113: How This NFL Star Became a Yogi & Cannabis Advocate – with Eben Britton

“I want to be one of those gladiators.”

Eben Britton was a seven-year-old boy watching the news one day at his grandparents when he distinctly recalls seeing the local news covering the NY Jets and Giants at training camp. Eben felt something — like a seed planting in his heart. He told himself that he would one day be “one of those warriors.” Over time, Eben grew to be six feet, six inches tall, and weighed at one point 325 pounds. He ultimately became a gridiron gladiator, getting drafted by the Jacksonville Jaguars and playing six seasons, including two years with the Chicago Bears. 

Those six years took a toll on Eben physically. He suffered through a lot of pain and had to retire at age 28. 

But this is where Eben’s story is just beginning.

In this podcast, you get to hear Eben’s incredible spiritual journey discovering his life’s purpose beyond the goalposts. Football was only a stepping stone to where he is today: one of America’s most effective cannabis advocates, plant medicine expert, yogi master, a writer, and a successful podcaster hosting two shows, including Hotboxin with Mike Tyson. 

In this podcast, we cover: 

• Eben’s many physical injuries that led to struggles with opiates
• How cannabis helped Eben in many ways
• Advocating for cannabis with former NFL stars Kyle Turley and Ricky Williams
• The signs telling Eben it was time to retire from football
• Eben’s experiences hitting “rock bottom” 
• The inspirations and pathways that led Eben to become a Yogi
• How Eben met Mike Tyson and began hosting a podcast with the boxing legend

Eben’s Daily Routine

Each morning, Eben is up at 6:30. He and the dogs head outside to practice yoga for 30 minutes. As a busy husband and father, Eben has whittled down his routine to an efficient place that works for him. 

He usually does the mountain pose, a forward fold, and a quad stretch. Then, Eben stretches his pecs and rib cage. The most important part of his morning routine is the breathing aspect. He breathes into his entire body loosens up everything through the breath.  

Eben describes his breathing technique as the “Wim Hoff technique.” Deep breathes through the nose first while stretching. He does five breaths in each stretch position, deep breathing literally down into his toes. Next comes some Wim Hoff tummo-style breathing, described as super-powerful full inhales, full exhales out the mouth. Three sets of those. 

They follow some bodyweight exercise like a hundred pushups or a hundred squats, followed by more breathing exercises with some sort of rotations to loosen up the spine. This process takes about 30 minutes. 

Eben also does intermittent fasting each day and doesn’t eat till around 2 p.m. 

Finding a Silver Lining in the Pandemic

Something Eben shares is this: “One of the blessings from covid is that it forced me to reconfigure my workouts and my training. I would go to the gym every day and spend two hours lifting weights and going after it. Now, my practice is so much more about feeling strong, feeling flexible, and being out in the sun. The keys to my day are breathing, meditating, being outdoors, getting sun, and spending a good amount of time flushing the channels. That’s through writing or conversations or podcasting. If I can do those three things — I’ve lived. I’ve had a great day.” 

Eben is a spiritual person–something that he and Wade spend a good portion of time discussing. Eben found yoga, something he hated as a young football player through his trials, physical injuries, and short NFL career. Eban points out that the American mindset sees yoga as a physical practice. But as he and Wade and anyone who has dug deeper knows, yoga is a mental and spiritual practice as well— much more than just “some stretching.” 

Check out this episode – yoga and cannabis could change your life.

Episode Resources: 
Eben Britton Website
Wake.net – use code: ebenflow for 10% off and free shipping
Eben Britton Wikipedia Page
Eben Britton Instagram
Eben Britton Twitter
Eben Britton Pro Football Reference
Eben Britton on Medium
The Cauldron Article by Eben Britton

 

Read The Episode Transcript:

Wade Lightheart: Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. It's Wade T Lightheart from BiOptimizers with another edition of the Awesome Health Podcast and boy oh boy, we have got a hot topic for you today. Our guest is none other than Eben Britton, Eben Flow host and writer health and wellness advocate. He's also driven to help have fellow human beings. He's a former football player. He's a cannabis activist, and the co-host of a podcast with Mike Tyson. He's lived one of the most unusual careers you can imagine. And he's got a really interesting spiritual side and creative side, something that you might not expect from an NFL stud. So the question is Eben, welcome to the show. How the hell did you get into, how did you go from football career to being on a podcast of Mike Tyson to writing books, advocating, you know, cannabis? I mean, you're just one of the most interesting people I've ever come across and I'm excited to have you on the show. Welcome.

 Eben Britton: That's amazing, man. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here, man. I'm honored to be here. How did I get here? I guess the short answer would be following the universe, you know? But the long answer is when I was about seven years old, I had a dream to play in the NFL. I was at my grandparents' house in Connecticut one sunny summer day watching the news and they had clips of the jets and the giants and training camp. And this seed was planted in my psyche, in my spirit, in my heart. That was just like, I want to do that. I want to be one of those warriors. I want to be one of those gladiators one day. My mom would never let me play football. Of course she was always worried. I get hurt. Which there's so much truth to and.

 Wade Lightheart: So is it a hundred percent injury rated in the NFL?

 Eben Britton: Yeah, absolutely. And I did end up getting hurt, you know, I got really hurt. But so finally my freshman year of high school, I convinced her to let me play. And from that moment on, it was sort of a rocket ship to the moon. You know, I was surrounded by a lot of great people who were always very encouraging. I was obviously physically gifted as a kid. So I took my God given gifts and I applied, you know, the powers of visualization and manifestation. And I kept to this vision of myself playing in the NFL in my mind's eye and everything I did from the moment I stepped on that football field when I was 13 years old, how I carried myself, how I ate, how I trained, how I you know, played the game, how I studied the game, how I thought about myself was all in alignment to achieve this goal, reaching the top of this mountain of playing in the NFL.

 Eben Britton: You know, again, I was surrounded, my, my parents are yogis, very holistically minded people who believed food is medicine. You exercise to take care of yourself, drink plenty of water use, whatever natural means are available before going through a doctor be prescribed some sort of medication. And that ethos really was infused in my athletic career. I mean, my mom was dragging me to yoga classes. You know, the moment I started playing football, basically, which I'm so grateful for because it made me super durable for a long time. I mean, obviously the game of football is is a violent one and it really wasn't until I got into the NFL that I started having severe injuries, dealing with really intense injuries, like dislocating my shoulder multiple times having to have shoulder surgery back surgery, torn muscles all over my body. A handful of concussions concussions obviously are, are the NFL's number one PR nightmare, I guess you could say in, which has really driven me.

 Eben Britton: And my passion in Cannabis Advocacy all the more so, you know, throughout my career, I got drafted by the Jacksonville Jaguars in the second round 39 to overall played offensive tackle and guard there for four years. As a free agent, went to Chicago and played with the Bears for two years. My career was full of really high highs and some really dark lows had a, like I said, a couple of surgeries that were life altering. You know, I had a back injury that really inhibited my performance on the field, this L5-S1 disc herniation that created literally unbearable, sciatic nerve pain all the way down into my right foot. I couldn't feel my foot for, for a number of years to this day, still have a little bit numbness in my toes. And that was really sort of that happened.

 Eben Britton: That injury happened going into my second year and I managed somehow to battle through for another four years. But coming out of my football career, I was completely decimated physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally at rock bottom had no idea really who I was, what I was supposed to do with my life. And this is even having come from a background. You know, there's a lot of athletes in my life, but there's a lot of artists as well. My grandmother's an Academy Award-winning actress. My grandfather's a renowned author. My father is a painter artist as well as a D one basketball player. So I had this really beautiful mix of sports and art throughout my upbringing. And along with my dream of playing in the NFL, I had this sort of underlying current of what I'm done playing football. I'm going to be a writer, which is one of the reasons I chose the university of Arizona where they have maybe the best creative writing program in the world. And I went there for that. I chose that school for that purpose. And it was, you know, at the end of the day, I love being a storyteller. You know, everything I do. It's, it's about understanding, I guess I've had an astrologer told me once that I'm a master propagandist, which I love, you

 Eben Britton: Know, especially in this day and age, you need to have a, you know, you need to be able to plant seeds with people in a way that they can receive them. You know, there's so much information in the world, a lot of bad information. So it's important for, to package to be able to package the good information in a way that people just sort of open themselves up to receive it. And I think I have a, a gift for doing that. So I got out of my football career was totally decimated. 

 Wade Lightheart: How old were you at this time? And when that happened.

 Eben Britton: I was, I was 27 years old, you know, I was young

 Wade Lightheart: Right.

 Eben Britton: Yeah exactly. It was right on time.

 Eben Britton: So I, I, you know, just started the grind of figuring it out. I I got my football agent handed me over to a literary agent. I started working on a book proposal that was really the, the Offensive Wineman's perspective of the every day life of an NFL player. It was sort of Charles Bukowski meets you know, me and meets the NFL. And I got a lot of, lot of interest, a lot of good feedback from publishers at the end of the day, they really wanted more dirt or they wanted the red carpet story. And I just didn't really have that to give that turned into a, an article was sports illustrated.com. They have an editorial section called the the cauldron. And so I wrote this long piece, really detailing my experience in the NFL, dealing with injuries, dealing with the pharmaceutical pill protocols that every guy is subject to in that world.

 Eben Britton: The highs and the lows, and it got a ton of reception went really far. I was even getting phone calls from my, my old athletic trainer who was kind of pissed off about things I had said. And I said, "Hey, man, you know, I wasn't trying to call anybody out. I was just trying to tell it like it is." And so he had some gripes with that, but that's really about more about his insecurities, about what was happening in that locker room. Then it has to do with what I said in that article. And I love the guy to death too, by the way, what Mike, if you're out there listening. So that really led me into, you know, the thing I should mention to make it all make sense is that cannabis was a big part, had really become a big part of my healing and recovery process, dealing with all those injuries throughout my football career.

 Eben Britton: I, you know, had very intense personal experiences with opiates, following surgeries, you know, severe withdrawal symptoms after prescribed, after very short periods of prescribed dosages three days into prescribed dosages of opiates, feeling severe withdrawal symptoms waking up at two, three o'clock in the morning with shooting pains, in my gut chills, cold sweats, you know, running the gamut of, of withdrawal symptoms. Yeah. So I very quickly realized that opiates and me were not a good mixture. Not only that, but they made me feel insane. They made me feel as though my rage was really just brimming below the surface of my being. I lashed out at people who were taking care of me. And I remember in those moments going, wow, who is this guy here? And I and I was able to really very quickly tie draw the line from this behavior comes directly from the pills, this medication that I'm taking, because it's not really my nature to be like that.

 Eben Britton: Whereas I was very in tune as an athlete, you know, we're very in tune with our bodies and what the things we put into it, the output we get from that, you know, whether it's food or supplements or medications or alcohol, whatever it is, you know, as an athlete, you're, you're all what your body is your temple, you know, your body is your guide through the world. So I knew that opiates really weren't doing me any favors cannabis had always helped me. I can I can, when I talk about my story with cannabis, it really begins with this experience I had after my freshman year of college, it was the end of the season. And a bunch of us Offensive Wineman had gotten together, had a bond fire. Someone had a joint rolled and that got passed around and not only was there this great brotherhood that was being galvanized, you know, ceremonially of, of what we had just all been through together this season in the trenches.

 Eben Britton: But I remember waking up the next day, feeling so rejuvenated and, and healed. And I thought to myself, man, if we'd been up drinking all night, I'd feel terrible right now. But here I am, we had smoked some cannabis the night before. And I feel like I could go back out and start playing again. And so obviously in college, it's a difficult it's difficult to navigate the drug testing process in the NFL that becomes much easier. And now, thankfully I think they've removed cannabis from their banned substance list, or at least they're not testing for it anymore, which I think is a Testament to all of the, the speaking myself and this group of tremendous individuals. I've been blessed to be a part of has done over the last few years, which we'll get into in a second. I just want to give you guys some context of where we're coming from.

 Eben Britton: But so that experience in college really transcended into my NFL career where I realized there was this plant and yes, it's demonized and stigmatized. And I have to navigate a drug testing protocol, which in the NFL, you get tested for cannabis once a week, once a year. And you have a good, good idea of when that test is going to happen. And once you get that test, you're really free to use cannabis or any other drugs categorized under the substance of abuse lists whenever you want. And so cannabis really in the NFL became my go-to source of healing and recovery. You know, I could come home from a long day of the grind. It's super stressful physically and mentally and emotionally, and I could smoke a little cannabis. I could decompress my body, physically decompress emotionally. I could get some rest. I could connect with loved ones.

 Eben Britton: I get a great night's sleep, wake up, feeling rejuvenated and ready to go the next day. That being said, I was always a team captain. I was always in Jacksonville. My teammates used to say, ed, you're the golden child, man, you can do no wrong. The coaches love you. And so I was always terrified to have coaches or teammates find out that, you know, I used cannabis. I didn't want to be labeled a stoner. I felt as though that would be completely destructive to my credibility and legitimacy as a team leader. So I kept my cannabis use very private throughout my football career. So coming out of my career, I wrote about my experience dealing with injuries. You got a lot of reception that led me to meeting Kyle Turley, who has been one of my childhood heroes. Kyle was a all pro offensive tackle, a power, a force of nature as a human being he has really been the tip of the spear in this cannabis for pro football players movement.

 Eben Britton: Over the last probably 10 years, you know, where Ricky Williams has really been sort of the, in the, in the league street line of a player using cannabis. And, you know, Ricky is, has really gone through the fire with the media as far as them trying to paint him into this burnout. But I always really viewed Ricky as a hero, you know, going back to even this 60 minutes piece that was done on him a long time ago, when he made the decision to leave his team to go practice yoga at Ashram in Northern California. Because that really planted the seed for me of, Oh, you can be an athlete and a human being at the same time, you know, and you don't have to completely destroy yourself for the sake of this sport. And I think that that influenced me greatly throughout my football career.

 Eben Britton: So getting to know Kyle, he says, we actually had the same football agent me, he calls me up and he said, Eben I read your article. I'm putting on a cannabis and sports panel out in Phoenix next week. I would love for you to be there, just come share your story. Meet some people. I've got a lot of big things happening. I'm putting together basically a coalition of us to galvanize this effort, to get cannabis taken off the banned substance list. And obviously talking to this guy who's one of my heroes, I said, yes, definitely. You know, at the time I didn't really know what my story meant in the grand scheme, but I was just following the universe. You know, I was just going where the signs pointed. So I found myself in Phoenix at this cannabis conference and I'm there with Kyle Turley, Ricky Williams, Nate Jackson, and another former NFL guy who, who really is one of my brothers.

 Eben Britton: We've done a lot of work together in this life after football. And we get up there to speak on this panel to tell our stories. The conference hall was filled with probably 700 to a thousand people, maybe one of biggest audiences I've spoken to ever. It was, it was incredible. I finished sharing my story. Just talking about how cannabis benefited me in my, in my life in football, dealing with injuries helping me heal, even smoothing the transition out of football. And I'm looking around this room and it's filled with military veterans and cancer survivors and traumatic brain injury survivors. And these mothers of children who suffer severe seizure syndromes, who cannabis has helped get them off of all of these medications. And it's, it's occuring to me how the, the scope of positive effects this plan has had on people and the scope of stories at this point, yeah.

 Eben Britton: Has, has affected people in a positive way. Yeah. And I'm realizing how much bigger this is than me and how important it is for me having played in the NFL to share my truth of what this plant really is. And then Kyle starts talking and he begins by saying federal government has a patent on cannabinoids as neuroprotectants and antioxidants patent 6 million, 630,507. And it just blows my mind because all of a sudden I'm going what this plant that I've been so ashamed to admit that I've I've used throughout my professional career has been studied by our federal government, by the US government, the same government that classifies cannabis as a schedule one narcotic, which is having no medicinal benefit whatsoever making it illegal to even study has a patent on the chemical compounds, found in the cannabis plant as neuroprotectants and antioxidants taking it further.

 Eben Britton: They've seen that it actually helps protect the brain from damage and can help the brain heal after it's been damaged. And it all of a sudden, my whole experience as an athlete comes to a, a point and this fire is lit in me. And then he goes on to talk about the endocannabinoid system that all living beings on this planet have that interacts with the cannabis plant and the cannabinoids found in the cannabis plant and that our bodies produce their own cannabinoids to facilitate all of these processes, namely our mood or appetite or sleep rhythms, how we feel and deal with pain. Basically the most important things happening in our body have something to do with our endocannabinoids knowing system. So being at that conference, I really, I really credit Kyle and that, that moment in my life as lighting the fire of my thirst for knowledge and my passion for speaking my truth in this realm and all realms because I felt as though I have to learn everything I can about the science, the history, what this plant is because it's been so powerfully healing in my life, and people need to understand this.

 Eben Britton: And, you know, on a microcosm of that, we need to get the NFL to remove this thing from its banned substance list, because frankly, there's too many guys suffering from, from concussions who are dealing with the, the after effects of that, which is CTE chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is basically early onset dementia or Alzheimer's, you know, there's a handful of guys I know who are really struggling, who never thought that cannabis could be an option. And just the information alone has been so healing for so many because it opens the door to options. You know, when you're really struggling and you don't know where to go, and there's a lot of families out there. My wife is a part of a Facebook group called of All NFL Wives. And these women are sharing all kinds of stories and information, and it's all about my husband is really struggling. What are we doing? How do we do this? You know, sharing resources and information. And this cannabis information in particular has been crucial for many, many people. And you know, so that's, that was kind of the beginning of that. And well, you know, all that, I'll let you,

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah, I got a couple of questions cause there's so many pieces in branches of the river of your life that kind of go down. But I think a couple, I think relative to the podcast, I think would be great. And that is, and I think, I think this is common in the human spirit or the human condition, but I think it's amplified dramatically in anything where you have a career in the public era, which is kind of glamorized. And so as a, there's nothing, there's really not many sports, more glamorized than the NFL.

 Eben Britton: YEAH.

 Wade Lightheart: I mean, you know, we're getting ready for super bowl coming up. There's this, all this stuff. There's I, I actually wrote a book and I talked about how Superbowl is the greatest marketing agents of Americana in the world. Like, you know, if you watch the super bowl, you see the planes flying over, you see the best, how you see the best rock stars thing. The billionaires are there. You've have these super freak athletes battling it out on there, like the who's who of everything. You've got a two week buildup and it's broadcast around the world and it's this. And, and anybody that's watching that from another country is like, yeah, definitely want to be in America.

 Eben Britton: Yeah exactly.

 Wade Lightheart: It's like, that's the advertising piece of the world. And then inside of this, you have a, I think the light curve, the average career is what three and a half years in the NFL, you have a hundred percent injury rate. 50% of the people that leave the NFL is be because of a debilitating injury that they'll often carry the rest of their life. There's a wide and I would say abuse of pharmaceutical based solutions to kind of patch people out, throw them up, you know, glue you guys back together.

 Wade Lightheart: So you guys back together do whatever it is. It's like, you're, you're almost like these robots to make sure that come Sunday, the show goes on, regardless of you guys. And the second that you can't perform, or the second that you violate the marketing alignments and arrangements and the public image of that whole product, you're cast out, you're condemned as like you're cast out of Valhalla to, to, to, to be down in the bottom of the pits. When you talk about that dark point after your career. Cause you know, is that some of the things that you're feeling is like, somebody just turned the lights out and I am now cast that I I've just been on the train or whatever one time I was going on a train to to, to the Czech Republic. And they had just implemented some weird passport law that Canadians I'm originally Canadian live in Venice.

 Wade Lightheart: They wouldn't allow us to travel like there. And so a guy comes down the aisle with a machine gun and asked for my passport and I hand him my passport. He's like this doesn't work. And they literally threw me off the train on the East German Czech Republic where I'm sitting on the side of the tracks, the train goes by, I don't speak the language. I have no idea where I am. And I'm like, Oh, yay. I just got thrown off the train. I think it'd be kind of like, I think it'd be a little bit more dramatic than that, but it did kind of feel like somehow you've been like your biggest dream and in such an incredible accomplishment was part, was partly being used and extracted from you in a way that was, you know, didn't maybe have your best interest in mind. Did it feel that way a little bit? Or was there some other iteration that you came up with?

 Eben Britton: Absolutely. No, absolutely. I mean, for me, I always wanted to play 10 years. I felt like I wanted to play a decade in the NFL.

 Wade Lightheart: Which is which is which is a long time by any stretch. Like very few people play 10 years in the NFL.

 Eben Britton: Yeah. Yeah. That's like, to me, that's the legendary status that I was working to live up to. And I got to six and I was, I was completely down, you know, I couldn't, I didn't have any thing left to give. I remember sitting in, in the film room one day, my last year in Chicago and I was going, what am I doing here? Now I'm in so much pain. And I have to go through so much just to get myself to a point where I want to play this coach behind me, love him to death, but he doesn't give a shit about me. He'll plug somebody else in there. You know, anytime

 Wade Lightheart: He is going to keep his job. He's going to keep his job. If he doesn't do it, he's out.

 Eben Britton: Exactly, so, and I'm going, I'm watching this film and I'm looking up there and I'm seeing this rap happen. And I'm looking at myself, lined up across from this defensive end and I'm going, man. I used to want to kill that guy like that. Guy's my buddy. Like I don't, I don't really have that killer instinct anymore. And I really knew that that was the end of the line for me. And I had really given it everything I had 

 Wade Lightheart: Shannon Sharpe said something similar. He was sitting in a film room one day the hall of fame tight. And he's got he's now on skip. And Shannon created a second career, much like yourself. And he said that he's like, I'm sitting there going, I don't want to take this hits anymore. I, I don't, I don't have it in me to do what I need to do to perform at that level. He's very Pat McAfee, I think in his show talks, and this is like the no fun way I want to do this. And everybody's saying, why are you walking out and talk with the gateway I'm done.

 Eden Britton: Yeah, exactly. So I made

 Wade Lightheart: So that realization, what does that mean? Because you're, you, you, you know, you've got family, you've got an identity, you've got your teammates, you've got all of this stuff in it. What does that feel like internally? Like

 Eben Britton: It's brutal.

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah.

 Eben Britton: It's brutal, you know, I mean, first it's, it's coming to terms within yourself going, okay. Yeah, I'm done. This is that moment that I've been sort of waiting for for a long time, you know, because football is such a hard game that you have to love it.

 Wade Lightheart: So violent.

 Eben Britton: Yeah. It's so hard. And that, you know, people just see one day a week. I mean, you're doing that six days a week, you know, in practice over and over again, beating the out of yourself in the off season con it's just constant, you know? And so I really felt that that moment happened for me where I realized I had nothing left to give to this game. This the end of the year came and I, I had some opportunities to go. Other places Chicago said they didn't want to sign me. And so from there it was like, okay, talking to my wife, let's move back to California.

 Eden Britton: Let's set up a home base. We'll see what happens there. I had started thinking, you know, I think I'm done. I think I'm done with this. But I was still getting phone calls. The bills wanted to fly me out to work out, the Falcons wanted to fly me out, to work out. And I remember we were in California, in Pasadena, at my in-law's house, staying while we had just bought a new house and it was going through the escrow and all that stuff. We were staying at my in-laws and I'm getting these phone calls. And I said to myself, I can't even get myself to the airport. Like getting on the plane to fly there is, it would be more than I can even bear. And I knew I was totally done. And you know, it started this long process of disentanglement, you know, disentangling myself from that, because now I'm starting to realize slowly but surely, you know, I wake up every day and it's kind of first it's relief.

 Eben Britton: First. It's own my God. Here I am. I can take a deep breath. I'm done. I did it. You know, I finished my football career this day that I wasn't sure when it would come or if it would ever come, you know, I kind of thought I'd just go on into eternity, playing football here. And here I am. And the day has come where I'm really done with this game. And I felt, you know, first of all, I was super sure about that. And I think that's important even after my fourth year, my last year in Jacksonville, I really thought I was done and I gave it another shot. Thanks to the advice of a long, one of my teammates, Brad Meester, who ended up playing 14 years with the Jags as a center. And I had a call with him after my fourth year in Jacksonville.

 Eben Britton: And I said, Brad, man, I don't know if I can keep doing this. And he said, ed, I think that every year. And he said, you know what? I just keep showing up one day to time and somewhere along the line, I find my love for it again. And he's like, give it another shot, man, go to another team. See if you fall on your love for the game again, if you do, that's awesome. You know, if you don't, you know, you're done. And I thought, man, that's great. So I had a couple of workouts signed with the bears, really found my love for the game. Again in that first year in Chicago, the second year was a little different where I realized I was done. But so that after that sixth year I knew I was down and I made that decision in myself.

 Eben Britton: So it was first relief, take a deep breath, man, look at everything you've done. But then sort of the cascade of Sure things started to unravel, you know, the realization that all of my relationships, my family, my friends, everyone, relates to me, from this perspective of being a pro football player or being sort of in the spotlight, the center of attention, you know, my whole life during football, everyone was constantly moving around me to make sure I was comfortable and good, you know, leave Eb alone. He's preparing for a game, leave Eb alone. He's needs to, he needs to rest. Eb, what do you want to do for dinner? Eb what do you want to do after the game? It was always that, you know, and so now here I am, and I'm just a guy now. Right. You know, so my relationships are all shifting. Then I'm having conversations with people about having finished playing football, retiring from the NFL. I've, I've never really used that term, but I guess that's sort of just the that's sort of the layman's term to, to say, which is done with their career,

 Wade Lightheart: Which is so unusual because you know, athletes have such a interesting lifestyle is professional athletes. You end up, as, you know, you put so much time, effort and energy to become a professional athlete and you, you have to have the skills and the right environment. There's a lot of different factors that need to kind of line up for you to get there. You get there. And when most people are kind of just in regular life are moving into maybe the Zenith of their career, an athlete's career is done it's over. YEAH. Like very few guys get past 35 RIGHT and and professional sports. And that's usually when people are hitting. And then when you're at, you know, still in basically your formative years as an adult, you're having conversations about retiring and you're going to, it's gotta be just

 Eben Britton: Yeah, it was crushing, you know, and then people are going, why don't you quit? Why are you so young? Why did you walk away? And that, you know, so that feeds my shame and my guilt towards myself of man, I, I didn't make it 10 Eb you didn't make it 10. How would you, you know, how do we feel about that? Maybe my career was a complete failure, you know? So that, that starts to descend. And then that sense of being exiled, you know, I liken being coming out of the NFL, I would always tell people, it's like, I just got dropped off in the middle of the ocean without a life preserver. Right. You know, and it's like, there you go, bro, tread water, figure it out, you know? And it's a very lonely feeling. It's a very painful experience. It's super hard transition, but you know, I feel super blessed in my openness and willingness to just sort of ride the wave of the universe and that's been ugly and that's been hard at times, but you know, the slow process of recollecting myself, recovering myself in life after sports and figuring out who I really am and what I'm really supposed to do here, you know, it's like, man, my football career, that wasn't really it. That was just kind of the set the stage for what I'm supporting and what I'm really supposed to do with my life. You know,

 Wade Lightheart: How long did it take? How long did the darkness, let's say that the reconstruction of your life after sports take? Cause I think there's a lot of people right now that, you know, their career has ended, their business has been wiped out. The circumstances that they couldn't control has altered their life radically. And they're in that state. How long did it take for you to figure this whole thing out? And what were the threads or the sutras that kind of pulled you out of that into, into your new career?

 Eben Britton: Hmm. You know, I would say, so I got, my last year was 2014. I would say that the darkness really settled in about 2016. So it took a couple years of settling down into the rock bottom, this of myself, and then in it literally that that state of crisis ignited in me the need to start rebuilding myself back up, you know, getting into therapy, getting into, getting involved in these men's groups. I'm a part of now finding slowly, you know, and, and even in those two years, from 2014 to 2016, I was slowly but surely just kind of following the threads of my interests. I, I was very much interested in starting a podcast. I was very much interested in producing content and writing. So I kind of had, like, I had some bits and pieces of things to start putting my energy towards, but there were many days waking up in the morning going, Oh my God, what, what do I do today? My whole life was scheduled for 15 years.

 Wade Lightheart: For super regimented, [inaudible] super bright.

 Eben Britton: I mean, I woke up at 5:30 in the morning. I had my first meeting at 8:00 AM, you know, for, for 15 years. And here I am now and I have to totally create my life.

 Eben Britton: And that was, you know, there were a lot of hard days sitting there smoking a lot of cannabis going, man. I thought something would have revealed itself by now

 Wade Lightheart: Where Is the lightning bolt from God? Yeah, right?

 Eben Britton: Yeah. You know, and so really just putting myself out there and, and writing that article, following this cannabis advocacy thread and starting through the cannabis advocacy, I met a lot of great people. A lot of like-minded individuals. Now I started building a community around myself, a new community of all of these athletes who believe in holistic healing practices and the power of cannabis and other plant medicine. We, I was a, I'm a founding member of Athletes for CARE, which is an organization for athletes of all, all creeds football. We have NFL players, NHL players, UFC fighters, Olympians, NBA players, you name it who have all come together around the ethos of cannabis as medicine for athletes. And that's really expanded into holistic healing practices and plant medicine psychedelics as well as just tools for healing during your career and to help transition into your life after.

 Eben Britton: And we offer resources and opportunities and a community for, for athletes really of all ages. You don't have to be a professional athlete to get involved. But so that, that, that was a big part of it. You know, following the universe, creating this community around myself, starting to reconfigure some sense of identity, which, you know, I've really come full circle on to, I don't know what my identity is anymore. I'm sort of constantly letting go of identities, but you know, it's important in the, in the main frame of this physical plane interaction, you know, to be able to, to relate to people from a specific reference point. So, you know, at the end of the day, I tell people I'm a yoga ex NFL or turned Yogi. And I think that about covers it. You know,

 Wade Lightheart: We share something I'm a, I'm a former bodybuilder that became a Yogi and yoga actually inspired some of my championships. And it's, it's passionate. And of course that was actually athletic pursuit and physical discipline is a first phase of yoga. TOTALLY. So a lot of people, you know, that a lot of people don't recognize the concordancy between high-performance athletics and actually how it can lead to a spiritual based discipline. Totally. Yeah. There, there, are concordant, what were your influences from a yoga perspective that you were able to draw upon or that you continue to draw? And I'm curious about that because that's an area that I'm, I'm continuously fascinated by. I've been a student of Yogananda's works for the last 20 years. And we'd go see Dr. David Hawkins and his map of consciousness. And, you know, we do the events with him and like spinach and it's allowed an, a richness in my life that I, I really feel more people would benefited by to explore because it's, it's kind of transcends religiosity.

 Eben Britton: Oh Yeah!

 Wade Lightheart: It kind of transcends dogma. It's a definitive practice so that you can experience a different aspect of awareness or consciousness or purpose or being, or connection that I think is, you know, yoga means union. What were the, what were the sources that you've drawn inspiration or pathways that have helped you in your journey to become, like, make that next step? Was it, was it threaded into the football? Cause you said your parents had that background. Was it threaded someone into football and, but kind of wasn't really fully embraced, but then it became like the sutra became a rope later.

 Eden Britton: Yes, yes, exactly. I would have to say first and foremost, my mother you know, she is the Yogi and our family is filled with yogis and mystics. I mean, my mom, even like 10 years ago, my mom found out that her mother, my grandmother has been practicing yoga for like 70 years. She's in her nineties and still acting on Broadway. And of course she does yoga every day, you know? RIGHT. Um so it really starts with my mother. And then, you know, it was interesting because when I went into the NFL, I fucking hated yoga. I hated it. I was because I was so big. I was so big.

 Wade Lightheart: Can you share with people just like what, what your, what your dimensions are just,

 Eben Britton: Yeah, yeah, for sure. My rookie year in the NFL, I was six, six, three, 10 to three 14. By my last year, I was still 6,6, but I was about 330 pounds.

 Wade Lightheart: That's a lot of weight to be moving around leavers. What a lot of people don't realize is the longer and bigger you are, the more torque that happens on your joints and the damage for bigger guys is often worse than for smaller guys. Yeah. It's just, it's just force dynamics. So what was it like running around at 330 pounds and crashing into other guys like that? I mean it was Excitement? Is there fear? Is there like, what's that like

 Eben Britton: No fear. It was a lot of fun, you know? I mean, you know, the fear gets deadened over time with the pain. And so it's just like fun and you just, you know, your body becomes a weapon really. Right. You know, and it was fun, but it was also hard, man. It was hard to get up. It was hard to fucking walk. My feet hurt. My hips hurt my back, hurt, everything hurt all the time. You know, now I'm six, six and I weigh about 250. Right. I feel just incredible. You know, this is my fighting weight. I would say

 Wade Lightheart: So you're basically a flyweight now. And when it comes to the NFL lineman.

 Eben Britton: Yeah, exactly. Exactly dude. So I, you know I grew to I grew to hate yoga. I was like, fuck this man. It's too painful. The whole just being in down dog is like, Oh my God, I can't even stand it. So I moved away from it. And of course the injury started to pile up, you know, and then in my life after football, I was brought back into yoga on my knees and I fallen in love with it. Like I just practice yoga every day. It's a part of my daily routine. So then, you know, there were times I started dipping my toes into formerly known as Bikram yoga. I dunno what we call that these days.

 Wade Lightheart: Yeah. Right, right. Interesting enough. Bikrams. His, he was a student of yoga [inaudibleFernandez] brother Bishnu, and Bishnu was a Mr. Universe judge first Indiana. And he used to travel around with the group of kids and they would be like, they develop powers where they could break baseball bats over their heads and they could do all these super strength things. And then Bikram became like one of the biggest proponents, but then he kind of stripped away all of the spiritual side of it and became this kind of like soaker phenomenon. And then recently of course, there's a lot of darkness surveilled on Netflix. YEAH. That documentary is pretty wild. YEAH.

 Eben Britton: I know, but you know what I mean? I think

 Wade Lightheart: This is great for athletes. It's amazing. It's one of my favorites. Physical performance is amazing

 Eben Britton: That physical sequence, that sequence of yoga in the hot room is one of my favorite things to do. So I got introduced to that. Then actually I got introduced to that. I did a little bit of that in the good days in my Jacksonville career, but even moved away from that, you know, as my body started breaking down, but came back to it, you know, in the last few years. But then, you know, I just, I really started gravitating towards these things, the Bhagavad Gita and Ram Das and learning about, you know, the, the other dimensions of yoga and this guy saw guru whoh as a great book enter engineering. That really is a great, you know, I'm, I I've kind of come around. I don't, so a guru isn't necessarily one of my favorites, but he does a great job of breaking down some really solid principles of yoga.

 Eben Britton:You know, in America, we've just sort of been conditioned to think that yoga is this like fitness thing. Correct. Really yoga is so much more than just the physical practice. Then the [inaudible] is, are super important because they can lose loosening up the physical body through those positions, loosens up the mind to loosen up the emotions, to loosen up the spirit, to be able to access these other dimensions. So, you know, I, I'm sort of I can't say that I've really followed one in particular. It says my practice is very, is hot, the yoga. And I appreciate all of the great teachers, Yogananda, you know, Ram Das of course, Krishna Murti, all these guys are talking about, you know, this, the deep spiritual gurus Osho, you know, they're talking about the yoga of the mind, you know, which is, and then meditation really became, I have to say meditation is, is really the tool that unlocked everything for me you know and brought me the, true the true healing, you know, that I've been blessed to experience in my life after football.

 Eben Britton: And it's interesting, you know, coming back to cannabis because cannabis is cannabis is so yogic and its spirit and the essence of it, you know, because for me, obviously like anything, cannabis can be abused and that's always kind of like the, the, the argument against it. But I think it's super important because for me, cannabis was always this thing that just brought me back to myself, you know, I could be way the fuck out there and then I can take a little cannabis and it just brings me right back here, you know, right back to this moment, good or bad. I could be having a really intense experience where I'm flying out to you know, the outer reaches of the galaxy, but it's like that the fear that it takes you into, or the bliss that it takes you into, it always just brings you right back here to your feet on the path, right in front of you. So, and that, that's what yoga is, you know, yoga, like you said, yoga means union, you know, and my whole life is really a yogic is a yogic practice.

 Wade Lightheart: It really is. It's an it's it's one of the reasons I was so excited about having you on the podcast today is because I can, it's pretty obvious to me. And we're going to get into a little bit about your book and your podcast in a minute, but before we get there, there's another unusual twist. And turn in your story is that somehow you are on a podcast with none other than Mike Tyson, the former baddest man on the planet, who is another just mystical creature of like maybe one of the most unusual lives in, in, in modern history would be Mike Tyson. Yeah. I mean, he really covered the entire spectrum. And then recently came out as a 54 year old and, and looked pretty respectable as a boxer. You know, I was like always amazed at that. How did that happen? And, and because I know he's a big cannabis advocate and that was a big part of his recovery as well. And you have hotbox and with Mike Tyson and how did the, that fusion come together and what is that experience? I mean, it must be kind of transcendent. You're sitting there and he's got great guests and he's, he's a really intelligent guy. A lot of people don't get how intelligent and aware Mike Tyson is. And you reveal that also about your own intelligence and and your awareness, which is not something people associate with these big bruising, super violent athletes, is that they can have this whole other dimension of being that is truly profound. How did that happen?

 Eben Britton: You're you're not going to your, what I tell you, you're going to be like, Oh yeah, of course that's how it happened. Beautiful. And so, you know, I started venturing into this cannabis activism. YEP. And when I did that, I really felt like I had alienated myself even more from my NFL world. And I NF and like football roots, like going back to, you know, now there's shame about man, what am I high school coaches think of me now, you know, which has been really beautiful because my high school coaches love and respect me even more now for speaking my truth about what has helped me heal. And they're even like, yeah, we agree with you. And you know, and it's amazing that you're here speaking your truth. But so for a long time, I really felt like I had, you know, if there was any, any cord left to linking me to football, I had just totally accident.

 Wade Lightheart: Right. Right.

 Eben Britton: Right. You know, with my cannabis, cannabis act activism and lo and behold, a couple of years ago, it was, it was around may of 2018. I get a phone call and it's one of my former NFL team doctors. And he says to me, Eb, I've been following you since you left here. I'm proud of you. It's amazing what you've done. I'm watching you and your cannabis advocacy. It's been really inspiring. I've stopped prescribing these guys opiates because I see the damage it's doing to these guys. Next week I'm coming out to LA and I'm going to be at a medical cannabis summit being put on by Mike Tyson, his canvas company, Tyson Ranch. I want to link you with them because I think there's a lot of synergy between what you're doing and what they're doing. And I was like, Whoa, you know, this is amazing.

 Eben Britton: First of all, just being contacted by a former one of my former team doctors and speaking so highly and encouraging it was that was really a beautiful experience. But then I'm going, man, I've been in, in the cannabis space now for four years. My, my identity as an NFL player in the cannabis space has, has provided me the platform of being able to meet literally all the players in the cannabis game. As far as I could tell, I'd met everyone, you know, all the top CEOs of all the seemingly booming companies. And I didn't even know Mike was involved, but, but of course I said, yeah, I would love to meet them. UI'd love to see what they're doing. Uany way I can help. I'm happy to be connected with them. So I get connected to one of my ex business partners and he basically says, Eb, I've got to put on this medical cannabis summit next week.

 Eben Britton: I've no idea what to do. I hear you're the guy to do it. I've been all over the country for four years, basically speaking on panels, giving presentations, you know, I had a community of athletes and I said, yeah, man, this is no, no problem at all. I'd love to help put this thing on. So I F I come in the next day after we had a phone call, I give a, a quick talk to the whole company, say, this is what we need to do. I'll handle the presentation. You know, we need to fly these people in brought in a bunch of athletes, some neuroscientists, some team doctors, some team owners even put on this really beautiful summit. I, at that point I hadn't met Mike in person. I'd seen him briefly through a FaceTime. But so that meeting ends and all of a sudden, it's like, it's like this quiet settles in on the office. And I hear these whispers like, Mike's coming, Mike's coming…

 Eben Britton: And, and my ex business partner gives everybody clear the room, but have you need to stay in here. And so it was as if Hercules was walking into the building or Alexander, the great as Mike would probably prefer.

 Wade Lightheart: He's such a profound presence, right?

 Eben Britton: Yeah. And he, he comes in and at the time, you know, Mike was in a dark place and I could see, I was, I was coming out of a very heat feeling. Last couple of years, like I had done a lot of plant medicine and some combo, and I lost the ceremonies. Yep. So I was super clear and I'm seeing Mike come in and I can see him sort of clouded. But I say, Hey, Mike, I'm Eben. And he takes my hand and gives me a big hug. And it was really the, it was a perfect example of our relationship. That's unfolded over the last few years, because I just always looked at him as my brother, you know, as a human being.

 Eben Britton: And I didn't ever put him on this pedestal of some of the iconic class, you know, sort of status. And I just really always related to him in that way. So we put on this, it was a beautiful thing. And I was so struck by his heart and his humility. And we put on this great event, they asked me to just continue working with the company as a consultant. One thing led to another, they said, Eb, we want to start a podcast with Mike, will you help us put it together? I said, of course we started Hotbox. And and that really led to Mike's own spiritual awakening and this incredible healing journey that I've been really blessed and to, to be a part of and to help just be a, be an integration integration therapist, really at the end of the day. I mean, that's what what the episodes 

 Wade Lightheart: It's good. It kind of seems like when you, and by the way, it's one of my favorite podcasts and I think everyone should take it's really, really great. It's, it's, it's really magical the dynamic that you have, the guests that you have and just how you go at topics and unusual things. And, and, and there's a lot of famous people that come onto that, obviously just from the associations, but you realize strip away the thing strip away, the glamour strip away, all of the bright lights you're dealing with real humans YEAH with almost what's interesting is the problems that you experienced as a human in that public image. There is this kind of pseudo pressure there, isn't an amplified falsity that kind of comes out that way. That can be probably lonely and, and, and really it's, it's hard to it's. I think it's hard for people to grasp and to relate because everybody looks at kind of the plus side of celebrity and there is plus side of it, for sure. YEAH. There's, there's a huge kind of like responsibility that often leads to kind of associate it, which leads to guilt because, Hey, just because you're really good at a sport doesn't mean that you don't have human problems. It doesn't mean you don't have relationship problems, don't it doesn't mean that you have don't have issues you, and sometimes it's even harder to admit those YEAH. Because you're held in this kind of caricature of yourself.

 Eden Britton: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was really profound, you know, it was a profound experience. It was super healing for me, you know, and I feel like Mike and I's relationship was really galvanized in healing and you know, watching him and what he's gone through. And it was so interesting because, you know, in the vein of what you're saying, here's this guy, Mike Tyson, the most controversial figure in perhaps sports history. Yes. You know good in the bad has experienced stratospheric highs and hellfire lows, you know, and his..

 Wade Lightheart: From the most famous person in the world to guy in prison, YEAH YEAH like that's very wild. Right.

 Eben Britton: Exactly. Exactly. And you know, in any of that, it's been so interesting to see the fans and the audience's reaction because, you know, really at the end of the day, it's about vulnerability. You know, and even though, you know, I felt like I could relate to Mike because I had experienced a microcosm of what he experienced as an athlete. But then at the same time, there's kind of this really, there's this really interesting transcendence that's happening of human experience, where it's like, maybe you haven't had the millions of dollars in the clothes and the insane relationships with people, but you've experienced those same threads of emotion and feeling in your own life, you know, no matter what level of life you're in or where you're at or what your role is, you know? And so to be able to hear a guy like Mike, be honest about what he's been through and having come to terms with himself and learned lessons out of those experiences, it really opens you up to go, man, why am I so hard on myself in this area? You know, it's like, let me surrender to this thing that has been lingering in my life, or, you know, the resentments I carry or the anger I hold on to, whatever it is, let me like, let it go. Cause here's this guy who has been the fucking prison and like had the most traumatic childhood, it's a miracle he's still alive. You know,

 Wade Lightheart: It's it's truly a wonder, which means there's a, there's a deeper purpose to it all.

 Eben Britton: Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, wow, he's here speaking about it. And he's okay. Maybe I can do the same, YES. You know? And that's really what has been so powerful about being a part of that show and just, you know, my role was really just as facilitator, like, let me open, let me create the space for Mike to just feel comfortable to share his heart, you know, and his soul.

 Wade Lightheart: But, but that's a huge, but that's a huge role. And, you know, I think, I think number one, you need to have the physical presence. YEAH Um there is, you know, with such a physical person, you know, it just radiates it. I think your physical presence can contain that environment. Second. There's the associate of as being a professional athlete, another thing, but I think what's really beautiful is this kind of spiritual side. That's so obvious to you in your own journey amongst that, where I think creates a safety for people to truly drop into the, like, let's get away from the, the, the projection of what's out there and let's get into the real human side of it. And you do such a beautiful job of that. Thanks man, I appreciate that. It's noticeable. And I can really appreciate that. It's really remarkable work. And I think setting the tone for presentation of information is at, you know, it's like what is a book without the space from which the words emerge?

 Wade Lightheart: You know, YEAH you, you need that, that, that space for the, for the letters that make sense. Otherwise it's nothing YEAH which I want to get into your work specifically. Now that we've come through this journey and you've got your own podcast, you've, you've got,ua book and, and it's in the thread. I suspect of some of the things you're related to what's that what's your career about now with the Eben Flow podcast, your upcoming book, that's coming out, the thing in your cannabis advocacy for healing, what is the overarching message that you're trying to get out to people on a consistent basis as a human, as a being, as an artist, as an athlete, as someone who has obviously deep cares for and concerns and love for the human condition, what is that message that, that your, your, your rating, your cross, the galaxy.

 Eben Britton: I love that dude. So put it simply in yogic terms. I, I, with, with everything I do, I wish to alleviate suffering deeper than that, I want to, through my experience, the things I've learned, the tools I've used to, and it's always a work in progress, you know, that's the kind of the interesting thing about it. And the more I heal, the deeper I go, it's like, Oh, there's other here. You know, there's more to heal. There's more work to do. Because I get more sensitive as Ram Das says, the deeper into the temples, you go, the lions become more fierce. 

 Wade Lightheart: That is the truest words spoken. And, you know, Dr. Hawkins said that

 Eben Britton: I love him, by the way, he's reading. I read Power vs Force this year. WOW And it was like, it was life changing.

 Wade Lightheart: Have you read the other one? And you have to read the rest of the series?

 Eben Britton: I need to, No. They all are in my list.

 Wade Lightheart: Transcending levels of consciousness, probably the most practical book. I, Eye of the I is amaz like it's a really beautiful book, but I is just completely to the ultimate. And then he's got a whole history of like this book, 10 books. I think that he did, his last one is a great one for a lot of people it's letting go the pathway to surrender, which I think is, yeah, right

 Eden Britton: That's my life. That's my life

 Wade Lightheart: Oh yeah. It's it's really is the life of a spiritual aspirin.

 Wade Lightheart: Keep going, keep going. Sorry to interrupt. But I was just, I just that Concord and see, I was like, I really got to talk about that, yeah,

 Eben Britton: No, I love, I love Dr. David Hawkins. He's so he's just like, he's next level, man. So, you know, at the end of the day with everything I'm doing, I want people, I want to help tap into themselves, you know, because we're really in a, we're really living in the matrix, you know YEAH uh I mean, when you say that people go, Oh, you know, they, they refer immediately to the movie, but you know, the way that our world is built around us and we live in this physical realm really governed by material interests, it's super distracting. It's super difficult to figure out what's real. And what's true. And the only realm that matters, which is who you are, you know, and the brilliant particle of light that each person is. You know, because at the end of the day, you know, we're being disillusioned, we've been disillusioned with the miracle of being a human .

 Wade Lightheart: Existence itself is pretty remarkable. If you think Oh MY GOD. About we're traveling at 1.5 million miles an hour right now at this moment, being blasted out from some center of the years, which has been going on for billions of years, and then that's rotating at 500,000 miles an hour, and the access is spinning at this thing. We're connecting digitally on some computer. I see, OH MY GOD! Like, what is more amazing than existence itself?
 
Eben Britton: It's a complete miracle.

 Wade Lightheart: And then everybody's like, Oh, my life sucks, you know the new iPhone. [inaudible] That's like, Whoa, Whoa,

 Eben Britton: Exactly, dude. You know, and, and I want to, with everything I do, I just want to help break down those walls for people. And I realized, you know, cause I have I have sort of a childhood deep seated need to try to save everybody that I realized that there's no saving anyone. You know, the only work I can do is to offer these tools, bringing it back to me, being a master propagandist, you know, figuring out how to plant the seeds in people so that they can open the doors themselves, you know? And so the Eben Flow basic tools for transformation. My book that I'm in the midst of having published, you know, it's about meditation, nutrition, movement, spirituality mindset getting back to nature really just the, the, the deconstruction of all the, of all the programming. We've all been subject to in one way or another.

 Eben Britton: And that's all through the lens of my football career and how I came to find these tools in my life and what they've done for me and simple practices. I think anybody can really apply to their daily life to start to feel that that sense of truth. You know, I mean, if you meditate for five minutes, you feel it. You know, and for me, that was really all it took, you know, because I said, wow, I want more of that. I want more of that. I don't, you know, nothing else I've done is really worked. And here I am, and I'm just desperate. And, you know, as one of my favorite guys around us says, life is a purification process, you know, and we can spend as long as we want sort of, you know, you know, walking through the bog and, you know, wasting our time, trying to achieve all this stuff.

 Eben Britton: And it's great. I think it's great to achieve all of your wildest dreams and it's great to strive for greatness, but at the same time, a lot of it is spinning on a hamster wheel. You know, we're not tapping into our true purpose and that's what I hope to do with everything I, I, I do. And am, you know, with every podcast I put out with every conversation, I have everything I write. I want it all to help people get on the path to so that they can realize their highest greatness for the greatest good of the universe.

 Wade Lightheart: It's so beautiful. It reminds me of this, the song, one of my songs that I really like is by John Lennon, where he's like, the line is like, I just get tired of spinning on the mirror, go round. I just have to let it go. You know, it's such a, it's such a poetic line for a guy that also hit, you know, super, super status of in everything that's associated with it. And, you know, I think life as an artist and one of the things I've noticed about professional sports and why I think it's so attractive to people as a human condition, because when you see sports done at a great level, it becomes art. YEAH. It transcends sports and becomes art. And I think as a human, if you look historically, we always look to the artists to kind of determine YEAH what their culture was at that given time, you know, you know, which is, which is an interesting component.

 Wade Lightheart: So it would, I would, I would extract from that, that a life well lived is very much like an artist. You know, Yeah. It's a, it's a new canvas every day that you can paint. So you can go through periods of life and on to transit from maybe one part of life that may involve decades, which it could be a career. It could be a relationship. It could, there could be all these in short. And then to be able to seamlessly become inspired by some other aspect of the human kitchen and start painting a whole different series or writing a different whole series. And then, and then being able to let that go and maybe become a grandfather or you know a grandmother, if you're listening to become this sort of thing to me to, to be able to move through those phases that we all are forced to seems to be great.

 Wade Lightheart: I would love for you to share maybe your daily practice and then how, because you really are an artist YEAH um you, how, how you've embraced being an artist in your life. And, and then you can probably tie that into maybe how cannabis kind of puts you kind of in that non-linear aspects, state of being now where the canvas is blank and I'm back to the energetics of, of life and flowing forward. Can you, you know, to, to use a little bit out of your podcast, can you talk about maybe that experience? Cause I can really sense it for me.

 Eben Britton: Yeah, man. I'm up at about six or 6:30 every morning. I head outside immediately. I let my dogs outside. And I do my stretching and breath work and my stretching is pretty simple. I mean, I'm a dad, I'm a husband and my wife is a, is a bad-ass, she's got her own law practice as an estate planning attorney. So she's super busy. And right now, of course, with COVID, you know, my daughter has been home from school for a year, which has been, you know,

 Wade Lightheart: How old is your daughter?

 Eben Britton: She's nine. WOW. She's in third grade. You know, which has been a nightmare and a blessing because it's like, here we go. Here's life hitting us in the face. Like how are we going to adapt and overcome? So I've really whittled my morning practice down to about 30 minutes. Just the most I do a mountain pose. I do a forward fold. I do a quad stretch, like a I mean, that's the simplest way to put it a quad stretch. And I stretch my packs in my rib cage. And the most important part of it is the breathing aspect. You know, I'm breathing into my whole body and loosening up everything through the breath.

 Wade Lightheart: Do you do a box breathing or what kind of breathing breath work do you typically do?

 Eden Britton: I do It is a, you could call it the Wim Hof technique. So I do deep breathing in the nose, out the nose through the stretching's through this quick stretching circuit, I do five breaths in each position, deep into my body, literally breathing down into my toes, exhaling out five breaths, each position on each side. And then I go into a Wim Hof method TUMMO style breathing, which is super powerful in full inhales, full exhales out the mouth. I do three sets of that. I'll do some sort of body weight exercise either I get in a hundred pushups or a hundred squats go back to a breathing exercise, which I'll do now. I'll do, it's a, it's a belly. So you breathe into the belly, breathe into the chest exhale.

 Eben Britton: So I'll do that for about three minutes. I'll do some twisting, I'll do some sort of rotation loose to note my spine. I'll do a another breathing exercise where I'm doing like shoulder movements to, to detoxify the lymph nodes. And that takes about 30 minutes I'm in and out. I'm into, you know, my day getting my daughter ready for school, cleaning up the kitchen. Sometime in there I make coffee. I intermittent fast every single day. So I don't really eat until about two o'clock in the afternoon. Usually it's just how I just feel best. And you know, getting my work done earlier, earlier in the day, I just feel like my mind works better when I don't have a stomach full of food. And then I'll get at least 10 minutes of meditation. For the last five years I've done 30 minutes of meditation.

 Eben Britton: No questions asked in the morning right now we have house renovations going on. There's just been a lot happening. So my, my meditation has become, I gotta get, at least if I can get at least 10 minutes in, that's great in the morning, if not, I'll get it in later in the day. And that's another chapter in my book. Flexibility is fundamental, which is basically don't let your routine Dick become your life. No, we have the discipline to get these things in that are fundamental to you and your wellbeing, but don't let that, if you miss one thing, don't let that destroy your whole day. Right. You know, I think that's super vital because we all our life is shifting and the days are shifting and, you know, our responsibilities can be different from day to day. So it's about really getting in what you have to get in early and then being able to kind of move on the fly.

 Eben Britton: My whole life is on the, on the fly these days, you know? So I just make sure to set that foundation of myself in the first 30 minutes of the day with my stretching and breath work and the breath work is super meditative as well. You know, that gets me into that great, energized, calm state of being. My relationship with cannabis has really evolved over the years. I used to be a daily, you know cannabis user. Now I, I use it usually only at night towards the end of the day because it's just, and it's something that I'll also use if I feel like I'm kind of getting stuck in a rut or, you know, my day is slowing down, I'll consume a little cannabis and go get a workout in, or I'll consume some cannabis and go take a walk.

 Eben Britton: Or at night it's great to kind of wind down with a nice indicum and just kind of settle into the evening. But for the most part, then the rest of my day is filled with doing podcasts, writing, sending emails, connecting dots you know, taking care of whatever needs my daughter has going on that day. Usually, you know, figuring out why it should at some point getting a workout in, I usually get so in the morning, I'll get my stretching and breath work. And then later in the afternoon, I'll hit some weights. I'll get some cardio there, got an assault bike, got, you know, an X three bar. Are you fan of the X three bar?

 Wade Lightheart: You know, it's so funny. My practice, I get up in the morning, I do my energization, I do my meditation. I do many of the similar movements here. I have an attack bike in my recovery room that I, that I do the attack by the concordance between our practices it's so mind boggling. And I have a, I have a rooftop gym I LOVE THAT. Um on my belly and I have an X-bar and I've got a power rock. It's awesome. There are bells, and they got the dumbbells on. I train outside.

 Eben Britton: That's the best. Yeah me too.

 Wade Lightheart: It's amazing. It's really amazing when, when Gold's gym, cause not far from Gold's gym in Venice, I was in my dream to go there and train there and all that stuff I get there and COVID breaks out a month later. OH MY GOD! So I, so I was, and then I ended up moving and got to this place and I got, I created what I call God's gym. I just left the L out and I'm up there. It's a virtual experience like out there in the sunshine and work it out without it really a goal. YES. Or it's not like I got to hit this many reps and this many as it's kind of like, I'm just experiencing divinity here, just celebrating life in the sunshine. And it's really interesting to exercise outdoors as opposed to indoors, there's something very powerful about that.

 Eben Britton: I'm a big fan of that man. And I would say, you know, that was kind of one of the blessings of COVID like, it, it, it forced me to reconfigure my, my workouts and my training. Cause I would go to the gym every day, you know, and I'd spend two hours lifting weights and doing the thing and really getting after it. And now, you know, my practice is so much more about feeling strong, feeling flexible, being out in the sun. You know, I would say that the keys of my day are breathing, meditating, being outdoors, getting in the sun and then spending a good amount of time, flushing the channels. So that's through writing or conversations or podcasting, you know? And so if I can do those three things, those, those things I've lived. I've had a great day, you know,

 Wade Lightheart: Eben, I want to be mindful of your time. You've been so generous with it. Can you share where people can reach out to you, connect with you, find out more about your work, what you're doing, especially particularly people who are suffering from a host of conditions that, Hey, there might be a sensible way to go about engaging in cannabis or cannabis advocacy, finding out the facts and the information and alleviate all the guilt you might have about it or the social pressures of your group, especially when we have an opioid crisis going on in this world and there are other options. And I think that you're doing a great job providing, can you share all that information for our listeners?

 Eben Britton: Definitely man. So you can follow me on Instagram at E D S Britton that's edsbritton. Those are my three first initials, Eben, Daniel Smith Britton. So that's me on Instagram at EDS Britton on Twitter as well at  EDS Britton on Tik TOK at Eben Britton tick-tock is really, I've just started that. And that's just all mindset, meditation, breath, work, and movement. And I'm having fun with that. You can check out my website, ebenbritton.Com. I've recently launched a patreon account that has everything I'm doing. I'm doing a lot of how tos and guides. There'll be a lot of cannabis content there. Check me out patreon.com forward slash E D S Britton as well. My podcast, the Eben Flow podcast on all podcast platforms. If you are an athlete or not an athlete, and you're interested in getting involved in the cannabis space or just need information head over to my organization called athletesforCare that's athletesforcare.org, and you can get, get involved, become part of the community being athlete ambassador. There's a lot of great resources and opportunities they're available for everyone. So dude, I'm super grateful, man. Thank you so much for having me Wade.

 Wade Lightheart: It's been an absolute pleasure. I hope we'll get a chance to get you back sometime. For our, all our listeners, please check out the links and be clear about advocating some of these things. And I've seen so many lives that have been transformed and changed by embracing yogic practices, the use of cannabis in a way to alleviate suffering. Our mission at BiOptimizers is to end physical suffering and activate what we call biologically awesome health. LOVE THAT. And it's so beautiful to see someone who has really painted a beautiful canvas within their life as an, as an artist, an athlete, a Yogi and an advocate. There's so many different ways that that could go and you've really done a great job and we look forward to continue following your career and how you're out there making a difference in the world for our listeners out there. It's another edition of the awesome health podcast. I'm your host Wade Lightheart we'll see you on the next podcast and be sure to check out Eben's work. Lots of love. Take care. Bye bye.