Ground & Root Podcast
Welcome to the Ground & Root Podcast with Holistic Cancer Dietitian, Dionne Detraz. In this podcast we will explore science based & time tested holistic strategies that will enhance healing, prevent cancer, and ultimately help you have a long & healthy life.
Ground & Root Podcast
From Leukemia To Lymphoma To Life: Dean Hall On The Power of Resilience, Nature, & Purpose
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In today's episode we sit down with therapist and endurance athlete Dean Hall for a raw, energizing, & inspiring story of resilience amidst a rare leukemia profile, profound grief, a lymphoma surge, & the unlikely decision to train for a 187-mile swim in 42-degree water.
Dean walks us through the exact choices that shifted his trajectory, healed both of his cancers, and transformed his life. We explore practical tools you can use today, including his “Nervous System First Aid” playbook, the Wild Me Manual, and simple weekly practices to recharge.
If you’re navigating cancer, burnout, or anxiety, this conversation offers both science and soul—showing how joy, play, and purpose...along with a healthy dose of nature...can be part of a serious healing plan.
Enjoy the show & share it with someone who could use a new perspective and renewed hope in their healing journey.
More about today's guest & how to connect with him:
Dean Hall is a licensed therapist with over 35 years of clinical experience and more than 60,000 hours working face-to-face with clients recovering from trauma and anxiety.
After losing his wife to cancer and later being diagnosed himself, Dean became the first person in history to swim the entire 187-mile length of Oregon’s Willamette River. Immersed daily in cold, moving water for weeks, the experience profoundly changed how he understands healing, resilience, and humanity’s relationship with the natural world. His doctors believe this sustained immersion was responsible for the spontaneous remission of his leukemia.
That lived transformation, combined with decades of clinical practice, gave rise to BioWild Psychology, a nervous system first, nature-based approach to restoring safety, clarity, and emotional regulation by working with the body’s biological signals rather than willpower or Mindset.
Dean now teaches this work through books, keynote speeches, retreats, and his LifeText platform, helping people remember how to regulate, heal, and belong anywhere on Earth.
👉 Dean's Website: https://www.thewildcureway.com/
👉 Grab Dean's Books: https://www.thewildcureway.com/books
👉 Follow Dean on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deanhallofficial/
🌿 Let's Connect 🌿
Welcome And Dean’s Introduction
SPEAKER_02Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Ground and Root Podcast. I am your host and holistic cancer dietitian Deion Detraz. I am so excited for today's episode. We have a very special guest with us today. As many of you know, if you've been listening to the episodes, a big goal of mine is to not only just teach you different tools and strategies that you can bring in to enhance your healing, to enhance your recovery, to help you stay healthy and cancer free. But I also think it's equally important for you to hear from real people, from like real stories of people who are applying these tools in their journey and how it impacted them. And that's who I have for you today. Dean's story fits perfectly also with our theme this month, which has been all about building resilience, both physically and emotionally. And that's a big part of what he has done for himself, but also what he teaches. So this is gonna be a very easy, I think, topic for him. I'm gonna briefly introduce Dean and then we're gonna jump right in. So Dean has such an incredible, inspiring cancer healing story that I'm not gonna give anything away. I'm gonna let him tell his story. I first came across his story on Instagram many years ago, started following him, started, I started personally being inspired to try a lot of the things that he was sharing on the gram. Invited him into our group program to speak to our community and have just been so thrilled with all the work that he's doing, which you're gonna learn more about today. He is also, though, uniquely, so in addition to his own story of healing, he's also a licensed therapist. He has over 35 years of clinical experience and impressively, more than 60,000 hours working face to face with clients, recovering from trauma and anxiety. So, like his lived experience combined with the decades of practice and knowledge has really put him in a very unique position to teach what we're gonna talk about today. I will link to his full bio and all the ways you can connect with him in the show notes. So don't worry about that. But without further ado, I just want to welcome Dean Hall to our call today. Thank you so much for taking the time to be here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I've just been looking forward to this since you contacted me. When was it, November or something?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I just love what you do and who you are and what you stand for and all that you teach others. And I've just been looking forward to this. So thanks for having me on.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you're so welcome. All right, let's just dive right in and let's start with your story and tell people what that entail for
Early Life, Resilience, And Sport
SPEAKER_02you.
SPEAKER_01I will give you the most brief version I have tailored it and cut it down to. I grew up here in Oregon, fortunately, to wonderful parents. Everybody in the 60s had parents who didn't like each other. My parents were crazy about each other. Dad would chase mom around the house. We thought it was gross at the time. But now I look back at it and I realized even then my number one goal in life was to recreate that. I wanted to have a really good marriage, somebody that was not only my best friend, but somebody I was crazy about as well. And a good, solid family. And uniquely, also, two other things that made my parents very different is we were the only family in the 1960s who got a home gym. Both of them were real fitness advocates and enthusiasts, mostly because they were both mountain climbers. Dad had grown up in a mountain climbing family. Mom didn't want to be left behind, and she's a tough little Swede. And we all think she's tough, even though she's 5'1 and just a little bird. Boy, that girl's tough. And so she was summoning with all the guys. And at age, I had to wait till age eight. It made me so furious before they'd let me climb with them. I'm like, I can do this at five, you know. By nine, I climbed Oregon's tallest mountain. And that was really the start of learning resilience, being taught resilience by my parents' role model, and then putting me in these extreme endurance situations at nine years old. And had a great time, but then I fell in love with what I call football, but that's what Americans call soccer. And was fortunate enough to play on the first Nike development team that took me all over the UK and parts of Europe and all over Canada and parts of the US, and was just having a great time. Going over to Europe was really great for my development because we were the best of the best, or so we thought, until we got over there. And we played under Liverpool and Manchester United's reserve teams, and they were just the reserves, and they made us look like Bobo the Dancing Bear. And it really made my teammates furious. But me, it was like, well, that's interesting. I'm not the best. As a matter of fact, I've got a lot to learn. And at 16, my ego really needed that check. Yeah. And so I had scholarships all over the U.S. There was this one tiny little college that was a Christian college. And on a lark, I'd never heard of anyone who had been to Kansas. I'd never thought of going to Kansas, but I was such a history nerd that I knew Kansas was the hotbed of not only the American West, but it's where kind of the Civil War with John Brown started. And so I thought I can get paid to go back there, have fun, play soccer. Since it's a little Christian college, I'd been to church camp and had some fun experiences. I thought this'll be church camp with college credit. And I can go off to places like Dodge City and other places like that and see these historical places in real life. Not knowing that I'd find this cute little Kansas farm girl and fall in love. And within a year or two, I put myself in exile for love. And so I stayed there in Kansas for 30 years. Actually, I lived in Dodge City the worst three years of my life. I was so glad to literally get out of Dodge and then taught. And about my eighth year of teaching, I realized, oh, this has been really fun in my 20s, but I want to have a family. And we're broke. And I looked at the pay scale. And when I was 40, I was only going to make be making about $2,000 more than I was making at 29. And I thought, this is silly. What am I doing? And so I went back to school. And for 10 years, I was both a teacher in the morning and a therapist at night as I built my private practice. And things were going well. I was really busy, but I was really enjoying it. And then in 2007, when it was 2006, four days before Christmas, I was getting ready to do a total
The Leukemia Diagnosis And First Choices
SPEAKER_01knee operation because I'd played so much soccer. And they took a blood test and it came back bad. Well, I'd never been sick in my life because I'd followed my parents' example of staying in shape and taking care of myself. And the funny story behind that is that I'd been teaching for so long at that point. Most of the little sixth graders that I'd taught in middle school were now out of school and in entry-level positions. And at this local clinic, two of the little ex-students I'd had had drawn my blood. And so when they said your blood's come back bad, I thought they'd fouled the test because quite frankly, these two were not the smartest girls. And but I loved them. And I said, Oh, whatever you do, don't get anybody in trouble. I can come back in. That's no problem whatsoever. And the nurse said, What? And I'm so yeah, I said, it's no problem whatsoever. I can just pop back in. She's okay, get back in. And it still did. I went back in, and these two little girls knew I had leukemia, but I didn't yet. So they were really nervous. I thought they were nervous because they were afraid of losing their job because they'd filed this test. So I'm trying to calm them the entire time and console them. And they're just really having a tough time. One of them was crying. Oh my god, don't cry. I'll make sure you don't lose your job. And she just looked at me confused. Yeah. Sometimes I'm not the quickest guy. And then my doctor met me at my office that night at 10 o'clock and told me that I had leukemia, and it was the worst case you'd ever seen. I had features of both acute and chronic. And just in the two days between, I had advanced by over 50,000 white blood cell counts, which it was just zooming up.
SPEAKER_02But you didn't have any symptoms, like you had no indication.
SPEAKER_01Not really. I mean, looking back, I should have. You know, I was really tired.
SPEAKER_00But I was working a lot.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I'm so ADHD that I've always used to drive my parents crazy. Give me three or four hours of sleep, and I'm good. And then I'm ready to go. And so I was only sleeping four or five hours a night, maybe. Yeah. So that was the only indication, but I just blew it off as oh, you know, I'm busy. And I'd always been a little tired because I never slept. That was the only real indication that I'd had. And then in 2007, I was really sick. Started coming back in 2008 because I did a bunch of lifestyle changes. I cut sugar, I cut most carbs. I was living in a small town in Kansas in the early 2000s, and so almost everything was pride. And so I tried to start thinking more intelligently about my diet and what I was consuming. My wife was so Baptist that we didn't drink alcohol, so I didn't have to worry about that. Yeah. So those were the things I did. Oh, the one thing I did that was primary is I pushed myself to sleep eight or nine hours a night, which was really strange for me at first. And I got better. I almost died in 2008. That was the first time I had a real near-death experience because my immune system was so bad I got pneumonia and woke up in the hospital not knowing how I'd gotten there.
SPEAKER_02Did you also do any conventional treatment at that time? Like with the first run?
SPEAKER_01I went to the oncologist first. They were really scared. At first, they only gave me four or six weeks to live. Oh, geez. Unless it went either chronic or acute. Because they'd never they sent it all over the world, and no one had ever seen someone with boats.
SPEAKER_00Wow.
SPEAKER_01And that was terrifying because at the time my daughter was 14. And I don't know if you've been around 14-year-old girls, but I think they need their dad.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I thought I can't leave her at 14. So I did whatever I could, but they immediately wanted to do chemo and radiation. I told them, I said, and this is something I encourage all cancer patients to do, to be their own best advocate. I said, you know, I don't want to seem disrespectful. I don't want to do anything that would look that way toward you. But here's the way it's going to be if I'm going to come to see you. I will treat you as a very esteemed expert consultant. But I'm the boss because this is my body. And if I die, you're not even going to remember me, but I hope my family will. And so I've got a all my chips are riding on this. And so I will listen to what you say, and then I will make a decision for my body. And uh I had to immediately fire two oncologists, and then later, uh, when I moved a third, because they were just incensed. They thought that was crazy talk. And I said, No, you know, I'm not your child, I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I'm fairly intelligent. And I think I need to, I've lost everything, it feels like, and I don't want to lose being in the driver's seat of my life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_01And I encourage that speech with everyone. And then the other thing I said, because I'd had so many clients who had successfully recovered
Loss, Grief, And Cancer’s Return
SPEAKER_01in the traditional way with pharmacology and oncology here in America, and had long-lasting, lifelong neuropathy, hardening of the arteries, inflammation, edema, brain fog. And I thought, okay, yeah, you save your life, but your life experience is so much diminished. And so I said, the way I look at chemo and radiation is it's the atomic bomb, and you don't drop the bomb on the first battle. Tell me when it's getting into dire straits and we've got no other choice, and I'll do it without complaint. And luckily, it went from acute to chronic, which you're never supposed to get over, according to American pharmacological lore, that it never goes away. You just manage it from then on, which bought us some time and wasn't quite as risky to have that kind of approach. And I got better. After I almost died, it really scared me even more. And so I got very strict with myself and really watched everything I ate and even what I thought. I'd been by that time meditating an hour a day for the last eight years previous, and I upped it to twice a day. And I started getting outside, even though at that point there was very little research about ecotherapy. I just needed to find open spaces, and I found that it helped uh relieve some of the stress that I had as a therapist. And so I started doing that, got really better, wrote a book. It was doing really well, and I was getting into colleges because it was on date rape, which was a huge problem at that time. And I was having groups of girls. I was even working with mothers against drunk driving, uh, because I developed something called the DD Plus stood for person looking for unsafe situations, because the problems the problem at that time with the DD is yeah, they wouldn't drink, but they wouldn't protect the girls who were, and the girls would get isolated, take it off on their own, usually raped, and then they take these poor little traumatized bodies back home, and the body would have been safe, but everything else wasn't. And so started working with colleges, researching this, and things were going really well. And then late July, early August of 2000, this wonderful little Kansas farm girl that was as close to the Energizer bunny as anybody I've ever met. She had two speeds, extremely fast and asleep. There was no in-between for Mary. And she started sitting on the couch. And my daughter and I thought that was a bit odd because we'd never seen her sit down. And then within a week, her face fell. She started complaining about numbness and tingling in her right hand. The doctor thought it was carpal tunnel. I thought, yeah, that makes sense. She works a lot out in the yard and other stuff, but it seemed odd. And then her face fell, and they thought it was Meneer's disease. And so I took her to my doctor, who's just brilliant. And he's no, there's something else going on. So we got a brain scan, and uh, she had the largest brain tumor that the neurosurgeon had ever seen. It was down back uh around her brain stem, had several ganglia, it was inoperable. Even if they did laser-guided surgery at that time, this is 2010, there was an 80% chance they'd nick a blood vessel and she'd bleed out on the table, or nick a nerve and she'd be a quadriplege. Uh and then they only hoped to get 50% of the tumor, and it would only extend her life for six months. And by this time, she'd lost her power of speech, and so it was up to me to make a decision. And I thought, you know, I asked the doctor, what kind of life would that be? And he said, Imagine having a bad case of the flu and a terrible migraine all at the same time. I said, That's no way to live. And so I said, What happens if we don't do anything? He said, Well, she'll continue to lose her abilities and she'll sleep more and more and die in her sleep. And he told us we probably had six months, and 52 days later, she died 15 days for our 30th anniversary, and only about 20 days before my daughter's 18th birthday. So it was really a terrible time. One of one of the ironic things
Rock Bottom And The Viktor Frankl Pivot
SPEAKER_01is I had been considered a grief expert in the Midwest, and I had help, I'd written articles, given seminars, and had no idea how terribly intense it is. And so I even called up some of my old clients and apologized. They were really gracious. They said, No, Dean, you were helpful. And I'm like, Oh, I can't imagine that I was. I had no idea it felt like this. For me, though, a bit of it was insidiously deep because when I moved to her small town of 12,000, if your grandparents hadn't grown up there, you were an outsider. And God forbid you were from the West Coast. Crazy. And I annoyed me for the first two years because nobody called me by name. They wouldn't say Dean. They'd say, Oh, there's Mary's husband, or even when addressing me, hey, Mary's husband, they'd never say Dean. I got used to it though, and even 30 years later, they'd know me as their teacher or as a therapist. They rarely call me Dean. It was always, oh, there's Mary's husband. And uh, I hadn't realized because I was so young when I married her, that it had formed my whole adult identity. And so for me, once I wasn't Mary's husband, I didn't know what to do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And as is the case typically, they're finding now, especially with blood cancers, that one year after a traumatic event is when people are diagnosed typically. And almost to the day, my leukemia came back with a vengeance a year later and brought with it this time non Hodgkin small cell lymphoma. It was very aggressive as well.
SPEAKER_02Wow. And that, and that I know it's a lot. It's a lot, but it's helpful to hear the backstory too, I think, because you know, people, particularly if you're listening to this show and you've had your own cancer journey that you've gone through or are currently going through, I think we all get to this point in different, obviously different ways. And yet there's overlaps to the story that I think are important to hear, you know, particularly when we're talking about some of the potential whys behind cancer. And so when we're looking at like the emotional pieces and the lifestyle pieces, like all of that, that you can find threads, right? Which I think are helpful for people to hear other people's stories. So now you're facing your leukemia again plus lymphoma. Are you still in Kansas or like what happens next?
SPEAKER_01I was for a year, but everywhere I went, people gave me the pity look. I got so tired of the pity look where you'd walk in and everybody go quiet. And I'm like, okay, I already feel that way. Just talk to me, just be my friend. Yeah. But people couldn't because Mary had been so greatly beloved in this small town, as had her family. And I realized in this tiny little berg, every rock, every brick, every tree, there weren't many, everything had a memory. Yeah, and so I had the choice of either living the rest of my life in memoriam to her, or to come back home where I loved and live my life and be around my family again.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that made more sense to me at the time until I got back, and then I realized oh, the only thing I still held on to was my career identity. And now I've given that up. And so I found myself renting for the first time in 30 years and very isolated, very all alone, very sick,
Training, Purpose, And Early Wins
SPEAKER_01and not knowing what to do. And so for the next two years, I just spiraled. I almost died again because I tried to right before leaving Kansas, we went to a big lake on the border of Oklahoma and Arkansas. And I wanted to prove to my daughter that I was still really, even though I had the diagnosis, I was still really strong. So I swam three miles across a lake and back and didn't know I was swimming through blue-green algae and got viral meningitis and almost died. The poor thing caught me not knowing how to get out of the bathroom in the middle of the night. I kept trying to go through the linen closet and getting mad, opening the door and seeing the towels and slamming it. And so she took me to the emergency room and I was in ICU for six days. I was in a coma for three. And when I woke up, I'd lost my temperature, had been so high I lost 60 pounds. Oh, wow. And when I woke up and saw myself, I had I was I looked whark and I had lesions all over my body, even on my tongue. I had scabs on my tongue, and I thought, how does this happen? I thought my life was at its worst, and now I look like this. I look like some kind of weird zombie. And all that time my insurance didn't pay. And so now I had $300,000 out of pocket. Oh my goodness, medical expenses.
SPEAKER_02I didn't even know all this. I feel like it's just layers and layers. Holy cow!
SPEAKER_01We decided not to put all of it in the book because there were so many things that were so bad. We didn't want to overwhelm people with how bad it really was.
SPEAKER_02Oh my goodness. Okay, so let's like when do things start to get more positive? So we're you're obviously like a really dark, difficult place.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02What when does it shift?
SPEAKER_01August 13th, 2013. I woke up and I'd made a practice for three years, really ever since that viromingitis. I'd never considered myself a pretty boy, but I was ugly with a capital U. Man, I I was so ugly I didn't even recognize myself. And so it was so discouraging to look in the mirror and think, oof, oh, who's that guy? That I'd made a practice of intentionally never looking in the mirror. And I hadn't for about two years. And I walked in one morning to go to the bathroom and I accidentally looked up and I jumped. I looked so bad, and my eyes looked so sad, and they were red-rimmed and haggard looking. And I was so skinny. By this time, I was down, I'm 6'1, and right now I've got about 11, 12 body fat. So I'm pretty fit. And I weighed two almost 213, 215, right in between there. I was down to 152 pounds.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I look skeletal. And before I realized it, I said a few curse words and said, You look like you just came out of Auschwitz. Because I did. You could see my clavicle, my shoulder bones. I haven't been able to see my shoulder bones since I was six. You could see every rib, you could see my pelvic bones. It was just really gross. And it shocked me and scared me. And then uh one of my favorite books and one of the books I used most helping people to come back to life or overcome persistent anxiety or depression was Viktor Frankel's book, Man Search for Meaning. And Victor Franckl actually had been in Auschwitz, and I loved his work and read so much about him, I felt like he was a friend. So immediately when I said, Oh, blankety blank, you look like you came from Auschwitz, I apologized to Victor Frankel. I actually looked in the mirror and I'm like, oh, Vic, sorry. I didn't come from Auschwitz, you did. And it hit me. If he did it, I can too. And living the way I've been living isn't fair to my daughter because basically I'm allowing myself to die. And I don't want her to be by this time she was 21. I don't want her to become a 21-year-old orphan. I gotta do whatever I can. And so I knew if for your
Planning The 187-Mile River Swim
SPEAKER_01viewers and listeners that don't know Victor Frankel, please read his book, Man Search for Me. His basic premise that he found in Auschwitz was those people who had the best chance of surviving were those that were most passionate about a purpose. And so I knew I had to become passionate about something, but I just couldn't. I'd I'd written a book, it had done well, I'd had a family or a marriage that had done well. I'd built businesses, I'd taught hundreds of kids, I'd really accomplished everything I'd ever wanted to accomplish. And so I just couldn't think about what I could become passionate about. And thankfully, one of the things I'd learned in the early 2000s is the brain, by its very nature, has to answer every question you ask. It cannot refuse to answer a question if you've asked it. And if you do the math on that, our lives are as successful and happy as our questions are. And I had helped many people start to look at their questions and then craft a question that's going to lead them someplace positive toward a life of their dreams. And so I thought I've got to start asking this question, but not just asking it here with my whole body and heart prayerfully. Three to five times a day, I would stop. I'd start my day with meditation, asking this question deeply. Three to five times a day, I would stop, maybe at a stoplight and ask this question and let it go. Each time, ask, feel it intensely, let it go. The longest I'd ever had to wait was 10 days. One time I saw a client wait 14 days. Six weeks later. Oh wow. I'm getting crickets and I'm starting to get really frustrated. And one time I was meditating, asking this question, and then I just got frustrated and I opened my eyes in this little duplex that I'd been living in for six months, and I realized I hadn't even unpacked. I was living like a frat. I'd been so depressed. I was living like a frat boy. I hadn't even put my bed for this is embarrassing, but I hadn't even put my bed frame together. My mattress was on the floor. And so I thought, okay, Dean, while you're waiting for the universe to answer, maybe you could act like a responsible adult. Maybe you can put your bed together. So I did that. Maybe you could unpack some boxes. So I started doing that. And there was the first box I picked up was a box of my childhood things my mom wanted out of her house. And one was a journal that I'd been forced to keep when I was 11 by my teacher. And on the front of it, it said, When I get old, I gotta have to, not got to. You got to. I love that. Climb Mount Everest, swim the English Channel. And when I saw it, I'm not, I'm not, I still get goosebumps every time I talk about it. I'm not being melting. Yeah, me too, actually.
SPEAKER_02No, like that was the universe, like answering your question, right? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'd forgotten the boy I'd been. I all I my parents knew several world-class climbers who, even in the 60s and 70s, had climbed Everest, not when everybody was doing it. And a couple of them were nationally geographic sponsored adventurers. And so little Dean, that's all he wanted to be was the National Geographic sponsored adventurer. And I'd forgotten that. I thought, oh my gosh, this is what
The Swim: Hypothermia, Fuel, And Grit
SPEAKER_01I was gonna do with my life. And then soccer took over, but then very quickly, this terrible, secret, almost shadowy, you've got to be a responsible adult and just make a lot of money and pile up a lot of things for whatever reason that American brainwashing had taken over and literally had a chokehold on me. And I thought, wow, I know I can't climb Everest because that would take about six, ten thousand dollars. And you know, with all the medical bills, I was pretty broke. Plus, I knew elevation, my immune system probably wouldn't be able to handle that, or Emile and Catman do. I decided, but I can swim the channel. And so I Googled active cancer patient who has swum the channel, and there wasn't anyone. There were several that did it in honor of someone who had cancer or who had died with cancer, but nobody with active cancer. And I can see why. And so I called up the doctor that had helped me through viral meningitis, and he's this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. You just about died a year and a half ago from viral meningitis. What are you thinking of? And it was because you were swimming blankety blank. He called me several names. Yeah, because we're pretty good friends. And here's the scary thing. I hadn't even realized, I hadn't remembered that I'd almost died from a swimming thing. And I said, Oh yeah, but I'm still gonna do it. I said, What do you want me to do? Die watching TV sitting on a couch? I'm not gonna go out that way. And he said, Okay, this is gonna make you look stupid, but wear one of those little kid nose plugs because the blue-green algae went up your nose. That's how it got to your brain. And I said, I already look pretty ugly, I don't mind. So I did that, and then the very next day I went to the pool and started swimming, and it took me over an hour to swim 11 laps, uh, because that was my goal for that day. Usually it takes me about eight minutes, but I felt good, I felt like myself for the first time, and so I kept swimming every day, trying to add a lap. Immediately, my numbers started going in the right direction within about a month. By two months, I was developing body mask and musculature again. My head by Christmas, this was August. By Christmas, my head was clearing, and I got out of the pool and I thought, who cares if another middle-aged man puts on a speedo and swims to France? It does the world no good. And in your case, Dean, it's not gonna be a pretty picture. So I started asking again what would do the world more good. And 30 years earlier, I'd had the dream of swimming the entire length of the longest river in Oregon, and again, another electric shock. Yeah, it's right here. I was born only four blocks from the Willamette River. This is what I gotta do, and so that's what I dedicated myself toward.
SPEAKER_02And how long did it take you before you were ready to do that swim?
SPEAKER_01What seemed like forever. I started in August and then I swam the next June.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so almost a full year.
SPEAKER_01Almost a full year, and that was the hardest part of the journey. I learned to never tell anyone what I was doing because they'd either tease me or be derisive or discouraging, or like my mom cry and beg me not to do it, but I just knew I had to, and it gave me such purpose and such passion, yeah, and it helped so much. It was extraordinarily hard. Another thing we didn't put in the book is I had lymphoma and I didn't know much about the lymph system.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And what I did learn, though, is the lymph system is the body's strainer, it's the little filters in your blood vessels that take out the toxins. Mine were full of toxins, and they only work when you're in movement.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01When you're sedentary, they don't work, and that's why it's so important to stay moving.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, they don't have their own pump.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01And every time I'd swim, within 30 minutes to an hour, my body would flood with toxins. And so I would have severe flu-like symptoms for an hour or so, maybe the rest of the day. And it cracks me up. I rarely tell a story because it cracks me up. So many people are like, Oh, it's so hard to get myself to the gym. Try getting yourself to the gym when you know you're gonna have severe flu-like symptoms the rest of the day. Yeah. That was the tough part.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Particularly too, I'm thinking, you know, because of course, as you're talking, I'm trying to apply it to like the take-home messages for people too, right? And so I'm getting tidbits as you go. And obviously, the first go with cancer, you just shifting your diet, shifting your lifestyle made a really big impact. Then, you know, then there was just the emotional grief and this that, you know,
Lab Results, Lymphoma, And A New Path
SPEAKER_02that can be a whole separate conversation because there's a lot of really good research around that triggering this sort of immune suppression and all the things. But as soon as you get a purpose, you get a passion, you start training for it, even though it was, like you said, you know, it took it was slow going, you were out of shape, you just took it day by day. Right. Yeah. Your but your body like pretty quickly started responding to that movement, right? You started seeing the improvement in your labs. And even though you were having these toxic dumps in your body, like your labs were still getting better, you were still getting like more musculature, like starting to get some of your strength back. And when I'm thinking as a provider, I'm like, okay, knowing that is the progression, having some extra lymph support on hand would have probably been really helpful. Like some detox support. Of course, you didn't know this, but like in my head, I'm thinking, okay, like we we could have prevented some of that if we had some cleanup, some support for you. But regardless, your body was still making progress, which is incredible.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. Yeah, and my mind and my spirit was too. Yeah. Because I'd been in triathlons all during the 80s and 90s, I'd done thousands and thousands of miles of laps. And so it felt like going home. For the first time, it felt like I was doing something that was me again. And as I did that, we now know that the bineural rhythm, particularly of the front crawl, as your head tilts from side to side in a fluid motion, just being weightless, all of those things are really good for your neurology. And I believe having that purpose really imbued my spirit with strength as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, of course. So you're finally strong enough almost a year later, to do the swim. And I know your book talks about this. So, you know, we're gonna encourage people to go get the book because that's gonna be inspiring.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's a spoiler alert, though. I lived.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. That's a good that's a positive spoiler alert. That's the kind of spoiler alert we want.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02It's good, happy outcome. Um, but tell us about that, give us kind of an overview of that experience and then what you what happened on the other end of it, which is right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I partnered with the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. They put me in touch with an environmental group called the Willamette River Keepers. They were so thrilled that I was gonna do this that they put me in touch with all sorts of guideboaters and river guides to help me know. And they gave me just tons of maps to look at. And my dad had been so involved in ultra-marathoning and backpacking that he was really good at staged events, and so he decided to partner with me to plan this staged event out because we knew I wouldn't be able to do 187 miles in a day or in one continuous swim, particularly since the Willamette's largely snowmelt rivers. So it was 42. We knew it was gonna be probably anywhere between 40 and 50 degrees the entire time. And so he started working on it.
SPEAKER_02I'm gonna translate that as super cold. Yeah, some people hear it and they're like, Oh, that sounds warm.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, when you realize it's only 10 degrees above freezing, that's not warm. No, yeah, no, and that I'm gonna be in it eight hours a day or more sometimes. But we started working on this, and in order to swim a river, you've got to have a kayaker or guide boater in front of you because you can see about a quarter of a mile and about 10 20 yards, but danger is always about 30 or 40 yards ahead, and so you have a kayaker in front of you that's up on the top of the water. And able to not only flag, you know, boats if they're coming at you, but can see danger like rapids or whirlpools or logs in the water that they call strainers because you can get caught under their limbs, or even on the Willamette log jams. Yeah. So we
Forest Bathing, Cold Plunge, Remission
SPEAKER_01knew that for me to do this and stay alive, it was real important for me to have somebody in front of me. So we got with the help of Willamette Riverkeepers, we got six guide boaters that were each gonna spend a few days with me. Two months before, not even two months before we get ready, within two days, four out of the six call and cancel. Oh, I just can't do it. And I'm like, oh my gosh, what are we gonna do? And dad was like, let me think about it. He calls back the next day and he's like, Hey, I got the idea. I've solved it. Oh, really? Well, what are you gonna do, Dad? What are we gonna do? He's like, I'm gonna do it. I'm like, Yeah, but we'll still need three others. And he's nope, nope. As a matter of fact, call the other two, tell him knock it off.
SPEAKER_00He's gonna do the whole thing.
SPEAKER_01And I said, What? And he said, I'm gonna do the whole thing with you. Uh it's gonna be you and me. I said, Dad, you're 79. Doesn't matter. Dad, you've never been in a kayak.
SPEAKER_03Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01Okay, and we found two of the best, most experienced guide boaters in the state, and they taught my dad. We went on several practice swims. They taught my dad how to kayak, and he had the time of his life, and so did I. And it was this beautiful rite of passage, probably 20, 30 years too late, but never too late, where this really strong alpha male and I got to work together rather than fight or buck each other, as we had most of my adult life. And it was just this beautiful, sweet, miraculous gift. Even better than the swim itself was all the things that happened with my family and with my time with him because I'd been on several multi-day backpacks, but I think the longest one was five or six days. Um, and how many days was this? Uh 22. Took me 22 days to swim, 187 miles. I uh most days I averaged 10 to 12 miles a day. That still doesn't sound like much until you realize a full triathlon marathon swim event is three miles. So I was doing three three marathons a day as an active cancer patient in 42 degree water. Yeah. The hardest challenge was even with the three mil triathlon wetsuit, I was going into deep hypothermia about every 45 minutes or so, so much so that I could feel my internal organs banging against my chest and my rib cage, and I'd start to slur my words. My dad, he said he could even tell my stroke would change a bit, and he'd ask me to pop up and talk to him. And if I'm slurring my words, he'd make me get out and I'd have to, after after 45 minutes of swimming, I'd have to get out on the riverbank and run in place and do jumping jacks and pop around to warm up. Because what a lot of people don't realize is you don't warm up from the outside in with hypothermia, you warm up from the inside out, and so I'd have to do that maybe five, six times a day. And that was the hardest challenge, but I just kept telling myself because I was the I was making my bid to become the first person in history to do this. I kept telling myself, now I know why I'm the first. This is hard, this is not fun.
SPEAKER_02No, I'm curious, and that's we don't have to spend much time on it, but just yeah, I'm curious, like knowing how many calories you were probably spending every day, right? Like just exercising and trying to stay warm.
Biowild Psychology And Nervous System Care
SPEAKER_02How did you eat enough to manage 22 days of that?
SPEAKER_01We were sponsored by a restaurant chain that look at it now, it's just a step up from Danny's.
SPEAKER_02It's not great.
SPEAKER_01But I was eating 15 to 18,000 calories a day.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but you how like how much time did it take for you to actually eat all that food, even I just um well time we'd stop, I'd eat as much as I possibly could, okay, and then swim.
SPEAKER_01And thankfully, for three months before, even at the pool, I would do that. And it okay the people who ran the pool weren't happy. I would see which foods made me throw up and which didn't. I kept the pool strainer closed.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, Dean. And behind the scenes, you just didn't know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And sadly, weirdly, you know, with your background, you'll probably wince. The only thing that I could keep down were crackers and sausage. And so I was eating this probably really awful processed sausage and crackers, and then I would start the day with steak and eggs, and then eat the sausage and crackers and uh hot tea, and then I we'd get out and we go to this Sherry's restaurant. I'd eat a huge plate of steak and eggs and hash browns at usually about six o'clock, and then at nine o'clock, many times I go back and eat again. And still by day 16, I was down to less than 3% body fat.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I was that alone is a challenge, is just to try to keep enough fuel coming in for you to do that for 22 days.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was just stick thin. But my doctor, who's also brilliant, you know, back then there was n I'd never heard of Wim Hof. I didn't hear Wim Hof until 2015. This was 2014. I'd never heard or seen any research on cold plunging or hypothermia or ketosis. But my brilliant best friend doctor from this little town came out to support me during the swim toward about day 16. He had he brought a skimful calipers.
SPEAKER_00Oh, wow. Nice.
SPEAKER_01And he made me take a day off and eat as much as I could eat.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But he said the nice thing is I'm probably really creating ketogenesis and taking stores of brown fat. And he said, That'll really help my cancer. And I'm like, okay, whatever. It didn't mean much to me at the time.
SPEAKER_02That's pretty progressive for your doctor friend. I'm impressed.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he's brilliant and just really fun.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so when we think about the metabolic approach to cancer recovery, you like definitely did that to an extreme because for 22 days, you're like hypothermic, ketosis, constant movement, like oxygenation, all the things you were in.
SPEAKER_01Sunlight.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, sunlight, yeah, wild water.
SPEAKER_01And I was following circadian rhythm as well because I was so exhausted. As soon as I got done, as the sun was going down, man, I was out. Yeah. As soon as the sun was coming up, I was up trying to get ready. Yeah, so there were so many things. This dream, following my dream, put me in the perfect spot to heal and become the person that I was meant to be and do the things, meet the people I was meant to meet. And I believe we all come into this world with our own unique dream, like an instinct that goose geese have to fly south for the winter. On stream is not dean stream, dean stream is not deon stream. But if we have the courage to follow our dreams, it puts us in the right place, in the right direction, at the right time to be extraordinarily happy and healthy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I so agree. And yeah, your story is such a perfect example of that. And so at the end of this 22 days, was there any cancer left in your body?
SPEAKER_01Yes, and no, I was feeling really good. And I thought I went, we had chemo and radiation planned right after the swim because we thought I'd need it. And I said, Okay, yeah, this probably will kill me. I'll probably be in a really bad condition, I'll do it. And I felt so good. I thought I'd gone in and taken the blood test right away, but I put it off for months because I was sure they'd say, Okay, you got to do chemo and radiation. I promised my oncologist I would, and I didn't want to.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so finally, months later, I went down to I was by this time, I had been in such bad condition that my parents had sponsored me to go down to the world's number three expert on CLL. His name is Dr. Juanario Castro out of University of California, San Diego. So I flew down there and took a blood test, and he came in and he said, Dean, I don't know what to tell you. And when he said that, I literally about pooped my pants because I'd heard that three or four times
Tools, Books, And Coaching Offers
SPEAKER_01before, and it always meant a death sentence. And he looked up from his clipboard, he said, Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I didn't remember, you know, what you've been through and what that must have sounded like to you. He said, No, I don't know what to tell you. I can't find your leukemia at all. And he said, I have researched leukemia for 30 years. I've never seen this happen. It's not supposed to happen. If I hadn't diagnosed you and done the test myself, I would have thought you'd been misdiagnosed. But he said, There's no shred of it. But the lymphomas was still there.
SPEAKER_02And had it changed at all, or was it still there?
SPEAKER_01He thought it would. We thought it would just dry up and go away now that the leukemia wasn't there because the two often go together. It got aggressive.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01It swelled up even more on my job. My what my doctor lovingly called my hockey puck, because it was the size and shape of a hockey puck under my right arm, grew. I had 70 lymph nodes that we could feel and identify throughout my body, and all of those just grew to some the size of golf balls. And he wanted to do chemo and radiation again. And I said, Nature healed me once. Let me find if nature will heal me again. He rolled his eyes and he's okay, Dean. But this is becoming life-threatening. Here's where it's gotta stop.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01And I said, if I can buy even six months, let me buy it. And he said, At first, this is so aggressive and it's just getting so bad. You've got to tell me, promise me you'll take blood tests every week. Okay. And those didn't really change much. So he said, okay, every other week. And so I took blood tests every other week, but very quickly I found research by Dr. King Lee from Nippon University in Japan on this thing called forest bathing. He would take men with cancer out one or two hours a week and meditate and mindfully walk through the forest slowly, using all their senses to really fee, feel, and see, and hear everything. And they found that it would boost their immune systems by 50 to 200 times for two weeks. And as they looked at this thing for a couple of years, they found that it was an essential oil that was imperceptibly being emitted into the air from the trees called phytoncides. These phyton sides were boosting their immune system. So I thought, okay, I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but if it's boosting it by 50 to 200 times for two weeks, and this is helping guys who only go out for an hour. If I go out for 24 hours every week, maybe this thing will become exponential and snowball. And so I started going out every Thursday night, staying 24 hours out and deep. I'd hike up into the Mount Hood wilderness and then hike off the trail for about a mile until I got found this sweet, beautiful grove of old growth Douglas firs and pine that I don't know that anybody but me ever goes to. And I'd hang up my backpack and hammock and watch the stars and just listen and breathe deeply. And very close to there is a glacial stream. And I'd had the before I'd left the forest, I'd do a cold plunge and feel the life of that stream and absorb all those ancient minerals. And I started that in May of 2015, and by March of 2016,
Play, Joy, And Practical Resilience
SPEAKER_01my lymphoma was gone again without chemo or radiation. And I thought I'd quit that practice, but it became such a treasured practice that to this day I still go out every Friday. I've never found anything that recharges me and de stresses me as efficiently as that.
SPEAKER_02I love this. It's so beautiful. Obviously, I'm a firm believer in the power of nature. And this is why earth-based living is really one of our pillars of what we teach people. And your story just so encompasses all of that so beautifully. And, you know, I think too, it's okay, you were kind of, I don't want to say forced is not like the right word, but it was brought upon you because of this extreme urgent need to do something. And I imagine, imagine preventatively too, like how impactful this could be for people who either had cancer before and are trying to stay cancer free or just you don't want to ever get cancer, like to start bringing some of these nature practices into your routines. I'm assuming you're like you said, you're still doing forest bathing every Friday, you're still jumping in the cold water, like you're still continuing some of these tools, right?
SPEAKER_01Oh, certainly. Yeah. Yeah. And teaching them to anyone and everyone I can. Yeah. I now, because post-COVID everything went remote. Um, I get to work with clients around the world now, many who have stage four cancer, and thankfully have had incredible results, particularly with those who will do what I encourage. I tell everybody that if you do what I do, you'll get what I got. I always want to be something special. I'm really not. And that's the power in my story. I'm just an ordinary guy. What works for me will work for you. And this last year I had six stage four people that I worked with, various kinds of cancer, and four out of the six are now in remission in just a year. So that's amazing. Yeah. A couple of two of the four did chemo and radiation, but even their doctors were surprised at how quickly they recovered even from those rounds of chemo.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So do you want
Resources, Subscription, And Closing
SPEAKER_02to speak a little bit about your work? Because I'm sure our listeners are going to be like, tell me more about what this actually looks like. And then, like I said before, I'm happy to link to Dean's resources in the show notes so that you can go explore when you're just listening.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I've this year, almost a year ago, I had so many of my clients say, Dean, we really want to know. You say, if we do what you do, we'll get what you got, but you tell us, but we want to know more. And so I developed a journal I call the Wild Me Manual that's on Amazon that you can buy that kind of gives you some of the way I think about what I do. Because for me, I I don't even like the term biohacking. It I don't think we need to hack our bodies. I think our bodies are beautiful and miraculous. All we need to do is put them in a position to not fight against them mostly. And I tell everybody, why biohack when you can biohave? We've already got everything we need, but we're cavemen in a plastic world, and we don't realize it. We've forgotten what our natural habitat is. We're living very unnaturally. As a matter of fact, this year I've coined a term that's now starting to become popular in some circles called synthetic living syndrome. And I've developed a test for that. If any of your viewers want to contact me, I'll freely, happily give them this synthetic living checklist. But so that went pretty well. A lot of people got a lot out of that and encouraged me. They say, well, one thing we liked about that are some of the routines that when we get really anxious or dysregulated that you do that just pops you out of it. You don't have to do a lot of thinking.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And it got me to think. So I put together and I'm waiting to publish this formally here in a week or two. It should be done in a week or two. Something called Nervous System First Aid.
SPEAKER_02And it's let me just interrupt for a second because that could be, I think that's going to be perfect timing to when this episode gets released. So, see, that's just another universal alignment of how things were meant to go. Perfect.
SPEAKER_01Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Nervous system first aid, how to spiral back into safety fast. And it's got between 50 and 100, mostly nature-based, not all, but mostly nature-based physical things you can do with your body to regulate quickly, to go from highly anxious or upset to calm. And the reason I put so many in there is we're all so unique. I've found in working with clients around the world, what works for you may be very different than what works for me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so if I put a lot of stuff in there, and I will probably keep updating that book because I've already got about four or five things I've learned since I went to publish it that I wish I had put in there. So probably every year or two I'm gonna do another edition.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And people then I've got three different appendices that one's alphabetical, one is what I would call, oh, what would be symptomatic. You know, if I'm anxious, these are the pages I can look at, and you know, that kind of thing. And so that should come out quickly. And uh I've presented that with different crowds at speeches and at a couple different conferences I was at. That went so well. I had so many of them say, We want more, Dean, because you think very differently from all the other coaches we've had. Please tell us exactly how you think. And so I thought, you know, it's probably important that this stuff I've been unexpectedly falling into some things that work consistently with our and are. Pretty universal to those of us who are human. I want to get them down because I've learned how fragile life can be. I might not be here tomorrow. I want to get these things down before I'm gone so others can benefit from what I've been through and some of the conclusions I've made that I've found work. And so I started developing this really two years ago, but it really got intense this year. And as pretentious as it sounds, I've developed a new form of therapeutic approach I'm calling biowild psychology, bio, of course, our biology is still wild. Yeah. And we need to have a body-centered approach to therapeutic positive outcomes first. And even I have been taught that everything's up here. And I'm finding more and more, with all the latest in neuroscience and polyvagal theory and somatic therapy and everything else, very little. This is way overemphasized. And that's why we're all stuck. If I may, can I just tell you the three things that make biowild psychology? Okay. First is the first thing I do and have always been taught to do as a therapist is ask people what their symptoms are. No longer do that. I don't start with symptoms like traditional approaches do. I find out how much they are connected to source. How much do they get outside in their own way? Because we are bioelectric, bioenergetic beings who are living on this big battery, and we never plug ourselves into the planet. We take better care of our cell phones than we do ourselves. I don't know anybody that doesn't plug their cell phone in at night because they want it to work the next day. And yet we never plug ourselves in and recharge, even though there's all sorts of science that shows that's what we need to be doing. And yet we require that we work efficiently the next day and then wonder why we don't, and start shaming ourselves. So that's the first difference is I start with source rather than symptoms. The next difference is I do very little head work and a lot of body work. And one of the things I've realized about the nervous system is the nervous system is always presented in textbooks and theoretical approaches as a step approach or a ladder or a linear. And I don't believe that at all. I believe it's an active, living, vital organism inside each human body. And the most ancient shape, you see it throughout all indigenous tribes and peoples, is the spiral. And it's the most common shape in creation or in the biological world, all the way from galaxies as big as you can get, down to the helix in the DNA, as small as you can get, is a spiral. And so I've developed a theory that the nervous system is constantly spiraling and opening up and closing down like your pupils are. Okay, or at least less strong. They feel weak or like they're failing. And yet when their pupil shrinks because they're in light, they don't feel fail like a failure. And I teach people to start looking at their nervous system rather than critically, just in the form of connection and being cohesive as a part of creation, as a part of nature. That's beautiful. And all sorts of things in nature have that response. And it starts in safety, and then when you open up a little bit more, you be get into what I call vitality. And then if you open up more, you get into what I call flourishing, filled with curiosity and wonder. And that's when you're creating and living and being, but you may do that several times a day, yeah, and that's okay. It doesn't mean you're wounded. Sure, we all have trauma. And so what I do is I try to teach people okay, when you feel your nervous system collapse, what do you as a person do to feel safe and start opening back up? What works for Dion probably won't work for Dean. So we experiment together until we find what are your tools to help you open back up. And then the way all therapy ends is usually the client just lies and tells the therapist he or she is better, or they get tired of paying them, or they feel like they don't have anything else to talk about, because all traditional approaches aim at neutral. If we can get the person to be less symptomatic, we're done. That's not how nature works. If my tree just barely hanged hung on to life, I would think it wasn't a very strong tree. I want that tree to bear fruit. And so you will know when you're done with biowild psychology when you're flourishing and giving from your excess. This is a natural way to conclude that you're okay.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So those are the three basic premises that make it very different than any other approach and are much more body-centric. You don't have to have the right mindset, even. You don't have to do all sorts of mental work. You just have to be active, living, almost kids at play.
SPEAKER_02That's so good. I listening to you speak about all this, Dean, and really honoring you as the as an expert in this field, I feel so affirmed in my own work because one of the things I've really shifted this year in our process and client journey, you know, as a dietitian, it was always like starting with food and actually, no, not anymore. Now we're starting with nervous system support and like really understanding that as your nervous system capacity, like you described it as the breathing, right? As your capacity expands, you expand your the possibilities of healing and optimal health and all these things. So I just feel really validated. Thank you, Dean. I'm like, okay, we are on the right track here.
SPEAKER_01You really are, Dion, because number one, I think you're really smart. But number two, intuitively, one of the things I've had a problem with most dietitians and nutritionists is it's very recipe.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01And one size you know, and I'm sure you've known for decades, one size doesn't fit all.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Uh one diet isn't gonna work for everyone because we're all made up so differently. And one of the things I've seen that's really sad with cancer patients is we get so scared that we chase the recipe. What's the exact right cocktail, if you will, that will make me well? And I sadly see many of my fellow cancer patients slash survivors chase that the rest of their life and not even live while they're alive. And I tell everybody it's not happiness and health, it's not about a recipe, it's about a relationship, your relationship to food, your relationship to the world, your relationship to yourself, your relationship to those around you. Yeah. And once you start trying to infuse each one of those relationships with love and playfulness, yeah, um, then you get better.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I know. This is actually such a perfect segue. So we're wrapping up our January theme on building resilience. And this is obviously working on like physical, mental, emotional resilience. And as we move into February, our topic is going to be about nervous system, love, joy, pleasure, like why this actually needs to be part of the quote unquote prescription. And it's so often not. So I couldn't have planned this better. This was not I didn't pay Dean to say any of those things. I was just like perfectly alignment. It was just perfect alignment. No, it's I'm assuming people are definitely gonna want to learn more from you. So we'll make sure, let's make sure that I have a list of the resources that I want to share. So certainly the books that have already come out, plus the new one that is going to come out very soon, probably at the time of this episode. Is there anything else? Certainly your Instagram, but is there anything you can I've got several things.
SPEAKER_01I've got hundreds of people that don't feel like they can yet afford me as their coach. I'm still doing coaching.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01Would love to work with some, especially some of your people as their coach. Yeah, I have made it nearly a spiritual discipline to answer everybody that DMs me on Instagram, which has now become almost a full-time job. But I try, I miss some if I have a viral post and get avalanche with 500 DMs. It's I some get lost in the shuffle. But it's one of the ways people can most easily get a hold of me. So I would encourage people to do that. But hundreds of people have told me that they can't afford me because I'm all out of pocket. You know, insurance doesn't pay for coaching. And so what I've started this week, or I've been working on for four months now, is a subscription service where I'm going to put all my books at a discount and then weekly teach something new in four different areas and have deeper dives into how I think, how I live, what I encourage, and hopefully do a little motivation there as well. Because life doesn't have to be such a death march, it can be really fun, even if you're dying. You know, I one of the questions I started asking myself, because again, remember the brain has to answer every question you ask. Even when I was really sick, is how can I do this and have more fun? The hardest place to answer that was to go to the oncologist. How can I go to the cancer center and have more fun? Because almost everybody there looked like a walking zombie, and it was scary thinking, oh my gosh, I'm gonna look like that someday or already do. But I found ways. Uh, I would take coffee to the receptionists, I would take one time I gave my oncologist one of those little blow whistles like a kazoo. Yeah, but those ones with that unwrinkle.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, just stupid stuff just to make him laugh and to make it more fun.
SPEAKER_02I had a client once who did something similar. He told me that every time he went into his infusion, he would come with a new joke, and that was like something like so. Every time he had to be prepared for a new joke, it would make people laugh, it would shift the whole experience.
SPEAKER_01It would, and it did, yeah, and you can do that. I still ask myself that every day. I look at everything I have to do, and I ask myself, how can I do that and have more fun? And it may sometimes it's an epic fail and makes me look like a total dork, but even that's better than being boring. We can live life in a state of play, and that's when we learn the most, and that's when we set new habits the most. They found that it takes hundreds, if not thousands, of replications to create a new habit, unless in a state of play. In a state of play, it's 10 or 15 times. Oh wow, it's much more efficient, much more efficient.
SPEAKER_02I think that's a perfect place to end our interview for inspiration to go have more fun. It doesn't have to be a difficult thing to add to your to your to-do list. Just go have more fun. How can I make this more fun? I love that so much. And I think I'm gonna have to join your subscription. I want to continue to be inspired by you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02In addition to Instagram.
SPEAKER_01So at least over here. So it's a little bit of nothing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And I'm gonna hope that uh and the other thing is it's through a company called Life Text, which will then give you a lot of added benefits. And I asked them to develop a platform where I can start a community inside of there as well if a person wishes to be a part of it.
SPEAKER_02I love that. Okay, we'll make sure you can find all those links below this episode. Dean, thank you so much again for sharing and being so generous with your time too. Like you've spent so much time with us. Thank you. And for any of and for any of you listening, if you know anybody in your life too that you feel would be inspired or motivated by today's episode, please share it. Please spread the word. The more we can get this, you know, this information into more ears, the better. That's really one of my goals with this podcast. And have a beautiful rest of your day. I look forward to seeing you all on the next episode. Thank you, Dean.
SPEAKER_00Thank you.