Deep Fix: Exploring Hakomi & Ayahuasca as Antidotes to Addiction with Alex Olshonsky

What if stress is less about how busy your life looks and more about whether your body believes it has enough energy to meet what is being asked of it? Marek Doyle joins Jonny to unpack his framework of “energy security”: the relationship between the resources available to the body and the demands it expects to face. He explains why a manageable gap may produce sympathetic mobilization, while a gap that feels impossible to bridge may lead to a parasympathetic stress response often described as freeze or functional shutdown. They explore why a healing protocol can work beautifully for one person and do nothing for another, why improving energy availability can briefly make someone feel worse, and why a high HRV score is not automatically a sign of resilience. The conversation also covers embodied safety, secondary stress, metabolic dysfunction, breathwork and how to run more useful self-experiments without blindly chasing a number. You can expect to learn: - Why Marek became interested in people who did not respond to supposedly reliable health protocols - How energy security describes the gap between available resources and perceived demands - The difference between sympathetic mobilization and parasympathetic stress - Why coming out of freeze can initially feel like increased anxiety or activation - How Marek reads HRV as one clue within a larger clinical picture - Why a high HRV reading can sometimes be misinterpreted - How safety, prediction, parts work and phobias shape protective responses - Why “anxiety about anxiety” can magnify the original stressor - How chronic stress and metabolic dysfunction can reinforce one another - Why rest, breathwork and somatic practices do not land the same way for every nervous system - How to think in principles and experiments instead of universal protocols ABOUT MAREK Marek Doyle is a functional nutritional therapist and breathwork practitioner with more than 20 years of clinical experience. His work focuses on complex cases where standard protocols have failed, combining personalised nutrition, laboratory testing and a systems-level view of stress physiology. CONNECT WITH MAREK - Marek's website: https://www.marekdoyle.com/ - Energy security, parasympathetic stress and mobilization: https://www.marekdoyle.com/?p=48061 - Using HRV to measure stress: https://www.marekdoyle.com/using-hrv-to-measure-stress/ - Health & Humanity: https://marekdoyle.substack.com/ - Marek on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marek.doyle - Lucid Labs: https://www.lucidlabs.health/ EXPLORE MORE FROM JONNY - Follow Jonny on X: https://twitter.com/jonnym1ller - Nervous System Mastery: https://nsmastery.com/ - Stateshift: https://stateshift.app/ - Take the free Nervous System Quotient self-assessment: https://assessment.nsmastery.com/ - Subscribe to The Inner Frontier newsletter: https://ch.kit.com/f2ecbf5169 CHAPTERS 00:00 Nervous System Mastery 01:40 Welcome and why reliable protocols fail some people 08:40 What Marek means by energy security 16:47 Reading HRV in context 23:17 Moving from freeze into mobilization 25:27 Embodied safety and the predictive nervous system 28:35 Rehabilitating cortisol's reputation 35:48 Parts work, phobias and protective responses 39:13 Primary stress and secondary stress 41:10 Why transitions between nervous-system states can feel rough 45:48 Practical ways to investigate energy security 53:48 The loop between chronic stress and metabolic dysfunction 65:21 What can meaningfully change HRV? 75:14 The healing state and the limits of protocols 77:27 Why deep rest may require feeling what was avoided 83:31 Where to learn more from Marek

AI can now write, code, research and build at a speed that felt impossible a few years ago. When a machine can reproduce yesterday's competence on demand, what remains distinctly human? Dan Shipper is the CEO and cofounder of Every, a media and software company exploring what comes next in technology. In this conversation, we examine AI as a mirror for our values, fears and creative instincts. We explore why good work still requires taste, how coordinating agents can fry your attention, why Every's aggressive approach to automation has created more human work, and which qualities matter when the ground keeps shifting beneath us. You can expect to learn: - Why your first encounter with a frontier model can resemble a psychedelic experience, including Dan's 30-day rule for major life decisions - How to use AI without sacrificing your capacity for reading, writing and sustained thought - Why taste, meaning and craft still come from the person using the tool - What Dan means when he describes AI as a "non-specific amplifier" and a form of "frozen competence" - Why automating everything possible at Every has created more work for people - How experts can thrive when competent one-shot outputs become cheap and widely available - Why curiosity, playfulness, openness to experience and the ability to tolerate uncertainty matter in the AI era - Why knowledge work remains a process of wayfinding, even as agents become more capable and autonomous ABOUT DAN Dan Shipper is the CEO and cofounder of Every, a media and software company that publishes a daily newsletter about technology, builds software products, teaches courses and provides AI consulting and training. CONNECT WITH DAN - Every: https://every.to/ - Follow Dan on X: https://x.com/danshipper EXPLORE MORE FROM JONNY - Follow Jonny on X: https://twitter.com/jonnym1ller - Nervous System Mastery: https://nsmastery.com/ - Stateshift: https://stateshift.app/ - Take the free Nervous System Quotient self-assessment: https://assessment.nsmastery.com/ - Subscribe to The Inner Frontier newsletter: https://ch.kit.com/f2ecbf5169 CHAPTERS 00:00 Before we begin 00:38 Annie Dillard, art and writing 04:14 Can AI deepen human craft? 05:43 The slot-machine effect of AI agents 06:55 Dan's "house phone" experiment 08:01 What AI can actually help us create 13:55 AI as a non-specific amplifier 17:23 Why AI companies mishandled the story 19:36 Will AI destroy jobs? 22:35 AI as "frozen competence" 26:11 Are human-AI centaurs temporary? 31:34 Career advice for the AI era 37:19 The traits that matter now 40:08 Every as an AI research lab 42:25 The coherence problem 45:25 Rapid-fire questions 48:00 Superintelligence by 2030? 50:44 Life after superintelligence 52:07 The questions Dan is living 53:02 Give yourself permission

What happens when the habits that made you successful stop making you feel alive?

In this conversation with designer, mindfulness teacher, and friend Jay Vidyarthi — we explore how to reclaim agency in the age of the attention economy without rejecting the magic of technology. We discuss why mainstream narratives about digital distraction often leave out empowerment, how to build healthier relationships with technology, the nuanced role of AI, the sacred responsibility of attention and why awareness is the first “spell” in your own defense against the dark arts of distraction. Listen to this conversation and learn how to enjoy the best of tech while setting boundaries around the worst of it! Connect with Jay

Nir Eyal is a New York Times bestselling author and behavioral design expert. We had a wide-ranging conversation on curiosity, identity, and the unexpected ways that beliefs that shape our lives. Nir shared why curiosity is a superpower for self-improvement, the role of community in mental well-being, why “pills don’t teach skills” when it comes to mental health, why testing and rewiring our beliefs is essential for personal growth, and how living with integrity aligns us with our deepest values. Show Notes: