No Way Out

Presence That Works in Real Life: Jody Weiss on Attention Training, Nervous System Regulation, and Micro-Practices for High-Pressure Leaders

• Mark McGrath and Brian "Ponch" Rivera • Episode 149

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Imagine stepping off the freezing Manhattan street and finding a steady warmth at the bottom of your breath. That’s the thread running through our conversation with Jody Weiss—meditator, community builder, and co-host of Exploring Reality Maybe—as we explore how presence and modern therapies change lives. From VA-approved iREST Yoga Nidra to evidence-based ketamine infusions, we look at what actually helps veterans with PTSD, executives in crisis, and healers carrying the weight of others’ pain.

We dig into a practical definition of “home base” and why training attention throughout the day matters more than a single morning routine. Jody shares non-dual practices that quiet the intellect, interrupt rigid patterns, and open a wider field of perception. We connect stories of rapid transformation—like first responders stepping back from the brink—with neuroscientific advances in brain mapping that reveal how new circuits can unlock relief in days. The goal isn’t to numb or escape; it’s to become more present and more free.

This episode also celebrates the power of community and conscious capital. Jody describes Women Funding the World and Consciousness Drinks, spaces where clinicians, shamans, researchers, and investors meet to nurture the nurturers and fund work that sustains life. We talk about equine therapy, the stigma and renaissance of psychedelics, and the simple city practices—yes, even in Times Square—that “melt identit

John R. Boyd's Conceptual Spiral was originally titled No Way Out. In his own words: 

“There is no way out unless we can eliminate the features just cited. Since we don’t know how to do this, we must continue the whirl of reorientation…”

A promotional message for Ember Health.  Safe and effective IV ketamine care for individuals seeking relief from depression. Ember Health's evidence-based, partner-oriented, and patient-centered care model, boasting an 84% treatment success rate with 44% of patients reaching depression remission. It also mentions their extensive experience with over 40,000 infusions and treatment of more than 2,500 patients, including veterans, first responders, and individuals with anxiety and PTSD

John Boyd’s Conceptual Spiral was originally titled “No Way Out.” In his words:

“There is no way out unless we can eliminate the features just cited. Since we don’t know how to do this, we must continue the whirl of reorientation…”


Download a complete transcript of Conceptual Spiral for free by clicking here.

Stay connected with No Way Out and The Whirl Of ReOrientation

Want to build your organization’s capacity for free and independent action?See how we help teams become more competitive, collaborative, and coordinated under pressure:

Mark McGrath:

All right. Well, it's always fun to have friends on the podcast, and it's always fun to have relatively new friends that have taught me a lot in the year we've known each other. I'd say Jody Weiss, how are you?

Jody Weiss:

I'm amazing. It's Friday afternoon and the sun is out. It's cold outside, but it's a beautiful January here in New York City.

Mark McGrath:

Well, I was just gonna ask, is your end of Manhattan any warmer than mine? Because I'm freezing.

Jody Weiss:

It's so cold. I have my down jacket on here. Thank you very much.

Mark McGrath:

It's rough. Yeah, I'm wearing a wool.

Jody Weiss:

Yeah.

Mark McGrath:

It's a wool sweater, and I've got I've got thermal socks on. It's really something.

Jody Weiss:

Yeah.

Mark McGrath:

But uh what a wonderful city we live in, too. It is never a dull moment, and our perception is constantly being challenged and it's constantly changing. For the stuff that we teach on No Way Out in our Substack, the world of reorientation, I I can't think of a better place than Manhattan to really see everything we talk about unfold right before your very eyes. Right. So have you ever tried explaining to somebody that's not from New York, that's never been to New York? Have you ever tried to explain New York and they just look at you like they don't know?

Jody Weiss:

Yes. People who come and visit and they're like after two or three days, they're like, I think maybe I'll go back home. It's a little too intense here. Yeah. It's very intense. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark McGrath:

It's either you love it or you hate it too. I don't I don't think it's really hard to be lukewarm in the middle of the road.

Jody Weiss:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, they say us roaches move in and we don't move out. I'm one of those roaches. I I was born here. I was born here. I love it. Yeah. Can't get enough.

Mark McGrath:

No, it's it is a hub. It really uh is a magnet. Both of my parents were born here. I I was raised at Army Bratt and then my own military career, but to be be here in New York full-time is it's unlike any other place because again, the scenery is never the same. It's it's constantly changing. So let's talk about that. So roll the clock back a year ago. We had Maria Velcova on the on the show from Tabula Raza, which was a fundraising money for uh psychedelic therapies. She was talking about um, I believe it was MDMA at the time it was it was being uh voted on whether it was going to be approved by the FDA. But anyway, offline she says, hey you guys, we're going to the to this dinner meeting. And then lo and behold, I meet you.

Jody Weiss:

There we go. That's so you know.

Mark McGrath:

I'm getting invited to all kinds of cool events, uh meeting all kinds of interesting people that really tie into the a lot of the things that that we think about, that Ponch and I think about as it relates to psychedelic therapies for, you know, in our case as veterans, um, um, and and and a lot of our brothers and sisters that are dealing with very severe PTSD. And so much of our worlds converge. And, you know, in some cases it's a really unlikely convergence, but it's a really fascinating convergence. And here we are.

Jody Weiss:

Here we are. Here we are. You know, I just feel this is a time in history where we're where consciousness itself is elevating the conversation around it, the research around it, the transformation in the mental health space, in the way we treat, treat um challenging situations, the transformation in the medicines we give, the practices we do. So it's an awesome time to have met you and to learn about your work with veterans. And yeah, it's really, it's really the right time to be in this conversation.

Mark McGrath:

It's it's it's mind-opening and it's really cool. Mind opening, pun intended, I guess.

Jody Weiss:

Yeah.

Mark McGrath:

But it is it is really cool to see something that actually Ponch, who uh couldn't be here today, but you know, Ponch was the per first person to tell me about psychedelics for therapies for veterans dealing with trauma. And yeah, of course, like a lot of people, the first thing out of my mouth was psychedelics, really. Like, I mean, I was a Grateful Dead fan, but I was in the Marine Corps and like psychedelics, I think it's like drugged out people. There's there's such a negative connotation of psychedelics that uh the war on drugs has really unleashed on the just the word psychedelics, or they or they think of you know, hate Asbury, or they think of, you know, right here where I am in the West Village in the 60s. Uh, but what they're what they're forgetting is that these things have been around for thousands and thousands of years and have extremely valid therapeutic uses.

Jody Weiss:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And in fact, I think we're really beginning to understand that the mind, intellect, and ego are tools, and that in fact, our default is this quality of pure present consciousness. It's quite precious. So when the mind stops working, when the intellect stops thinking, past and future and subject-object experience, when it's just a rising experience, it can quiet that negative spinning mind that that uh many soldiers deal with. They deal with images, they deal with negative thinking about what happened in the past. And so there's a particular practice called iREST by R-E-S-T with 20 clinical studies that uh Dr. Richard Miller has used to quiet the negative spinning of mind. And so most of the VA hospitals across the USA right now use iREST. It's Yoga Nitra. And um, and the studies show, the clinical studies show that when the mind, intellect, and ego stops conversations, mental conversations about the past or the future or the negative things that happen, and one just sits in that precious quality of them self in the moment, the beauty, the wonder of oneself in the moment that there the stress of post-traumatic stress calms and this other kind of quality arises of preciousness of life in the moment. And so that's why these clinical studies are profound, and that's why the VA hospital teaches IREST in most of the VA centers.

Mark McGrath:

So, wow, so many directions that we could go just with, you know, I guess we'll bounce around a lot in this conversation. But to see the VA look to do something, you know, not traditional was is really is really promising. Nico Grundman, who we both know, who's been a guest on our show, was talking about how I believe it's 28 or so states at VAs that ketamine IV therapy is now.

Jody Weiss:

Yeah. Super exciting. Super exciting. That's the wider lens now. That's the wider aperture of what's happening in the research around consciousness. Right. And so there's, you know, neuroscience, quantum physics, all of these modalities are saying that maybe we are not um um uh an intellectual process. Maybe we're the arising of experience, maybe, maybe actually consciousness itself is the foundational quality of reality. And then what is the mind, intellect, and ego? Oh, and so Dr. David Schwartz, who's a dear friend of mine and a neuroscientist, and I started a podcast called Exploring Reality Maybe, where you can hear it on Apple and Spotify, but we interview neuroscientists and quantum physicists, biologists, plant medicine scientists, psychiatrists, psychologists, shamans, meditators, on what is the mind? How does reality arise? From where does it arise? And where does consciousness actually live within the bodies? Because some uh beings, some beings that are are not human, actually derive consciousness in areas that are not like ears or like eyes, but they're still responsive in a conscious way in in their reality. So where does consciousness live? And those are the kind of things we explore in our podcast.

Mark McGrath:

So you may have heard our latest episode that we just released as we're recording today on Friday, January 16th. We just had Dr. Yuval Nuria, and he's the you know, leading expert on uh on PTSD. And his his his journey to get to be a clinical psychologist to get to where he is started actually in the in the Yom Kippur War, where he was decorated with the Medal of Valor, which is Israel's equivalent of the of the Medal of Honor. And what he was saying was that it came down to that soul searching, you know, that like asking, asking bigger questions. Um, you know, starting with the fact that of the eight people awarded that decoration in the Yom Kippur War, four of them were killed. He was trying to understand that trauma and realize that it was also generational, too, that it wasn't just unique to him, that it was uh it was generational.

Jody Weiss:

Right.

Mark McGrath:

I wonder like where that is where a lot of the bad connotations of psychedelics even comes from is like just generational trauma.

Jody Weiss:

Like you think, you know, if you're your your parents raised you to think that it was hippies, you know, that psychedelics, you don't want to go into the Well, I think I think that you know, psychedelics they've been used for thousands of years, and actually shamans use them mul all throughout their life. They start children on psychedelics at age four or five. By the time they get to be 12 or 13, the psychedelic journey has actually directed that young person on what their their life's work is going to be, what their passion is, what their their real goal in life is. And so psychedelics are not quote unquote damaging. What's damaging has been the war on them since like the mid-50s. Yeah. And thank God there's this renaissance of the work around psychedelics with MDMA and uh stage three clinical studies, with the whole entire pharmaceutical industry now uh uh uniquely focused on psychedelic research with these amazing funds like SGF's fund and others that are investing in psychedelic research. You know, this is an extraordinary time for us to really celebrate that the mind is an expansive kind of a mechanism. And so when the the you know, the yogi says when the mind, intellect, and ego quiet down, this wider expansive quality of ourselves emerges. And one can experience a taste of that through psychedelics because it does it does quiet or really in its tracks, it changes what the intellect can do. And so there's an ancient book that I teach from called the Figyana Bhairava. It's a Kashmir Shaivite tradition and it's it's tantra, it's non-dual tantra. And these practices in this book also exhaust the intellect and also quiet the mind so that the habitual quality of the way we perceive reality is disrupted in its path. And that's also what like microdosing and and using different types of psychedelics do. It disrupts the habitual mind. And what an amazing time with uh the MAPS conference, um, multi multidisciplinary association of psychedelic research conference, with the studies that are going on now on psychedelics, that actually our mind is a ecstatic, expansive quality of experience when the intellect calms down.

Mark McGrath:

Some of the things you said really resonate when we think about Eastern philosophy was a big part of his input that really differentiated him from a lot of other Western strategists. And he started looking at things like Taoism and, you know, Confucianism, that sort of thing. So when you talk about, you know, creating perception and breaking perception, I mean, that's really what he ended up right before he died when he when he sketched out the Ootaloop sketch. It really does come down to how do I understand the projection of reality that I expect to see, and how do I keep challenging that um and keeping it aligned to what's actually happening. Dr. Naria said something like that too, because we were asking him, you know, the way we started the conversation was as fellow military officer veterans and asking him about, you know, and he was very candid about his experiences in the war in the front lines, and he said very flat out, like I wasn't suicidal and I wasn't nuts. I I kept trying to update my perception of what was happening, knowing that whatever I wanted to see or whatever I thought it would the way it was supposed to be was probably not what I was seeing. And I had to I had to keep it relevant and matched to what was happening. And he he fought for 12 straight days until he was evacuated. So the amount of presence that, you know, you use the word presence. I mean the presence that you have to have, I think really hits on that, what you're saying. Well, that's Oh, go ahead.

Jody Weiss:

I was gonna say that's a really incredible point because you know our minds are not so well trained. And I call them our minds the wild stallions of the mind, where thoughts go this way and that way, and they and the horses run around in circles and backwards. And so we, though we meditate, maybe doing mindfulness or some practice for 20, 30 minutes, actually the I call it kind firmness is a practice where where we actually, it's like going to the gym. We actually practice not allowing ourselves to think other things and maybe just rest at the bottom of the breath. So it's called equipada when you just focus on one thing and you rest on your breath and you just pause at the bottom and it goes up and then you go down and you pause at the bottom. If one can hold that practice for first a minute and then three minutes and then five minutes and then twenty minutes and then forty-five minutes, that is a mastery of kind firmness of the mind. What what we as a as a human race have generally is a less there's not a strong muscle to be able to control where the mind goes. And so my teacher used to walk for four hours at a time up in the Himalayas, just look just making sure his mind didn't wander. He just rested on that turn of his breath. And so, in a modern way to think about this, is where is home base? Right? And so I think a lot of the depression and grief and we're experiencing with kids in high school on the internet, uh the suicide aviation and the the higher rates of suicide. Yeah. Even bullying and things like that, there's a lack of understanding that actually our home, our home base is not only our families or friends or neighbors or teachers or whatever, but it's actually a resting place in our own self where one can go home and rest no matter what the drama is around us. And we teach in our in the practice that I teach, it's at the bottom, at the pause of the breath. And the reason that is so is that it's just it's a space in between. So there's not arising, there's not falling, there's not past, there's not future. There's this gorgeous pause. Yeah. And I want to inspire anyone listening who really wants to rest from the fear of what's going on in the world, anxiety, anxiety about the future, or stress about the past is just to rest in one's own internal, beautiful, exquisite presence at the bottom of the breath. You know, that that's really a message.

Mark McGrath:

Because nothing's new. No matter how crazy we think the world is getting, it's not new. It's always been like that for thousands and thousands or whatever years. And you know, you know, we think of psychedelics more as medicine versus an illicit drug, like an upper or a downer.

Jody Weiss:

Yeah, for sure.

Mark McGrath:

Um that do allow that. Like, you know, when Nico Grundman was on, he was talking about when when when the therapy starts with the with the ketamine that they're able to disconnect things. You know, it's said that a lot of people that that have gone through therapeutic use of psychedelics is that's what that's what we're talking about here. That it's like a it's like years or decades of therapy, just a you know, one one or a couple of treatments.

Jody Weiss:

Yeah. Yeah, that's true.

Mark McGrath:

Peaceful and yeah. Um Well now I've I've done some guided breath work too, and I think that that alone, I mean, it is kind of uh when when you when you get to learn how to do that and experience that. It really does. It it does, you know, it's one of those things that that does wonders for your for your body and for your, you know, for your again, learning how to be present. And I think I like what you were saying too, because so many of the the world's traditions and faiths and other things point to the fact that things are actually within you. They're within your power, they're not, they're not external of you.

Jody Weiss:

That's right. That's right. There there's a uh researcher named Marcus Brentley from um uh excuse me, from Brandon Brentley from Marcus Labs. You you can listen to him on our podcast, uh Exploring Reality Maybe number podcast 17, but he works with people who've had lifelong issues with depression, the kind of depression that cannot respond to medicines and things like that. And and uh Dr. Schwartz and I were just fascinated by his clinical study and research. And what they what he does is that he maps out the brain, the neurological movement of the brain using a various modalities. So it's not just one kind of measurement, it's micro-measurement of the way the the brain circuits move. And then he uh applies various solutions depending on the roadblocks or the the areas that are too enlivened, whatever the issues are. And what he says to his patients is that whatever you think your life has been, we want you to prepare for after you come home after these five days, it won't be the same. So people who could not even leave their house can walk out and feel it's such a transformational thing. And what that says to me is that you know, our reality is so affected by chemistry. Yeah, you know, life is chemistry, but also the neurological pathways that that create fear or fight or flight or et cetera, and that there's new modalities of science that are actually enabling us to understand the way neurological systems work and the way to enliven areas. Even um, even Cameron, we have a colleague named Cameron Farabus right here in New York, who runs the uh uh brain uh research center. He can also map the brain. So there's also this these incredible modalities that are being uh researched now that will transform the way people can deal with these issues if they're feeling stuck.

Mark McGrath:

Yeah, it's shattering that correspondence of the reality that you think is real but is not, right?

Jody Weiss:

Shattering it.

Mark McGrath:

Yeah. How have you so you've been at this game a while? I mean, um how how have you how do you feel about where it's at now? You know, it fe seems to like, I guess my perception is, or my perspective, it seems that talking about psychedelics in this day and age is is not nearly as uh taboo as it was maybe 25 years ago.

Jody Weiss:

Oh, it's an incredible movement that's going on. A renaissance of psychedelics is out, it's out, can't get it back in the bag. The clinical studies, uh penamine, you you Can um open clenamine ketamine clinics now, um sibin, ayahuasca, all of those things have potentials for research now. DN MA or is in stage three studies. I feel like, you know, over the I'm I'm a 50 year meditator. And so I started meditating when I was very young, but ended up in Kashmir when I was 17 and went eight times over 12 years in my uh late teens and twenties to study Nandal Tantra, to study the arising, the spark, the medit the spark of life that happens this second, this second, this second, the the sensual sensory quality of an ecstatic self in the moment. And what I've seen over those years is that meditation started to show up in the churches and in temples and in different ways with mindfulness. And it was taboo at first and underground, and people didn't really do it, and then all of a sudden, mindfulness was in the church, and then Goldie Hahn and her beautiful work with kids in in classrooms. Now it's an undeniable understanding that when one can take even five minutes a day to be mindful, to meditate on one's breath, to be quiet, the prefrontal cortex enlivens the higher learning, the higher intuit intuitive. They can measure it, they can map it out and see over a period of time how this frontal area of higher intuition is enlivened and the fight or flight area calms down. And so it's a it's a physiological transformation meditation. And the research shows it. So where I think we're going now with uh with gatherings like the Center for Consciousness Studies and the Science and Non-Duality Summits, where I think we're going now is uh colleagues are opening up a consciousness research center to really formalize what consciousness is. Where does it live? Where how how what is the makeup of reality?

Mark McGrath:

Yeah.

Jody Weiss:

And that's where I think we're going with this now.

Mark McGrath:

That's really something. I mean, again, it's it's so I guess what I'm gathering is even in like the last say quarter century, last 25 years, it's really, it's really gone leaps and bounds. Like it it kind of things like depression and things that people need relief from. We had um we've had Norman Ohler on the show twice, and he came on one time to talk about his book Tripped, and he was talking about the history of LSD and and how Albert Hoffman intended it to be like a one-time use mental health drug, but it served no value to drug companies or whoever was using it, you know, whoever wanted to use it to, I don't know, control people or whatever, but it seemed to be it was like it was actually useful and helpful and it was making people better.

Jody Weiss:

Yeah.

Mark McGrath:

It's so I guess maybe what I'm hearing you also say is that is it is it is it fair to say that really the the tone has changed so much, it's actually gives us a lot of people to be hopeful for to find healing and find relief from things like depression and PTSD.

Jody Weiss:

Absolutely. Absolutely right. Shamans um across Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, shamans who really live with this plant medicine really understand it as the teacher. It is the teacher for wisdom, for a higher wisdom, for an elevated sense of oneself. And so the kind of addictions that we deal with, the kind of whether it's a shopping addiction, work addiction, drug addiction, whatever it is, those hungry ghost qualities of constantly trying to figure out who we are can subside when we understand that the dream is not about something external. The dream is that we are higher consciousness at our core basis when the intellect calms down.

Mark McGrath:

You're you're giving up that higher level of consciousness, that higher uh inner peace and things like that. So, well, that's a good place, I guess, to segu to what we do now. Like, so what do we what do we do now? One of the things that you um so kind of how we know each other um is that you've been instrumental in bringing together uh people from across disciplines and across uh backgrounds. They, you know, marine veterans and uh um special needs mothers, doctors that own ketamine clinics, psychiatrists, all kinds of interesting uh people. Tell us about what we do once a month.

Jody Weiss:

Yeah, lovely. Lovely.

Mark McGrath:

Yeah.

Jody Weiss:

So I I work at the intersection of consciousness, nature, and capital. Because once we understand that that capital is energy and that energy directed as love is the only nutrient we need as a species. And so anything else that is directed not with that lens of sustaining life on earth, of the of the precious quality of who we are, is not a healthy use of capital. And so I, at that intersection of nature, consciousness, and capital, have uh host a gathering called Women Funding the World for men and women who allocate capital to living systems and to equity. Our nonprofit, the Diversified Capital Coalition, has just done a feasibility study to move the 0.4% of capital that goes to black and brown women and 2.3 that go to women to 10% in 10 years by having our guy colleagues help us solve that problem. It's uh, and we have all sorts of wonderful ways to do that, that we're going to be implementing. A sub-group, a sub-focus of women funding the world is focused on mental and emotional well-being. It's really the core of everything. And as a 50-year meditator, as a what I call a mystic in the business world, I'm a mystic. I started this podcast with Dr. David Schwartz called Exploring Reality Maybe, where we're really understanding what reality is. And as part of that, we have a monthly gathering called Consciousness Drinks, which uh we are launching in Hudson, New York, in Austin, and other places. And the goal of it really is to nurture the healers, nurture the nurturers who give so much. And so anyone in the healing arts, whether you're a psychiatrist, a psychologist, organizational management, a coach, a shaman, yogi, if your day's work is in healing others, we invite you to come and be part of Consciousness Drinks. In that community, we're bringing philanthropists and investors to meet you because we want to fund with that love, that love that I'm talking about. We want to fund your work. And so that's that's what consciousness drinks is about. We had the you were there. We we are one of our um gatherings, we had Julie Mossbrack uh Bachbrack Mossbacker. Mossbridge.

Mark McGrath:

Mossbridge, talk about um she's also she's also an alumni of the of our podcast, too.

Jody Weiss:

There we go. And that was an incredible conversation. You could not hear a I mean a pin drop. It was it was so incredible talking about the telepathy tapes, talking about nonverbal children and how they communicate with each other. And so those are the kind of sort of extraordinary conversations we're having. This month, Dr. Anna Yuzum from the Mind Body Spirit Institute, who's a co-host of Consciousness Drinks and who's developing the Yale Center for Mental Health and Spirituality, will be talking and sharing techniques on how to be in connection with each other more intimately in this age of loneliness and isolation. How do we really connect in a more authentic, true, tender way? And so we're very excited about that. And then every month we'll have other speakers join us.

Mark McGrath:

She's also an alumni of the No Way Out podcast.

Jody Weiss:

Yeah, we're just like a beautiful mirror of each other. I love it.

Mark McGrath:

Isn't it isn't it neat though? Because we, to your point, it it's a it's a real connecting event. It happens right here in Manhattan.

Jody Weiss:

Yeah.

Mark McGrath:

And I've never been disappointed. Every time I walk out learning or having learned something, in my perspective has really uh has really shifted, which I think is part of the intent. You know, we're we're we're people people that are in these, as you say, the the hook that really got me was how how do we help uh you know, brother and sister veterans, because they you know the historical path for healing is hey, you know, suck it up, tough it up, here's some here's some drugs, or here's some SSRIs, or you know, they oftentimes turn to um you know, booze or horse. And in the cases of a lot of people that are you know very close to you know me personally and to I know to uh Brian, my co-host personally, they they take their own lives. And it's it's it's the more I've learned about the therapeutic uses of these things, and the more I've met and interacted with people at consciousness drinks, it really is fascinating to see the think, and it does make me sad sometimes. Is there's a balance between, you know, sad and happy. Sad that I think of a buddy that could, you know, could have been one trip away from you know healing himself and happy that you know we're able to get people together and we're able to get to broadcast the message up. So for example, one of the people that I met at Consciousness Drinks was Dr. Nico Grunman. And we I think we we I don't know if we were recording yet, but we we were talking about him earlier, who runs Ember Health here in the city. And Ember Health has done over, well, I forget the number, 40,000 infusions of ivy ketamine treatment. And when he came on the show, he talked about uh a firefighter that was gonna jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, I think, and had had just come to the end. And they were able to help um and and help treat him. And, you know, we we talk about Ember Health on this episode. There'll be a plug. This episode is brought to you by Ember Health. That if you are a veteran or, you know, it's not just unique to veterans. There's he talked about first responders, he talked about uh 9-11 survivors, he also talked about victims of sexual trauma.

Jody Weiss:

And executives in high-level CEOs come to this clinic?

Mark McGrath:

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's all kinds of different categorizations of people that experience uh uh trauma. And and and that is it's really amazing because again, 25 years ago, I don't think you could go to a ketamine clinic legally and be and be treated here in New York, and now you can. Um and what was really amazing, and I have to tell you, like, you know, when I when I got off the route, we stopped recording with with Nico, I had to exhale because it was just so amazing to hear, like, the one, the work that he's doing, and two, to think of so many people that I've known who still suffer or who had suffered to the point where it did they did take their lives that this could have been something to help them. And so having a part in creating awareness of that is is really a big rise for us. So it's and it came from going to consciousness drinks.

Jody Weiss:

There we go. There we go. Right? This is the work. This is what's so breathtaking about this work is that, you know, lives that are I mean, we're not giving a handbook when we show up. And so how do we where do we get these tools from? How do we know who to turn to? Yeah. And so that's why these conversations, the more public we can get, the more offerings we can offer to turn these problems around, the better. I'm I'm struck by the numbers of young people in junior high and high school, young people who are suffering from depression and uh hopelessness. And, you know, I just want to say if any young person, if you're listening and you know of a young person who's suffering, or if you are a young person who's listening, that really the the one thing you can hold on to that you can rest in when you go to school or to college, whatever, is in that precious quality of your uniqueness. You're you're you're snow, you're a snowflake, you're a diamond, nothing is like you. And to rest at the turn or the bottom of your breath without worrying about the past or future is a beautiful practice. The stronger you can get with that, the more you'll get through the rough times.

Mark McGrath:

Isn't it boy? I had a really powerful thought when you said that. So often the things that we're we're wired for or we're programmed for through advertising and other things, they're downers. You know, how many when you watch an NFL game or a pro sporting event, you know, how many alcohol commercials are there? How many commercials are there for pharmaceuticals? You know? Wait, you know, as the as the journey goes on to continue to learn and understand these therapies and how they help people, it's not to numb you. It's not to bring you down or bring you up. It's actually to bring you present and to help you learn and see. Somebody talked about a trip to me that was explaining that a lot of their anxiety or or uh past, I guess anxiety future, but like past trauma was depixolating, you know, like it was just like it was just depixolating, and they were able to get rid of these things and and throw them out and and get over them rather than rather than be uh you know, carry them around like like uh lead weights.

Jody Weiss:

Right. Right. You ever see this scene in A Beautiful Mind where Russell Crowe at first has all the young child and that that older person in his face, and eventually at the end of the movie, they're just walking in the back towards the side. Yeah. And that becomes a mind that's able to move those images that have overtaken them for years. How to, you know, a practice so that those images, they're still there, but they have some quality of mind that doesn't allow them to overtake their space. And meditation can do that. Some of these ketamine, these kinds of uh medicines can calm those down and free a person up from those things that just haunt them.

Mark McGrath:

Dr. Naria talked with us about being able to forget, not just remember, but also being having the power to forget these things, not as denial or not as burying them or avoiding them, but but as you say, to have to have them there without being in your face and and dampening your your experience in life and that kind of thing.

Jody Weiss:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's something else.

Mark McGrath:

Yeah, he said a lot on you know, on our show, he said a lot of really interesting things. He said, you know, the the one he hadn't seen research or he wasn't familiar with the research, I think, on LSD, but he was talking about MDMA and ketamine and psilocybin as, you know, as effective treatments for for for PTSD. Which was good. Another thing that he talked about, and I'm going to introduce you to because he's gonna come, he's he's coming on the show, but he's also gonna um bring him the consciousness drinks, uh, is the equine therapy. You know, so so there's psychedelics and there's also horses and and uh you know, I know dogs too have a very beautiful, right? Yeah.

Jody Weiss:

Oh my god, dogs are such healing beings. I think their default is ecstatic love, you know? I always think about that. You know, I wanted to suggest this uh practice, it's uh a part of uh the Kashmir Shavite um uh meditation practice. And so when a person is suffering with an addiction, let's let's say, whether it's uh alcohol or cocaine or whatever, that the the spark that arises out of nothing is a desire. And so out of nothing comes a desire, right? And then we have the awareness of that, it's it's jana, it's the knowledge of that, what that desire is, and then there's the action, which is Kriya. Oh, I'm gonna go get that. And the practice for the yogi is actually to out of nothing see that desire arise and try not to even label it of what it is. Man, I've got to get that drink or that food. Just look at it, just feel it arise because it's gorgeous. Out of nothing, wow, there's a longing, and not put knowledge on it of history and memory and not act on it. And so if our listeners are listening and you're just struggling with a habit that doesn't serve you, the inspiration is that all feelings are allowed, all things that arise are allowed, but to not label it with history and memory and not act on it. Just let the spark arise non-judgmentally and then let it go like a cloud. Yeah. And so that's part of the practice.

Mark McGrath:

Well, you're you're you're wise in the sense that you you're able to do this and be conscious of these things within the the craziness of our world and the capital of craziness here in Manhattan. I find that when you read things like uh Thomas Merton or you read things like trying to think of another, like what's that book, uh Lost Horizon about Shangri-La, you know, you really do tend to want to withdraw. Like you wanna want to disconnect and withdraw, and you say to yourself, Oh, Thomas Merton said something along the lines of like when he when he went into the monastery and he had nothing but four corners and and a and a bed and a desk and a book to write, you know, and that was it. That was his freedom. Like he was finally he was finally free. And what I'm hearing what I'm hearing you say is like you don't have to go into a monastery per se. As crazy as life can get, you know, and and it seems like you'd want to do that, people would want to do that. You don't have to do that because there are ways that you can you can uh be present now with without uh being dragged down by anxiety of things in the future or trauma from things from the past.

Jody Weiss:

So here's a beautiful practice. If you are listeners, come to New York City. It's one of my favorite things to do. Go down into the subway system where there's talking, there's noise, there's musicians, there's the trains themselves.

Mark McGrath:

Times Square might be the best one for that.

Jody Weiss:

There we go. Close your eyes mostly so you can still see and feel the sounds come into you because we think sound just comes in through the ear, but actually sound vibrates through all of your cells. And if one cannot separate, oh, that's a voice or that's a note or that's a train and just feel a vibrational quality of all the senses triggered in that sound. Honestly, your identity of or my identity of Jotiness will dissolve and I'll become a quality of vibration. So how do one lives, how does one live in the city? One plays with perception, one plays with one's identity and one plays with the ego. It's it's it's it's it's actually an amazing playground to disrupt habit, memory, and history. It's an amazing playground. And that's some of the practices I that I teach on both the podcast and we're we're gonna have classes here and also online. So if you want to play with reality, I call it melting reality, there's amazing practices to go into a boardroom. How does one go into a boardroom or investor meeting and not be one's agenda or anxiety and be a trillion cells of vibrating potentiality instead? And what would that feel like? So yeah.

Mark McGrath:

I mean to the playground.

Jody Weiss:

Welcome to the playground.

Mark McGrath:

As you describe that, I mean, again, Manhattan, if you're open to it, because I think that you have to be open to it, you have to break I mean, for us that live here and you know, it's part of our genetic lineage or whatever, because you know, I'm not the first generation of my family to be here in Manhattan. If you're open to it, it really does teach that way, I guess. I never thought about the way that you described it, but like I I I can't wait to get on the the I'm gonna go straight to Times Square. And on my walk from the one to the to the shuttle, I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna try to absorb all that, you know. Uh when you yeah, there's really you've given me really a lot to think about. I was gonna ask you, and this is this is bringing it sort of to our not so much just a lot of them are veterans, but also to our client base, which are executives, which are senior leaders. You know, you mentioned how at um senior leaders and executives and traders and everybody else, they go to the ketamine clinic too, to get treatment for trauma and they they experience trauma from market swings and blown-up books and and everything else. Talk a little bit about that because there's a lot of people that that that lead companies, that lead teams inside of companies that are listening right now. And what are what are some of those things that they could be thinking about when it comes to things like consciousness drinks and women flooding the world and psychedelic therapies, ketamine, that yeah.

Jody Weiss:

Thanks for that question, Mark. I think it's a really incredibly important question. Uh you know, these are thought leaders who have huge responsibilities. They have quarterly reports, they have, you know, revenue uh things they have to meet, they have staffing. It's like a never-ending thing. And so it's it's actually one of the I think the most important things that a leader, a CEO can do for themselves, can give to themselves, is a practice throughout the day for one minute to disrupt the intellect. It's not 20 minutes after they work out in the morning and then they let the overwhelm of the mind go on and on and on and on throughout the day into the night. It's actually a pause that enables them to sit in their higher intuition, to sit in their sensuality, in their in in to sit in all of their senses triggered and just be with their senses. And it's it's a practice, but it's a gift, it's also a gift to themselves. It's also where creativity comes from and higher intuition. And so that's the first thing the second thing is I think leaders who know how to delegate and bring teams around them where they're actually flowing throughout the workday instead of producing, you know. Um, I think that that is a secret sauce. So, how does a leader make sure that they've delegated all of the right teams so that they can then intuitively move in and out of different departments in their organization and also show up, not as the agenda, not as a to-do list, not as a quarterly report, but in their heart, in the core of who they are, to bring humanity to the journey, to bring love, kindness, um, genuine caring to the journey of growing that company and its outcome.

Mark McGrath:

Well, you'll meet Punch, but he's the co-author of the flow system, and he would have loved to hear what you just said, because teaching, you know, teaching flow inside of a company, getting them to a state of flow is one of the things that is our business mission. And again, there's a lot of things that we think differentiate us when we go inside of an organization, but I think being exposed and learning to learning from people like you and Dr. Anayusum and and Dr. Nico Grunman and others, I mean, it really does do what we're trying to get people to do, and that's broaden their perspectives because the more perspectives that you have, the better it is for you to make sense of your world, the better for you to make decisions and act and learn inside of that. That's that's really that's really important, you know. And for leaders, especially that to your point, you know you point out some really good things like quarterly. I mean, again, having worked in asset management on Wall Street, like the the the you know, the quarterly and the year-end, and it's just, you know, and then the crashing and whatever, and you'd hear all the time of somebody jumping off a skyscraper or jumping in front of a uh you know, a truck on the New Jersey turnpike or whatever. I mean, it's there's there's ways out that don't involve you l losing your life, you know. Um you can you can look to these sorts of states of mind and free your mind and change your perspective.

Jody Weiss:

There we go.

Mark McGrath:

Yeah. So business, military, what else do we need to cover?

Jody Weiss:

Um You know, even family life, relationships, all of those are external, relationally, they're external. And that's why I really champion having a very clear practice on where home base is really. Yeah. That's the one if I can leave something with your listener to really get really well and get solid, is where do you act? Where's home? It might be in your house with your husband or your wife, whatever, but those things can change all the time. Yeah, life changes, nothing is permanent but change. What is the one place that is immovable, that is reliable, that you can count on the same quality when you were four and seven and fifteen and thirty-five and fifty? It's this consciousness, present awareness in the core of yourself. That is home. And so I really want to inspire listeners just to rest and pause at the bottom of the turn of your breath and call that home and nurture yourself there. There's nothing to do there, there's just to observe, there's nothing to be, there's no past, there's no future, it's a pause. And you can luxuriate in that quality, in that place. But when life externally gets challenging, remember that you have a unchangeable, perfect. It doesn't have to be any different. There's a perfection to it. It's your present awareness in the moment at the turn of the breath.

Mark McGrath:

Once again, we find that we have another guest on No Way Out that knows everything about John Boyd's Oodaloop sketch without knowing anything about John Boyd's Oodaloop's sketch, because that's exactly when you when you when you illustrated it and drew it out. That's understanding the difference between the internal and the external, and the internal is really where it matters.

Jody Weiss:

Yeah.

Mark McGrath:

Because that shapes it that shapes how you interact with your world. It shapes how you you function in it. Beautiful. Okay, so if I'm listening to the No Way Out podcast and I'm reading the world of reorientation, I'm seeing this, and I'm hearing about it, I'm reading the article about our conversation here. Where do you want us to send people?

Jody Weiss:

Yes, it would be lovely to have you got all listeners, everyone, come register sign up for be a listener on Exploring Reality Maybe Podcast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube. Visit us on www.exploringreality maybe.org. And you can sign up for consciousness drinks there if you're in New York, Austin, upstate New York, and we're we're uh working on other locations eventually. Um, and you can reach out to me at Jody at exploringrealitymaby.com.

Mark McGrath:

Perfect. Oh, and women funding the world. Where do we go for that?

Jody Weiss:

Yeah, you can go to women funding the world.com and you can reach out to me at Jody at women funding the world.com.

Mark McGrath:

Excellent. Well, we're recording on a Friday, and I'm going to see you Tuesday at Consciousness Drinks.

Jody Weiss:

You will. You will.

Mark McGrath:

Uh a lot of the people that we mentioned will also be there, but I will give you the last word.

Jody Weiss:

Oh my gosh, Mark, just amazing being with you. What a gift you are. You bring light and and wisdom to this journey, and it's just a joy to be here with you. And uh, I can't wait to see you on Tuesday.

Mark McGrath:

I can't wait to be on your show, too, and I appreciate the invite.

Jody Weiss:

Of course.

Mark McGrath:

It's gonna be fun. Yeah. All right, Jedi, we'll knock off the recording, but uh, thanks everybody for listening to No Way Out.

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