How to Have a Great Holiday Break (Start Now, Not in January)

Megan Ashton is the founder of Unity Breathwork and a leading advocate for raising safety standards in the breathwork industry. After fifteen years of trying to heal childhood trauma through hypnotherapy, yoga, talk therapy and six ayahuasca ceremonies, one conscious connected breathwork class in Bali gave her the breakthrough none of them had, and she has spent the decade since training trauma-informed facilitators and leading retreats in Sayulita, Mexico. In this conversation she explains what happens in the brain and nervous system when you remove the pause between inhale and exhale, why the first fifteen minutes feel like resistance, how to integrate a session so the change lasts, and where the real dangers lie. It is a grounded, honest guide to a practice that is growing fast and not always practiced well. Why connected breathing deliberately activates the sympathetic nervous system, and how that opens access to what the body has stored The one thing behind every hypoxic blackout Megan has seen: breath holds added to the end of a connected breathwork session How to find a safe facilitator: trauma-informed, at least 400 hours of training, no promises, no sensationalized social media Why one big breakthrough is not enough, and how often to practice for lasting change

Does your immune system have more say over your thoughts than you realize? Dr. Aoife O’Donovan, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at UCSF and director of the THRIVE Lab, has spent nearly two decades studying how psychological stress gets under the skin and into the brain. In this conversation, she explains why humans mount a full stress response to events that are long past or may never happen, how inflammation sharpens the brain’s threat detector while loosening its brakes, and why trauma can leave the body on alert for years. She also shares early findings from the UCSF Translational Psychedelic Research Program, where psilocybin therapy was linked to lower inflammation and mitochondrial stress in patients with Parkinson’s disease, and research showing that biological aging in immune cells can move in reverse. A candid, hopeful guide to working with a nervous system that evolved for short-term survival rather than long-term flourishing. In this episode: Why the stress response protects you today at the expense of your long-term health, and why that isn’t your fault Inflammation and threat sensitivity feed each other: what happens between the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex under stress Pessimism and perceived threat predict shorter telomeres, yet immune cell aging turns out to be reversible “Figure out what kind of nervous system you have, then build your environment around it,” plus why starting absurdly small works

Dr. Chloe West is a psychedelic neuroscientist who studies how psychedelics change the way the brain processes information and updates its beliefs about the world. Her path began at age ten, when her family moved from a small town in Georgia's Bible Belt to Kawakawa in New Zealand's Northland, and she encountered atheism, evolution and ayahuasca in the same disorienting year. Brad and Chloe explore why beliefs absorbed in childhood are so hard to shift, how psychedelics raise neural entropy and soften the brain's certainty in its own predictions, and why the weeks after an experience matter as much as the experience itself. They also consider mystical states reached without substances, the risks of a challenging trip, and whether psychedelics helped shape the world's religions. Psychedelics act like fresh snow on a sledding hill, letting the mind carve new paths beyond the rigid grooves of PTSD, depression and addiction. Perception is a "controlled hallucination," and psychedelics temporarily loosen the brain's predictions so old beliefs can update. Chloe's research suggests a window of openness in the weeks after an experience, when setting and support shape what takes hold. Breathwork, meditation and flicker light can open similar states without any substance at all.

Don Mann spent 21 years in the Navy SEAL Teams, retiring from SEAL Team Six, then another 25 as a CIA contractor. He is a New York Times bestselling author, host of the TV series Surviving Mann, and a veteran of more than 1,000 endurance events, including a double Ironman he finished after passing out at mile 32 of the run. In this conversation with Brad Hook, he describes the combat mindset that got him through a night dive with no oxygen, the leaders who taught him to leave ego at the door, and the four daily habits from his new book, Navy SEAL Playbook, that he offers to anyone who wants more from their life. He is also frank about what twenty years of continuous war has done to the people who fought it, why the wars being fought today keep him up at night, and why he now puts being a good person ahead of being a warrior. Why most people set their goals too low, and how to choose a macro goal and micro-goal your way up Four daily rules: get stronger, get faster, get smarter, and do something good for somebody Leading without ego, from the SEAL Team Six leader who made every man on the team feel needed Visualize it worse than it will be: the mental practice that got Don through BUD/S

What happens when the striving that built your career stops working? Fabrice Desmarescaux, McKinsey partner, leader of Aberkyn in Southeast Asia and author of The Art of Retreats, joins Brad to explore the "second adulthood": the unnamed life stage that begins around 45, when raw problem-solving gives way to wisdom, judgment and the ability to hold paradox. Drawing on decades of coaching CEOs and C-suite teams, Fabrice explains why control doesn't scale, why midlife is an awakening rather than a crisis, and why silence, solitude and stillness are the most underrated leadership tools of all. A warm, quietly radical conversation about presence, letting go, and finding your new game. In this episode: Fluid intelligence peaks in your 30s, but crystallized intelligence keeps growing into your 70s and 80s Why senior leadership is an adaptive challenge: influence, nudging and holding space instead of control The lost rites of passage, and why we need elders to guide life's biggest transitions How to build a retreat into a busy day through silence, solitude and disconnection