate a lot of stagnant energy in the joints and things. But when we do that, and it's great because kids love that. But if you do that before any meditation, any practice, any exercise, it's great for just discharging any any extra energy, anxious energy out of the system.
Smoke:Yeah. That's that's awesome. I mean, that's what I've come to under like, a lot of my early stuff was I needed to know the stories. I needed to understand what happened. I needed to, like, resurface memories.
Smoke:I've done that work. I know enough I know enough of the details to know, you know, specifically what happened and everything else, and I've cleared it, and I've forgiven, released it. But so I don't I don't have this, like like, I hard charging desire like I did early on to find out find out. Now I'm just conscious of, is there any spot that I'm feeling anything that's blocking any energy flow? And if I just put my awareness to the spot, I don't need to know what caused it anymore.
Smoke:I just need to know that it's there and be aware of it, and then it just resolves.
Travis:Yeah. I love that. You nailed it. I mean, that I feel the same way that I used to wonder my mind would, my curious mind would have questions or what's causing this or, but now when anytime I'm in a space or when I'm doing a Reiki session with a client, the whole goal really is to get out of the way, right? So of my own self, I can do nothing.
Travis:It's the divine within that's doing the works. And and it is it is just energy. At the end of the day, it's just energy. There doesn't need to be a story attached. And although sometimes we receive impressions that can carry information, still, it's like wind blowing through.
Travis:The the impression is what what created it? Everybody has trauma. Everybody has all kinds of things that they've battled in their life. Everybody has gone through great adversity. And so we carry some of that and we store it.
Travis:The biggest thing I've seen work for me is just keeping the energy circulating, moving the body in a lot of different ways, keeping the energy circulating, you know, really just trying to be a sponge, but at the same time, constantly wringing yourself out too.
Smoke:Yeah. You have to clear yeah. It's like, I look at it as energetic hygiene that has to be you know, once you've done your work and you've cleared, the deep the big things, we have to keep the hygiene up. Right? So it's it's the little practices.
Smoke:And whether it's, you know, for me, a salt bath, I I, you I have a I have a full spectrum sauna now, which I'm using twice a day, which is awesome. It just you know, it's a great clearing mechanism. And and just releasing whatever happens during the day. People don't realize, but they're walking around. They're they're if they watch TV or, you know, nonsense that's out there, just the commercials.
Smoke:You know, you go through an airport, CNN's on, and they they've got a pharmaceutical commercial. They're implanting the disease in you by these messages. And so even when you're already in a good place, you have to cleanse that stuff out all the time. And ideally, you do it, like, when it happens, like, you know, something happens and you're like, you just clear it.
Travis:Real time.
Smoke:But certainly, like, every day, you know, end of the day, morning you know, before you go to sleep, cleanse and clear and get get that stuff out of you, and it it really works. And And you don't need to know what it is necessarily. You just need to, like, clear it. Nothing that doesn't belong to me that is not serving me. Please release.
Smoke:And you you you know, there's lots of different techniques, but I think having a practice is really important.
Travis:Yeah. And and having the tools to be able like you said, you nailed it. To be able to do it in real time and not waiting not even necessarily waiting till the end of the day, but when when something happens, I always bring this up in discussion with the students in the qigong class that I facilitate is like, the reason we're practicing this is because it's so simple. It's so basic that you could do this anytime throughout the day. And that's the point is the practice.
Travis:The the qigong masters say, the real qigong is the qigong we do all day long. Right? The kriya masters say, the real kriya is the kriya we're doing all day long. And so sometimes there's a technique where you you just into, it's called the navi kriya, the navel. So you just ohm into your navel center, the lower Dan Tien.
Travis:And sometimes I'll be in the grocery store and I'll start to notice the energy in the field a little turbulent or dramatic or tense. And I'll just start oming into that center. And I believe it helps clear the field. You know, it'll help not only clear yourself, but it helps others in support. And I think that's the other thing too, that if you are clear and your nervous system is at peace, that's such a powerful resonance and vibration that if that's all you do in a space is just sit in deep stillness and peace, that's enough to transmute a lot of those denser energies that are being released and people need to feel that support.
Smoke:Yeah. And the higher coherence energies will always will always entrain the lower. Like, we'll always, you know, things will always organize to the higher. So if you can hold it in a disaster, in a in a tough situation or an accident or, you know, whatever you are, if you can hold that, you're absolutely helping everyone. It's a it's a big deal.
Travis:That is you used the best word. I love that word in train because it very rarely gets used. But it's like I always describe that to people like, well, you think about music. If somebody turned on reggae music right now, I would immediately start going like this. I'd be like, yeah.
Travis:Yeah. You know? Because you get in trained to the frequency, to the energy. The same thing, like you said, it's the David Hawkins map of consciousness, which is one of my favorite, favorite tools. I think David Hawkins is one of the most underestimated teachers of our our time for his his willingness and daringness to be to even be ridiculed and to be called a kook for stratifying the map of consciousness based on kinesiology.
Smoke:Yeah. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. And it and it works, and it's real.
Smoke:And and I I write about it, and I I get some resistance from people, you know, who don't don't understand. That's okay. It's it's okay. Like, I I I don't it doesn't matter to me. Like it.
Smoke:I it's I think it's he he uncovered tools that and and if you and if you read I've read all of his books many times. Like, so I'm I'm deep in Hawkins. Right? But if you just in Power versus Force, he he kinda surveys the world of, like, applications of how you could use this in different aspects of human society effectively to be helpful. And and I think his his ultimate wish was that, you know, humanity would take what he did and take it to the next level.
Smoke:And so I have a I have a whole thing on that. I won't talk about it here today, but I've got I've got something I wanna share with you that I'm working on that will would enable us to take it to the next level, I think, the way he intended.
Travis:Count me in. I am a David Hawkins devotee. So Yeah. I I have a huge map of consciousness here in my office, and we my wife and I, because we were so deep in his work when we had our son, we named him Hawkins.
Smoke:Oh, right on. Alright. Yeah. So, yeah, we're we're we're gonna continue. Well, this has been awesome.
Smoke:I could talk to you for hours, actually, Travis. So I I want you to come back sometime so we can continue. And, also, Mati invited me on your guys' new podcast, the Wisdom Matrix. Is that right?
Travis:The Wisdom Matrix. Yeah.
Smoke:Which is awesome. I'm excited for that. And you guys got got some, I think, some good big plans around it. And anything I can do to support you guys, count me in.
Travis:Thank you so much. Yeah. Today is actually the launch of The Wisdom Matrix on on platforms, and we're excited. You know, it's the goal is to bring together topics and people, the intersectionality of of ancient traditions and wisdom and and where it meets us, you know, in the modern life. And, you know, got a a few a few dudes together where we've been playfully calling ourselves the three unwise men.
Smoke:I thought I I I listened to it this morning so I could so I I knew where you guys were headed. I I thought it was a good good chemistry there.
Travis:Yeah. Yeah. So well, thank you so much, Smoke. This has been a pleasure, and I agree. I could we could chat for for hours, and I feel just as connected to you as I did in in the time we shared together, and that was three years ago.
Travis:Just goes to show that, you know, the the connection is is meaningful and it's potent.
Smoke:Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you, brother.
Travis:Yeah. Thank you.