This week Troy Casey Certified Health Nut joined Sarah and Russ on the Rebel Scientist podcast.
Troy is a leading longevity authority, and a world renowned life coach and healer who has scoured the Earth searching for for the most powerful health and healing methods. Troy joined Sarah and Russ to talk all things mind, body and soul. His unique approach and philosophy was shaped at an early age when he spent 8 years living and working with the indigenous tribes in the Amazon RainForest, as not only a healer but also as a medicine hunter, utilizing some of the world’s most most sacred plants. Troy has also studied Vipassana Meditation techniques, Ashtanga Yoga and more recently at the world famous CHEK Institute, working closely with Paul Chek. Troy shares his secrets about his ability to successfully restore physical, mental and emotional balance for those of us who have failed with all other systems. He discusses his vision for clean, air, water, soil and equitable systems for all mankind in his lifetime drives his passionate work for personal and planetary wellness. He teaches us how to stay healthy in a toxic world.
Troy: Sarah. I really appreciate the opportunity to share any of my perspective or experience on this planet. Thank you so much. I think the most fundamental thing for a human being, and I postulate, women are a little bit different, but for men, it’s very important that they have their dream, their purpose, their legacy in place from their heart’s desire, not their mind. The trap in today’s world is how will we monetize our good idea or that which our heart desires. And so there’s probably a very effective way of living a very uncomfortable life is doing things for money. And so eventually, that catches up with us. And so when we have purpose... You know, I live in Sedona, Arizona. If I want to go to San Francisco, and I start driving towards Miami, I may get to San Francisco eventually. But if I want to be efficient, then it’s a good idea to map that out. And so I think that we are programmed in the industrial age school system to chase paper. And depending on our ability to do that we get a little bit confused in sideways, and going into careers that may not be beneficial for our own soul’s growth. I postulate that women are a little bit different, because I do believe that a prime directive is to stay alive and part of prime directive is to procreate. And I think there’s nothing more important than a job of taking care of the children and nourishing the children. And so I believe that if women want to have a family, then that’s job enough. And of course, we’ve been sold the idea of feminism, not that women’s empowerment. Please, anybody that wants to do anything on this planet, do that! But let’s really get focused back on the children and let’s look at the world that we have created, especially in the industrial age - last 150-200 years. And there’s no victims. Let’s not ever play the victim. We’ve created this circumstances that we have on the planet to awaken us to a higher vibration and understanding towards sustainability or what I like to use, the term is biomimicry. Life creates conditions conducive for life. And currently, we are out of balance with that. And I know this because I worked in the Amazon as a medicine Hunter. And I saw the deforestation and the destruction of our ecosystem.
So I’m very keen that this isn’t just about my little health and wellness platform. I’m very keen on transforming the world, holistically, sustainably, and I do believe attainable.
And I think everything’s on the chopping block right now.
Russ: Yeah, like freight train. No conductor! We’re going down this track fast. I’m on the train and I’m listening. I think it’s an incredibly important point, whether male, female, transgender...purpose is important. It’s the most important thing.
And I think you said something that I’ve been working through very closely over the last five years in my life of resetting, not redefining, because there’s no definition, but resetting purpose. I had four kids and I was running [and] trying to take care of children and go after paper and pay all the bills I had, and that was a high. But purpose is so important. Troy, are there things that you do to help people figure that out to kind of break through the clouds, break through that gray area and figure out what their purpose is?
Troy: I have three very simple exercises in my book to figure out what the heart desires. And the first one is to become the authority of your own life, the author, write your eulogy. Why is it that you’ve come to this planet? And imagine, your best friend up there on the podium, you’re dead as a doornail, like really meditate on your own death. That’s one good exercise. Another good exercise is figure out what your nightmare is. Because it’s your subconscious ideas that keep haunting you with anxiety and maybe even depression, day in and day out. So it’s best, just like facing your death to face your own nightmare. And to become very clear, and then start to reverse engineer that backwards. And the statement that I work out with... I do men’s work. And my men’s groups are, “I am X, Y, and Z creating X, Y and Z.” That’s the basic template for that. It comes from the heart’s desire, not from the mind of how I will monetize that. You know, man needs purpose, man needs direction. And that’s going to get you out of bed in the morning, whether you lose your job or you get an injury. I mean, we all go through ups and downs in life. But when we’re very clear on our mission and our vision, then we’re unstoppable. I am a humble, kind and gentle man. My mission is to raise human consciousness and change all systems.
My vision is clean air, water, soil, and equitable systems for all mankind in my lifetime.
And if people don’t know what an equitable system is, I have a one-way ticket to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Sudan, or any other place that has natural resources that the industrial world covets.
Sarah: It’s almost like stoicism, isn’t it? Is it challenging to stay in that clear minded place?
Troy: My prime directive is to stay alive. So I take care of myself every day. I practice what I preach. You know, my book, the general underlying principle is the natural law of correspondence, as above, so below.
How do we expect the world to be healthy if we’re not healthy ourselves? So I get good sleep, I hydrate, I only eat organic food, I move my body every day in the ways that my 55-year-old body can handle, and I keep fresh, and I keep my consciousness as clear as possible.
My breathing mechanics are optimized. And I do various techniques to keep my vibration high. I make sure that my children are taken care of. I make, 20~30 videos a day, or I do a handful of podcasts. I communicate with my team and the people that follow my work. I have a full day, all day, every day. And I’ve done this blindly for 15 years, just doing what my heart desired, sharing my videos and my content that I created in the Amazon rainforest, and answering people’s questions. And lo and behold, 15 years later, we’ve got one of the biggest millionaires and marketers on the internet, Gary Vee talking about how to build a business. I did that by osmosis. I have that moving train, now, it cannot be stopped. It wasn’t always monetized. It wasn’t always easy. But now I’m on the train. I create so much content daily [that] if I did nothing for the next five years, my team would be full steam ahead with work. It’s like Tupac Shakur and Biggie after they died. They just created so many albums after.
Troy: There’s two forces that are guiding us. Yin Yang, masculine feminine, inhalation exhalation, black white, up and down. And so we always have to remember that the ancient sages have said,
“Walk the middle path.” And so I would postulate that your curse is your gift. I teach my clients not to look for problems, because you’ll find them. Look for solutions, we have the seeds of greatness and the seeds of darkness inside of us. And energy goes where attention flows.
Focus on that which you desire. Focus on your legacy. Focus on your seeds of greatness. The darkness will always be there. You can juxtapose the darkness to fuel your greatness as well. I had digestive problems growing up as a kid, indigestion, heartburn, constipation, adult constipation for 20 something years. So I studied fasting, internal purification, herbal medicine, everything that I could. And then when I studied holistic health, I know that everything’s mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. So I had to look into my emotional body.
And lo and behold, inside my gut, there was all sorts of blockages that had to do with my emotional life and processing those emotions.
And it took years. And so one of my mentors said, “You’re either living or learning.” And so I’ve been learning a lot over the years.
Russ: The greatest artists in the world were motivated by what haunted them. I’m making a shift in my life to be a full-time storyteller. A lot of my stories come from the hauntings in my life, and I’m grateful for those at this point. I want to go to biohacking, because it’s something that Sarah and I spend a lot of time on. Sarah is a red-light expert. What do you do in terms of measuring yourself? Do you have a quantified version of yourself that you’re tracking or is it more a feeling?
Troy: I look in the mirror, baby. The mirror never lies. And then yeah, it’s an internal how do I feel. And if I feel crummy, I jump into cold body water.
If I’m not feeling optimal, then I go out on the trails or I start doing some pushups or some air squats, and that gets my serotonin and dopamine. So I can change my state at any given moment. Maybe I need some food. Hey, maybe I need some sleep. You know, newsflash.
Maybe I need to get rid of my phone, get out on the trails, ground into the electromagnetism of the earth, get the sun on my body, and lo and behold your problems shift all the time. Cold body water, grounded to the earth, some nutrition, jumped my far infrared sauna, it all works you know. Epsom salt bath, you know the old school. Let’s go old school. Epsom salt bath, put a little borax in there, some minerals and get a good soak in. You can change your state at any given moment.
Russ: You’re saying that you just know when you’re off and you can turn yourself back on in the direction that you need to?
Troy:
The eyes are the window to the soul. So look no further than the inflammation in your face.
Russ: Troy, you’re inspirational - how do you keep your spirits up? I mean, do you have a shitty day?
Troy: The pain teacher is always guiding us. The question is, “Are we listening?” You know, my prayer for the longest time is that I find more humility and gentility in my life. And the challenge is they’re tough right now. But this is my prayer. And I know that this is what I prayed for. And so I can only face myself. I can only face myself in any given moment.
Russ: I find children to be my biggest inspiration and my motivator, because every time I look at my kids, I’m like, “Why am I doing what I’m doing?” I think you’re showing them every day. When we come out of COVID, I think people are really going to be struggling with a few things. One is, we’re all going back to restaurants. We’re gonna start eating restaurant food again, normally and sitting down, but our controls are all lost. And I feel like when we get stressed, we’re so close to our kitchens, we’re up there and we’re eating or we’re so close to eating shitty food because it’s there for us. How do you start a track of eating healthy?
Troy: Well, it’s great that you asked that question because I’ve been involved with a superfood company for the last eight years. Before that I was working with an herbal company, a superfood company from the South America from the Amazon rainforest. And so we have a 30-day program. We get hundreds of thousands of people on this. In the last eight years, I’ve helped over 20,000 people. The company has helped over 100,000 people. Halle Berry takes the products. The Kardashians have done the cleanse that we have. Their organic products from our farms delivered straight to your door. It’s a 30 day cleanse. and 10 days of it is, a 10-day juice cleanse intensive. Get rid of food addictions, sugar, tobacco, alcohol, everything pulls you off that get you feeling better. Fasting is the oldest trick in the book.
I think fasting and sleep is the number one way to heal the human body.
This is calorie restricted fasting. It’s nutrient dense. It cleans the liver, the kidneys, and the colon, and it resets the metabolism. Once we’re cleared the slate, you look in the mirror, people are looking and feeling better. My average client loses 25 pounds in the first month. Once you’re looking and feeling better, then I can get you on the Chi Gong, I can get into the grounding out into the sun, you’ll listen to me more.
The biggest part of it is getting people to feel and look better, to reduce that inflammation, is to clear up the gut. The gut microbiome is so important.
People are thinking, they’re eating food, but they’re eating glyphosate laden food that’s compromising their gut microbiome. So within 30 days, we set the record straight. We get you looking and feeling better. I started out juice fasting as a Versace model 30 years ago sitting in Milan bloating, constipated. My career based on my looks and didn’t know anything about nutrition. That’s when I got into fasting, herbs, juicing. And 30 years later, I’m still juicing every day. But now I just juice two scoops in water. It’s all dehydrated and out the door. There’s no 45-minute juicing schedule for me. And so I make nutrition simple for my clients.
Russ: Troy, do you get early morning light? Do you get sunrise light? Do you get up to see the sunrise?
Sarah: Troy, why I’m such a big fan, it’s because when I was in Santa Cruz, I used to do naked sunbathing, because we had a little terrace at the back where I could do that. And there was this thing on Instagram of butt chugging sun. And Troy was credited with a big picture on Instagram. I thought, yes, I totally agree with that. That’s when I started following you on Instagram because I thought that’s just brilliant. I know, it was a little bit of a silly Instagram post, but we need to see sun. We’re not born with these clothes on. We’re meant to be exposed, our body is totally covered in light receptors. I loved that. And my friends, of course, thought I was nut so why wouldn’t I follow the certified health nut? So yeah, that was very cool.
Troy: Yeah, and it went viral. So obviously, it has some application, energetically. So, I postulate the sun and your breath. These are the first forms of nutrition. Look, my muscles get beefier and stronger, and I look better when I go out and work out in the sun. And so I get copious amounts of sun. I’m always in the sun.
I have a men’s retreat in June coming up in Taos, New Mexico. And I just love the Southwest in general. I mean, it’s just a magical place.
Remember a Native American saying, “If you want to heal the body, go to the ocean. If you want to heal the mind, go to the mountains. If you want to heal the soul, go to the desert.”
Russ: Yeah, you know, we’re coming towards the end. And there’s one thing I want to ask you about... You have a video up around Ayahuasca. And I’m curious.
Troy: Well, Ayahuasca speaks to me in the visions of knowing and I had three very profound visions. It penetrates the liver, the gallbladder, the intestines. It can make you puke and purge, and poop, which is a beautiful thing. But more importantly, it penetrates the nervous system where we hold our beliefs. And so I’ve done it quite a few times in the Amazon rainforest. It is a magical brew. It’s not Child’s Play. But love and gratitude is the end result. An open heart and gratitude for everything and everyone. It is really the overall message that I got. And I had three powerful visions. One was the spirit of my daughter came to me. I was not in a relationship. And she was my second child. And then the certified health nut was born there. I was doing stand-up comedy at the time. I was living in Hollywood as an actor. And I had all these natural medicine studies behind me. And certified health nut was born right in the middle of the Amazon. The final vision that I had is that humanity makes it through this ecological disaster that we find ourselves at. Now, I don’t know how that shakes out exactly, but I know that we make it.
Russ: I think we should end with that because I think that’s the most important thing. Your empathy and your compassion and your love that you share. I think, Sarah and I took a lot away today. We wish you the best of luck.
Sarah: Thank you. Really appreciate you, Troy. So lovely to meet you at last.
Troy: Thank you so much. I’ll send you my Qigong on playlist and you can pick a couple of those moves out there. I challenge people to 100 days but you guys could do it for seven.
7 DAY CHALLENGE
Sarah: Well, what a fascinating character. I mean, I’m really grateful that he took the time to come on the show. And his challenge was to do the Zen Swing Qigong movement, which I hope you’ve been doing. I’ve heard rumors you’ve been doing it on the beach.
Russ: Yeah, I have. Yeah, I’m near the beach. And I feel stretched, I feel spiritual, I probably pulled the muscle, but that’s okay. I will say that he’s leaning more towards the male side of the spectrum of biohacking. And, you know, we want to welcome all. But I want to lean a little bit towards the fact that we have probably one of the most important women in biohacking on our podcast. And I want to spend a little time talking about why are the women not as exposed in this industry as the men are. I mean, we’ve seen articles and stuff, but I think, it’s time for Sarah Turner to take the helm and be the leader.
Sarah: Yeah. Well, I mean, there are actually a few great female biohackers. You know, we’ve had on the fabulous Molly and we had Kristen, we had Deanne. So there are some ladies leading the way, but I think maybe traditionally, it’s been a lot about technology and measurements and all of those things, which are maybe, typically more of a male pursuit, perhaps. Certainly, the conferences are male dominated and a lot of the marketing seems to be aimed at men. But we always come back to responsibility. There’s no one stopping anybody doing anything. You know, if women want to be a biohacker, there’s no one stopping you doing it. And actually, a lot of the events are very inclusive. I mean, the Finland one, especially, there’s no judgment there. You can do what you want. There’s some fabulous female speakers. But yeah, I think, Troy is audience is men that have difficulty showing their emotions.
Russ: That’s right. He really did show emotion. And I feel for him. I mean, it’s a situation and that’s heart wrenching, and to be able to share that and expose it and say it out loud on our podcast, I mean, that’s powerful. I think there are lots of reasons why we don’t emote. We are all are scarred from our childhood.
Sarah: There’s a lot of cultural conditioning. Like you say, there’s a lot of gender specific conditioning. There’s a lot of stuff going on. The exercise that he showed was all about liberating yourself, and basically just doing what you think is right. So we’re gonna put the exercise up. We’re going to challenge our listeners to do the exercise. It’s relatively simple, but it’s also about the mindset. You’re free your body, you free your mind. So I mean, I thought he was totally great. He has very specific views on women and how they’re maybe being cast into a certain role and how young women should be happy and not going to work and being at home and looking after the kids, it’s his viewpoint.
Russ: Is it important for you to find a coach that’s gender specific?
Sarah: This is a very controversial topic right now. Because nobody wants to be judgmental label people, but there are biological differences between men and women, and I think that should be acknowledged. And I’m not saying that people have to make any external choices based on that. But if you want to get the best from your biology, it serves you to acknowledge biological differences, and not that you need a specific coach. But yeah, there are coaches who may know more about women’s biology. And people like Troy, he is focusing on men’s psychology. I mean, personally, I do think people should be able to do whatever they like, present however they like. And I certainly don’t think that a woman’s place it in the home anymore. However, you know, I think that there are differences and acknowledging them, if you’re doing it in a way that’s helpful for people and for yourself. What’s the point in denying something that’s there? So yes. And I think we probably will talk about it a little bit more in the series when we get into things. I know later on; we’re going to be talking about fasting - it’s something that I’m gearing myself up for. But there are certainly gender differences and things like that. “How do women store fat? How do you metabolize food? What does it mean if you fast at different stages that your menstrual cycle? Is that relevant?” It's interesting to explore those cultural, psychological and biological differences.
Russ: There are definitely biological differences. And I think we’re getting into the biology of our body versus the social aspect of our world. And I think that these two things are very much coming together in the biohacking world, where it’s like, you’re combining this world of mindfulness and wellness with a new form of science. And knowing thyself and quantifying thyself means understanding your cycle. And my cycle is different than your cycle. I can’t make babies. Those are things that my body biologically doesn’t do. And we get different cancers as well. And I think we get different ailments. And so I think it’s just this combination of understanding that a human is a human, but we have to understand our biology.
Sarah: You are, who you are. And you can be whoever you want to be. It’s just take responsibility and do the things that are going to be best for you, your biology and your psychology, however that looks for you.
Russ: Troy is one of the more beautiful humans we’ve spoken to. A fantastic beard. He’s cut. He’s ripped. So, if you’re in Sedona, and you see a beautiful, bearded man with no shirt on, that’s Troy Casey. Give him a high five and ask for his guidance. Great gues!
Sarah: Thank you, Troy. Thank you for bringing your beard!
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