Bryant Wood on How to Unlock Healing with Spiritual Biohacking | EP 584

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I've always been someone that's totally down to admit where I was wrong. And at the end of the day, I was not the same person that I am without the substance, right? It totally changed the chemistry of my brain, the way I was behaving.
My emotions were flaring up and it wasn't who I was. Because of this connection is a byproduct of making less productive decisions.
And when you can rally and start making slowly conscious decisions for your health that nurtures you, your friends, your family, they come along because you're taking care of yourself. Welcome to Passion Struck.
Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles.
And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.
If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.
Now let's go out there and become PassionStruck. Hey, PassionStruck fam.
Welcome to episode 584. Whether you're a longtime listener or tuning in for the first time, I am so grateful you're here.
You've joined a global movement dedicated to igniting purpose, living boldly with intention, and creating a life filled with meaning and connection. Before we dive in, let's reflect on the powerful conversation we had earlier in the week with Dr.
Lori Santos. Lori is one of the world's foremost experts on happiness and well-being, and she took us on a deep dive into the science of joy, why our minds mislead us, and the power of connection in building a truly fulfilling life.
If you haven't had a chance to listen, I highly recommend going back. It's packed with wisdom that can transform the way you approach happiness and meaning.
Now let me ask you this, what if the strength we've been taught to value isn't real strength at all? What if true power comes not from suppressing emotion, but from embracing it? And how do we redefine masculinity in a way that fosters deep connection, emotional resilience, and authentic living? That's exactly what we're diving into today with Bryant Wood, a former model and bodybuilder turned master breathwork instructor, spiritual guide, and transformational coach. Bryant has dedicated his life to helping others break through emotional barriers, reconnect with their true selves, and harness the power of breath to heal from within.
His work is rooted in empowering people to unlock their highest potential through mindfulness, movement, and deep inner work. But Bryant's personal journey is what makes his message so powerful.
Once consumed by external validation, numbing himself through substances, and disconnected from his spiritual core, he reached a breaking point that forced him to turn inward. Through breathwork, prayer, and radical self-exploration, he rediscovered his purpose, and now he's here to help us do the same.
In today's conversation, we explore the power of breathwork as a tool for emotional and spiritual transformation, how to cultivate true strength through vulnerability and self-awareness, the science of signature frequency, and how to step into your most authentic self, as well as practical strategies for fostering belonging, connection, and personal growth. This episode is a must-listen for anyone navigating personal challenges, seeking deeper emotional healing, or looking to redefine what it means to live with true authenticity and purpose.
Bryant brings profound wisdom, raw honesty, and an undeniable passion for helping others break free from limiting beliefs. And for those who want to go

deeper, check out our episode starter packs on Spotify or at passionstruck.com slash starter packs. With over 580 episodes, we've curated playlists on themes like mental health, personal transformation, and physical wellbeing to help you find the insights that resonate most with you.
And don't forget to subscribe to my live Intentionally newsletter for exclusive weekly insights, tools, and actionable strategies to live with greater intention. Now, let's dive into an inspiring exploration of breathwork, emotional healing, and redefining strength with the one and only Bryant Wood.
Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.
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I am absolutely thrilled today to bring Bryant Wood on PassionStruck. Welcome, Bryant.
Thank you, John. Really grateful to be here.
I have to give some credit to our mutual friend, Emma Cappella, for introducing us. And I thought maybe that would be a great starting point.
Emma was a guest of the show last year. She and I have gone on to become very good friends and collaborators.
And I really think she's one of the leading people out there, as you and I talked about before, on really bringing breathwork and mindfulness and other things to the mainstream and also exploring the science of happiness.

But how did you first get introduced to Emma?

Emma's a legend.

Anyone that's not familiar with her work, I highly recommend checking it out because she has, I think, 20 to 30 years in academics on the forefront of the research of meditation and breath work. And this is supporting veterans of PTSD.
This is supporting college kids with stress. I mean, she's really on it and has produced significant healing for people that need it the most.
So she's just absolutely a legend. But I met her through Sri Ravi Shankar, who is an Indian guru.
He runs the Art of Living Foundation. They do the Sky Kriya, which is mindfulness, breath work, and then I think some yoga postures as well.
And he's in 106 different countries and helping tens of millions of people's lives. And she's devoted her life to him.
And I find that to just be so admirable because not only does she has is the pinnacle of research and science, but she's also deeply connected to the spiritual aspect of life. I was supposed to interview him last year.
And unfortunately, it fell apart for very sad reasons. My sister, who was a Buddhist, died of pancreatic cancer, and it was just weeks ahead of when I was supposed to interview him.
So we weren't able, I wasn't able to get to where he was and we couldn't pull it together, but that is still something I would love to do. Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
I've actually had the pleasure of interviewing him about three to four times. So I got in there and he's like a kid.
He's a kid with just the utmost wisdom. You look into his eyes, it's pure unconditional love.
He always answers things in a way that's like specifically for you. It's a very magical thing to be able to interview him.
So I really hope you get the chance to someday. That's something that people tell me about his holiness, the Dalai Lama too, is that he takes every message and he really personalizes it.
Now, I think his overall message is he wants to end human suffering, but he really personalizes it to each person he interacts with and what part they can do to help people. Did you get the same sense from your takeaways in any of those three interviews that you did? So I like to pick up on, I'm very interested in why people become the way that they are, especially in the spiritual realms, because for me, there's not a more powerful place to be than to be someone that people respect in regards to directing their life path and how to think about life, how to behave.
So he's reached the pinnacle of what I consider success just from an embodied state of love. And when I observed him, he was very open with me in a way about his skill sets.
One was he was extremely versed in the Vedas. So he knew every of the ancient texts, he had it memorized.
And I think he was like 10 years old, citing them off from memory. So obviously there's past life relationships with that information.
And then simultaneously there's the cities, the cities are enlightened gifts that you get. And he has access to be able to read a TV screen and get intuitive hits that then can help a message resonate.
And so there's psychic abilities mixed with the ancient Vedas and then just being an embodied loving person. And that's how I see him being so effective just from an observer perspective.
Thank you for sharing that. And Brian, I want to go back to your early beginnings.
You've spoken in the past. I've heard you talk about that when you were younger, you really developed a deep spiritual connection, but later you lost that connection.
Can you discuss that? And was there an event that happened that caused that to happen? Was it just you aging and changing your belief cycles? What was it that happened as you entered adulthood? My fondest memories as a kid were either the hardships or the connection to, we'll use the word God for this. But I vividly remember just being in church, always having my hand up, crying, praising the Lord.
It was like my favorite thing to do. I was like, yes, God.
Yeah. You know what I would never miss an opportunity to confess my sins or get baptized.
I think I was baptized like seven times because I enjoyed it so much, the ritual of it. But then the praying every night, the small moments of gratitude before meals with my family, somehow they slowly got lost because of the hardships of what my family had to go through with a divorce.
And you're just trying to make ends meet and survive. Typically, when you don't have that level of safety, you start making what you lack your God.
And then the gratitude for the super intelligence of existence goes away because you're like, where am I going to get my next meal? How am I going to survive? How do I process these emotions as a kid, et cetera. And then when you get away from that prayer or that gratitude, or that just when you close your eyes and you have that beautiful dialogue with your personal God, eventually the lack of those interactions with the divine depletes you if you're someone that gets nourished from those experiences.
And I just went into wrestling and went into working out and went into being the most aggressive man I could be to get a full ride D1 for college, that any sort of sensitive moment

of high life, how you doing today? You know, what's going on? That just dwindled away into like,

how do I make my next meal? How do I beat this person in wrestling, etc. And then I started experiencing very severe side effects.
So depression, anxiety, couldn't sleep at night, like really severe things where I was just completely out of balance. and it got to a point where you know you're on your hands and knees and then you finally have to pray because things got so bad.
And when you pray, it's that honesty kind of puts you on a trajectory of figuring out that connection again. Yeah, it's interesting.
I was a division one athlete myself. And for those people who go into it, I don't think I realized before I accepted it and started performing how much you are really owned in a sense by the school who you're, I almost like to say performing for because you really are.
I mean, everything, your whole scholarship, everything is dedicated to you giving 120% to that athletic endeavor. Did you find that to be the case as well? Oh, studies, any sort of extracurricular activities did not exist.
You were there just as an athlete. I do believe athletes nowadays have a different experience because I think like physical therapists and doctors and instructors are telling people not to go as hard on athletes so their body can recover, their mind can recover, and they're putting academics on more of the forefront than the athletic performance itself.
But in my time, it was pretty much you were just a wrestler. There's nothing else that you did other than wrestle.
Yeah. I didn't have as much of that luxury, although that's what their expectation was, but I was at the Naval Academy, so we still had to do a whole bunch of stuff around it, but they still had that attitude.
I ran cross country and track. So we were still running at times 80 to 120 miles a week.
And I just remember my plea beer just being physically and utterly exhausted, especially during track seasons. And I remember, and I tell people these stories and they can't believe it.
We would do a warm-up six to eight mile run and then we would come to the track and do four or five one mile repeats all under 430 with a 400 in between. And the 800 ones and others were even worse.
And then having to go from that and know you were going to get harassed back in the halls and then having to study and everything else. It's just a lot.
It's a lot. And for recovery, for brain function, for muscle growth, even it's just not the most productive way to, in my opinion, run some of the athletes.
And I just recently watched someone at the Olympic Training Center for Wrestling, this woman, this doctor, talk about how they're actually giving a lot more time to recover to their athletes than they did previously, because now the science has proven that's how you actually make gains. That's how you evolve your body, your mind, etc.
So I think times are changing, but I mean, I don't remember a single day out of the 10 years I wrestled where the goal wasn't to get you on your knees where you couldn't move anymore. Like every day, that was the goal.
It goes hard as you possibly can until you can't move anymore. And wrestling is one of those things that, I mean, it takes a lot out of you.
You have to deal with a lot of physical pain and injuries. Now I had things like stress fractures and other things like that, but it doesn't really compare in a way to what you were going through.
And I was talking to a friend who played for Notre Dame around the time they won their 88 national championship. And he was telling me how they were at that time encouraged to use painkillers, other drugs, et cetera, to help them get through the pain.
Did you find it the same thing? Fortunately, my time, all sort of medical substances were just a complete no. Wrestlers, you would dope, you would do steroids, but you get tested you get tested you tested for everything i found painkillers later on in my life because of my wrestling injuries 13 broken bones or something i have a broken neck right now i got a back surgery last year and people don't know this but if you're putting your kid in a sport, like their rehab, their recovery from any injury should be the ad, like the number one priority, because if you don't rehab it properly, and build its strength back or set the bone, it slowly over time, your body reorganizes around the injury, and then things are out of balance, and then you get chronic pain.
So I had severe chronic pain, I think, two years ago. It flared up out of nowhere where I could barely walk down the street, and then I got all these x-rays and found out I had all these broken bones that were never set properly.
And I got on opioids and this thing called Kratom. Have you heard of this by chance? This is important to talk about.
So there's these things called feel free that I think colleges are being sponsored by. Professional baseball teams are being sponsored by.
And this is like death in a vial. It's like an opioid, Adderall, and ecstasy all in one.
And you take it and you just feel for the first time pain free. You feel free.
But what they don't tell you is the withdrawal symptoms from this is you can get addicted to it within three days and then have visceral, intense withdrawals where your body's dependent on it and you actually need it to keep going. And this is the same thing with opioid crisis, heroin, all these different things.
And after my surgery, I got on opioids and then I had such an addictive personality naturally that led me to when the opioid prescription went out, led me to the fill freeze. And then it was the same addictive qualities and withdrawal qualities.
So I couldn't get off it when I wanted to, had to go to recovery. Recovery worked immediately.
I was there for a week and got off all of it, but people have a much harder time and it's ruining lives.

So yeah, there is now substances you can get over the counter that are sponsoring athletes that are absolutely terrible for you. I wasn't planning to go here, but it's piqued my interest.
What is it about Kratom that does that? Because around here where I live in Florida, you see these kava and kratom bars everywhere.

And I myself have these kava and kratom bars everywhere.

And I myself have done kava and it's been around for centuries really.

But I have never tried kratom.

Yeah, I'm glad we're talking about it.

I think there needs to be much more awareness around the topic.

And I'm very passionate about bringing it up because anyone that listens to this, hopefully it leads them into a different direction because you can fix chronic pain by rewiring your brain. You don't need substances.
Kratom is very similar to opioid. I believe it hits opioid receptors and that's why there's an addictive quality.
It gives you the feeling of euphoria. It's a painkiller, a natural painkiller, but it's extremely addictive.
And at the end of the day, if your body is sending you signals of pain, or if you're getting anxiety, that's information for you to learn how to work with and heal, not something to numb. So you're just suppressing all of these really important signals for your health.
And then over time, the painkiller stops working, you get addicted to it, and then you have to go through the withdrawals and that will force you to feel all the things that you've suppressed. Let me tell you.
Yeah. Wow.
I want to go to this area that I call the disease of disconnection. And I want to, I want you to think about this time when you were dealing with this addiction to the painkillers.
Did you experience disconnection from yourself at that point? I think because of my practices over the last decade, there was a lack of ignorance around what was going on that I opted into. So I knew that I stopped feeling my connection to source, right? And what I mean by source is I'm grounded, my cells are vibrating, there's almost like a beam of light coming through my body, life, like the love of the natural love of life is pouring through me.
And I feel authentic, and I'm grateful to be alive. And it's a beautiful thing to be.
But when you take something like the

Kratom or opioids or anything like that, it numbs everything. It doesn't just numb the pain.
And I felt like I was in a fog, but there was a part of me that was always aware that I was in a fog and not connected to myself and knew I could be connected to myself if I chose to. So the disconnect I felt mostly was with my family and friends.
And because there's a lack of honesty of my, of my use of using the substance of why I was using the substance of what was going on that caused me to use the substance. There was just a lack of honesty and transparent transparency, especially someone like me, where I'm a leader in my community.
I'm speaking about wellness stuff all the time. It's just not a good look to be addicted to drugs, but it's important to discuss it.
And I didn't have any real support during that time. It was pretty much ultimatums like fix this or you're by yourself.
But I've always been someone that's totally down to admit where I was wrong. And at the end of the day, I was not the same person that I am without the substance, right? It totally changed the chemistry of my brain, the way I was behaving, my emotions were flaring up and it wasn't who I was.
Because disconnection is a byproduct of making less productive decisions. And when you can rally and start making slowly conscious decisions for your health that nurtures you, your friends, your family, they come along because you're taking care of yourself.
I want to ask a follow-on question about this, and I'm going to set the stage for you so you understand where I'm coming from. Last week, I was interviewing another one of Emma's friends, Sandra Matz, and she's got a new book coming out about AI and what its impact, the algorithms, et cetera, are doing to us as a society.
And we were exploring this whole concept that she grew up in this very small village in Germany, a village that only had a few hundred people in it. And everyone knew your successes, your failures, et cetera.
But you always had this feeling that people were watching out for you, that they cared for you, et cetera. And we were describing how that village, which you could think of your family unit is a village.
I grew up, I think you live in Pennsylvania. I grew up in Pennsylvania and I grew up in York and I always felt, especially York, it's not a very big town, but within that, I also grew up in a very Catholic community.
So within that community, I felt that. And now we're going into a global village where many of the actors that we're interfacing with don't have our best interest at heart.
And in fact, many of them are nefarious and are wanting to control us in certain ways. So how do you think, especially for young adults right now, this is impacting their sense of belonging and their feeling of not only how do they matter to themselves, but how they show up to others, I guess is where I'm going with it.
I live, so I live in Atlanta, Georgia now, and I live on the water and I don't know any of my neighbors and it's about 15 minutes to 20 minutes to get anywhere where there's other people.

And I've been here for about a year. So at the end of the day, this was my dream to be in the middle of nowhere with just my wife and my animals where no one else is around and just study and work out and pray and all the things.
But very quickly you realize how important human connection is and how healthy it is to be around others where you can be yourself, where you can play, where you can listen, where you can grow.

And how it can also be detrimental to your health when you have that loneliness.

Sometimes my wife is gone working for two weeks.

Sometimes I'm gone working for two weeks.

And we have to do a lot of self-work to really be able to be okay just being alone in a room with no stimulus. So I think the important thing here is everybody needs a different amount of human interaction.
Everybody needs a different texture of experiences to bring out the best version of themselves. Like for example, I love sword fighting.
Anytime any of my friends visit me, they know that they're going to get fought with a sword. And you better believe that we're going to act, we're acting out like a death scenario and it's very dramatic.
And the goal here is just to play your way into flow, be in your body and have a fun interaction without any sort of competition really involved. And I do that because it brings me a lot of joy.
So you have to, at this day and age where everyone's on their phones, people aren't going to the park anymore. You got to create the experiences that bring you joy, find out what you love, and then invite other people that you think will enjoy those things as well to that conversation.
So at the end of the day, you just got to be a creator and not a consumer. And I think that will really support people in solving their disconnection.
For example, I went this morning and I went two miles down the street. There was some sort of MMA fight studio that was open on Thursdays or something.

I knocked on the door at some guy's house. His name is Mimo.
And now we're going to get together and do some jujitsu this Thursday at 5 p.m. And I'm creating these experiences for myself because I understand that they're actually really important for my overall health and well-being.
So I can stay passionate about other things in life. Because if you're only working on one thing and you're not including the joy or the play or surrounding yourself with other like-minded people that enjoyed those things too, you're really just going to have, you could have a really beautiful life, but a lot of the times it'll take a toll on your mental health.
And I'm going to just segue this into a question that I wanted to ask you. You've been married to Kat Graham, the actress now, for a year.
And for those who aren't familiar with Kat, in addition to being an actor, she is also a big humanitarian and she has done a lot of work for the UN, specifically trying to help refugees feel seen and valued. As you've worked with her now more than that, the two of you have come together.
This whole thing I'm talking about with feeling that you belong, it's not just a US thing. This is something that people are feeling everywhere.
What have you experienced through her work along this lens? Oh, wow. That's a beautiful question.
So with her UN work, one of the biggest things that drew me to her first as a friend, second as a life partner was her sincerity and wanting to help other people. So she has a really strong balance of being able to be the coolest person in the room at Hollywood events, but speaking up and directing people's attention to things like refugees that really need some support.
And I've had the opportunity a few times to go with her when she's speaking to refugees, for example, I believe in Budapest with the UN. And the stories you hear are just so, I mean, you wouldn't even imagine the stuff that people go through.
But most importantly, the hope that they have. And she goes in there and tells their story and speaks to them as a role model and someone that understands the mindset of people that have been through similar things.
And she just does a lot of good. So my main thing is her sincerity.
I love it. It's my favorite thing.
You can feel it. You can feel someone that's actually there for others when they walk into a room.
And when I go as far as a support system, I'm just going there to keep the kids present and talk about nothing because sometimes that's all that they need. They need people to see them as human beings, not as someone that's struggling

and then help them remember to smile.

And her work is just a plus is really,

it's God's work, man.

Like you don't even, it's extraordinary.

It's very special.

Let me know if that answers your question.

It's interesting.

I told you my fiance, Corey,

I told you about her earlier,

but what I didn't

tell you is she's a nurse practitioner. She happens to work for an eye institute who does a lot of glaucoma and cataract surgery.
So many of the people she's meeting with are older adults. And oftentimes she may be the only person that they're interacting with in a given day.
And she really just cherishes those interactions because she really views it as an opportunity, not only to clear them for their surgery, but also to make them feel like they're seen and heard. And it's one of the qualities that I admire about her the most is she's an empath and she's Jewish and I think has this nurturing

quality about her that I can't tell you how many times since we've been dating, she hears how she

has saved people's lives or just made them feel better. And it's eye-opening just how a small

minute or two conversation can change the whole trajectory of a person's day, week, even life. We call those good people.
It was my highest compliments. That's a good person right there.
And it's a lost skill set to be able to be fully present with someone and listen to their story and just be there. I always say like one of the secrets to life is walking into a room and someone before any sort of financial exchange or do this because I ask you to just ask them how they're doing.
And that unlocks a whole different dimension of experience that honestly leads to connection and not disconnection. Absolutely.
Brian, I want to get back to your story and your healing journey. You describe assessing something that you call your signature frequency as a turning point in your healing journey.
What does that term mean and how can others find their signature frequency? Thank you for asking this question. It really has a significant depth to me, signature frequency, because a lot of the times when I guide this during a breath worker meditation that I'm leading, it's usually after working through emotions that people may be experiencing, limiting beliefs, tension in their body.
And then you get them into this meditative state that's vast and open.

And you ask the question, ask life to show you what your signature energy is. And I believe this is something that you experience, not something that you really discuss, but it's different from what your karmic experience is.
Your karmic experience is your present emotional state, the quality of your thought patterns throughout the day, the physical tension or flexibility or openness or contraction of the body. This is your present karmic state.
When we say signature frequency, you've done the work in softening the body, getting your breath open, processing the emotions that you're navigating in that present moment, creating a stillness within the mind. And then when you ground your energy down, there's a connection and a sense of connection to the earth.
And what that means is you can actually meditate into something higher. And then when you bring your awareness up here and you ask, what is my soul's signature energy? There is a texture of life that comes through that feels like home.
It feels like you. And your goal is to fill up your little bubble of that authentic home-like energy so you can flood your cells with that sensation.
So I never, I'm never going to say this is what your signature energy is. It's an excavation of everything that's not you into showing you what you naturally are, and then a connection to that naturalness.
And when you're speaking, breathing from that space, it's authenticity. And I think I really believe that you win the game of life when you learn how to be yourself.
I'm glad you say that because that's what this whole podcast is about. And I wrote a book last year and I opened it up by talking about, I think so many people today are living in what Henry David Thoreau called quiet desperation, meaning they find themselves stuck in this place in life and they don't know how to get out of it.
And they've become such a shell of who

they are wearing what I call is the mask of pretense, really hiding who they are because they're trying to conform instead of letting themselves shine. And I think that's exactly what you're describing.
And we live in a world that's constantly programming us. it is terrifying to think about how easy it is to desire things that you don't have and to think that you have to be better.
And really, it's always an internal journey. Any sort of discovery of happiness, it's an internal discovery, not an external accomplishment.
and the mask that you're that you speak about it's all these layers that are put on us every day

just layers and layers, and you got to peel back the layers. And it's really exciting to realize that I'm not my thoughts, I'm not my body, I'm not my achievements.
And then what are you? That's a fun thing to explore. It is.
And this is where that whole disease of disconnection I was talking about really takes root because if you're not connected to yourself, there's no way you're going to feel like others feel like you matter, or there's no way you're going to make other people feel like they matter in the same way if you don't feel like you matter to yourself. So one of the things that you're most known for is breathwork.

And as you and I were talking about before we came on the show, I first came across breathwork in kind of the early to mid nineties when I was part of a SEAL team. And we were using circle breathing and box breathing, probably more box breathing, but it was really a technique that we were using to try to reset our central nervous system so that we wouldn't panic.
And we did a lot of yoga practice, a lot of work that you wouldn't think of for elite warriors. And I remember at that time, we did a lot of training exercise with the Italian special forces, the French foreign legion and others, and none of them were using this like we were.
But for you, how did breath work help you reclaim your sense of power and presence? During that disconnection phase, I hit the books very aggressively, read everything I could find, got a bunch of certifications, still didn't figure out the thing. And I flew out this little gay man named Reese to live with me for a month to train me in yoga.
I always laugh because my guru was a drag queen. Really funny to me.
And he, I mean, he was like a master of ceremonies, right? He could just light up a room with joy within 30 seconds. And I was like, this is a skill that I want to learn.
It's like, how do you light up a room with joy in 30 seconds? This is cool. So anyways, I trained with him for about a month.
And on the last day, we went up to the mountain and we did this practice called the 10 Tibetans. And it's different physical postures with breathing to really clear out your system, right? A really deep purification tool.
By the end of it, I was in complete peace. So I had embodied state of peace.
And before that, I was just, my thoughts were keeping me up at night. I mean, it's just so severe.
You can't really explain it unless you've been there. But I went from being totally disconnected, so much anxiety to all of a sudden being in a complete state of peace.
And this is a decade ago. And from that moment forward, I was like, this is something I needed to devote my life to.
And also another thing is this little man, you remember, he's a tiny guy. He could breathe three times more than me.
Because he'd be like, inhale, I'd be like, and he'd just keep going. And I was like, what the? I was like, are you telling me this guy's three times better at breath than me? I was like, I mean, it was like three times better at the foundation of life.
So that it really inspired me to train to deepen my breath as well. I was a little competitive.
So then fast forward about five years of teaching, I experienced that chronic pain and all those injuries started flaring up. And then my breath work wasn't really cutting it anymore.
So I had to hit the books again and also really go into a beginner's mind of maybe I don't really know what

I'm doing anymore because I'm having a really hard time creating an embodied state of peace

because I'm experiencing so much pain. I'm like, how do I get rid of this pain?

Then I came across a method that I've tweaked and mastered called the emotional freedom process. And this is actually how to deal with emotional turmoil that's causing physical pain or any sort of physical symptoms.
And this is way different than what Breathwork's telling people to do where you just go into a practice for a long period of time and hope your shoulder pain dissipates. This technique, you actually go into in a safe parasympathetic way, the sensation, and then it untethers the sensation.
And then you rewire the brain that's holding that sensation in place. And it actually solves the pain, the tension, the anxiety, it solves it.
Now I'm teaching a more of an embodied breathwork that's inclusive of kind of these rewiring of the brain practices to actually solve some of these issues. Because what I realized was I was just trying to elevate my frequency so much, but not actually deal with these emotional wounds that I was carrying.
It makes me think as people set new year's goals and they look back on the failures that they've had over the past year for not achieving their goals, how much of that do you think has to deal with these emotions being shut off? Because I think it matters a lot more than people realize. The foundations matter more than anyone realizes.
Sleep, food, hydration, connection, meditation, yoga. I mean, all of these simple things.
I think people don't realize how hard it is to let go of a bad habit if you're not replacing it with good habits. I think that's the biggest thing.
And we have to find good habits that resonate with the people and what brings them joy and what feels effortless to them, not something that necessarily feels like hard work. Yeah.
It's all foundations. Well, I had an interesting conversation.
I'm not sure if you know who Susan Cain is. She's an author, wrote a great book called Quiet and then came out with another book last year called Bittersweet.
I really wanted to interview her about it because she was really going into these hard emotions we don't want to talk about. Sorrow, suffering, sadness.
And we tend to shut those things off. And this past year, I experienced them in a profound way.
I brought up my sister, but then we were also impacted with three feet of water in our house after the hurricanes and had a lot of emotional impact. And I saw just how much it completely halted a lot of the goals that I had for the year.
It was like a tale of two years for me. At the beginning of the year, I put out a book.
I feel like I'm in cloud nine. My sister dies, then the hurricane.
And it was so hard for me because I was emotionally shut off to get back into those things. And it had a ripple effect in that it started impacting what I was eating and how I was exercising and then how I was showing up to others.
And do you think that's common? Statistically, it's about 11 years. It takes someone to admit that they are experiencing a trauma from a past experience.
Statistically, PTSD, people hold onto it for so long until they actually have to figure out how to get help with it. So it's extremely common.
And I think it's about one in 10 people in the US have had are experiencing some form of post traumatic stress disorder. And what I mean by that is this the emotional symptoms are still happening six months after the actual car accident or death, etc.
So we really aren't necessarily equipped as a society to navigate emotional turmoil. And also, I don't think we're aware of the physical symptoms that can be associated with emotional turmoil, like muscle tension.
Like I said earlier, chronic pain studies show it's about 88% of people that are experiencing chronic pain. It's because of pain in the brain.
It's called neuroplastic pain. And it's the pain signals that are left on after the injury.
And you learn this skill of chronic pain in your brain. So you're in this constant pain.
And unfortunately, if you're experiencing pain inside, you're not going to behave in a fun way. Like you said earlier, if you're not loving yourself, you're not going to perceive the love from other people coming at you.
And the same thing when you're experiencing emotional distress, if you're not working with it and creating a state of homeostasis or harmony within all of your choices are going to be a by-product of that feeling. And you're not going to be really proud of that, let's say.
So I want to talk to you about biohacking. So PassionStruck is at its core an alternative health podcast.
So

we have done a lot of conversations on the subject of how do you bring down your biological age. And I've had Mark Hyman and Rhonda Patrick, Kara Fitzgerald, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, where we've explored that area of it.
But an area that I haven't really talked about is spiritual biohacking.

What's the difference? Because you've been a pioneer in this. You've led sold out talks at the biohacking conference, et cetera.
What's the difference? Thanks for asking. We actually started spiritual biohacking, my team and I.
So biohacking, I like to just call like using science and what we have available as far as markers to hack our nervous system.

Right. So it's very easy to understand nowadays how to downregulate and upregulate to get in that optimal state for optimal well-being and health.
So we mix in the science, but then what's missing is that there's a spiritual system within all of us. Think of it as energy centers, chakras, whatever it is, that is also working in the background that's then manifesting all these physical symptoms.
I like to say it's about 80% energy, 20% physical manifestation. So if you get your energy systems spinning correctly and get the debris out of them, then your ability to embody a state of health is way more effortless than if you're just trying to hack your nervous system, right? So we mix in the biohacking is a huge part of it, because if you breathe a certain direction, it's going to slow down your heart rate.
If you breathe fast, it's going to uplevel your heart rate. If you're experiencing depression, you're not going to want to do a meditation, you want to do something that's going to activate the vagus nerve, you're going to shake it out.
You're going to breathe faster, get the energy going. If you're experiencing anxiety, you want to down-regulate.
There's these key things that you need to know how to use with your breath and also your body and your mind. But then there's things that transcend the act of doing, right? That is the spiritual system in the body.
And if you don't look at both, you're not going to really be able to create the effects that you desire. And most importantly, allow life to work through you.
I think we take a full spectrum approach, mind, body, spirit of some of these things. And we're seeing many people have now the skillset of what they can control, change their lives.
It's interesting because when I think about talking to Mark Hyman about functional medicine,

which he really took from being a novel thing to now it's becoming mainstream. One of the core

aspects that I don't hear talked a lot about is spiritual health as a part of it. And yet,

I think spiritual health is one of the

things that's lacking more now than it's ever been. All you got to do is look at the declining

attendance at churches around the world. Why do you think there's been a disconnect

from the need for spiritual health with the other elements of biohacking?

I think we're really used to a faster-paced society and an accomplished-based society. We always want to figure out how we can do more and be more, but really deep healing occurs when you're able to just be.
And if you think of churches, I love churches. I've always loved church.
We'll be going to like Costa Rica or let's say Mexico and I'll walk into a church. We'll be going in Barcelona, I'll walk into a I absolutely love it because there's an intelligence in a church.
We'll be going to Costa Rica or let's say Mexico and I'll walk into a church. We'll be going in Barcelona, I'll walk into a church.
I absolutely love it because there's an intelligence in a church of how it's out, how it's designed to create spiritual experiences. There's an energy to that of devotion.
I can't personally speak to the decline of people's church experiences, but I do believe with YouTube and whatnot, spiritual experiences are accessible. And that's the thing.
It's like, if people ask for spiritual experience and they're sincere about it, it'll be produced. And that's a cool thing to really play with.
If you're listening to this and you don't know what a spiritual experience is or how to feel connected to spirit, like just sincerely ask and see. And then what will manifest is something that will be really beautiful.
I absolutely believe that. And I think that with the spiritual healing, for me, it goes hand in hand with hope and gratitude.
I find what are your thoughts on that? It's hard to have hope when you're hopeless. It's hard to have gratitude when you're trying to survive.
It's a lot of these quote unquote spiritual states of being is actually what's left over when you heal the things that are coming up for you. So if you excavate the anxiety, if you excavate the limitations, what's naturally there is the joy and the hope.
I think you can, through experiences, generate hope. You can, through breathing right now and saying, I'm grateful, generate gratitude.
But there's still going to be the thing that you're working on. And this is what's called a karmic trace.
And these karmic traces is the debris in our system that when a certain circumstances occurs, that looks like something that's happened in the past that's caused us pain, that emotion flares up. And we, our brain makes a guess on what we're experiencing and why.
And then we have an action that either strengthens that debris in our system or it suppresses it. And both of those things are less productive.
So if you're looking, I think it's important to live a spiritual life where you're actively healing the behaviors and the emotional trauma that you're experiencing to then become someone that's more peaceful. And I think peace is a beautiful North star.
In meditation, can I reach peace? Can I experience peace for a long period of time? Okay. Outside of this meditation, can I change my behaviors from things that made me, made me make me like aggressive? Can I change it from a peaceful way of responding? And then if you have the skillset to be able to shift into a peaceful state anytime that you want, then you're doing a really wonderful job.
And I believe that's like the simplest way to explain a kind of a spiritual lifestyle. Yeah.
Are you familiar with the director and producer, Louis Schwartzberg? Tell me about it. Well, he's most well-known for a Netflix show he did called Fantastic Fungi, which you might have heard of.
But if you want to watch something really profound, and I think it gets into this whole core of spiritual healing. Last year, or maybe the year before, one of the two, he did something called Gratitude Revealed.
And he did this documentary on people really expressing gratitude in different forms through different parts of the world. And it was really profound how this gratitude and how we see the moral beauty around us transforms our spiritual sense of well-being.
So I just thought it might be something for you to take a look at because I thought he did a tremendous job on it. I have this buddy named Spence, and he is the most grateful person I've ever met.
And one of his favorite things to do is go on top of a mountain and lift his arms up and just take big, deep breaths and just say, I'm grateful for life. He's just like, I'm so grateful.
And when I observed him do it the first time, I was like, that is a powerful tool. That is cool.
And when he rolls out of bed, the first thing he does is he opens his arms and he just is grateful. And I think that those little things to start the day with that is such a profound baseline.
I think when you start from a place of gratitude, it completely changes the whole approach that you have for your day. I mean, every single day I start my day, I take my dog for a walk and while I'm doing it, I incorporate meditation practice where I am really trying to put myself in one with nature and thanking the universe for another day on the planet.
And what am I going to do with it? Because we all have days where we wish we got more sleep

or we don't feel the greatest or whatever.

But what I've really found is how you approach those first moments of your day

have a cascading effect on how that day is going to go for you.

So I always just try to say, no matter what, I want to live a day of excellence because

you don't know how many you're going to get. We're going for the extraordinary.
I love it.

Exactly. Exactly.

Bryant, you are someone who has participated in mainstream media in many different ways,

from speaking to being a top model, to being an actor on Netflix. You bring a real unique lens

Thank you. in many different ways, from speaking to being a top model, to being an actor on Netflix.
You bring a real unique lens to what it means to be male and have influenced many males around the world. How do you think media representation impacts our understanding of masculinity and our emotional expression? There's a lot to this question.
I will say that if you have media credibility or if you have views, you naturally have a space to share your message. And that could be productive or not, depending on what message you're sharing, right? So someone that maybe doesn't have the proper experience can share things and then manipulate people into believing them because of the amount of views and natural position of leadership that you'll get into because of that.
I will say that in my early 20s, when I got my first 100,000 followers, it was more significant. It was more my followers gave me a false sense of pride.
And then that pride allowed me to be many different things. And then I remember I spent, as soon as I hit my pinnacle of almost a million followers, I just deleted Instagram for two years.
I was like, this is not healthy for me. And I went and furthered my studies and education and learned how to be present.
Then I was like, okay, I'll get back onto social media because I have more of a shield up and a resilience from being manipulated into thinking I have to be a certain way or do a certain thing. And I don't think people nowadays really value social followers or media as much as we think they do.
I think people can weed out inauthenticity pretty quickly. And we value people that are kind to others, that are more embodied in how they treat all beings instead of just what they show online.
And I think that really, when you're embodied in as a good person, I think that is a really powerful form of leadership where it's less dogmatic, where we're not here to tell people how to behave, but when you behave good, you're able to observe that. And especially when it happens to, you're able to replicate it to others.
Let me know if I'm answering this on point, if there's a specific part of the question, because there's a lot here to unpack. Well, where I'm trying to go with this is to establish your prominence in this space, because where I really want to go with this is I want to ask you, and then we're going to go from it.
What does it mean to you to be a strong and compassionate man in today's world? What it means to me to be a strong and compassionate man in today's world is a man that's willing to be wrong at the end of the day. Someone that doesn't know anything for certain, but is able to listen and grow in every single moment.
I think that form of leadership is really powerful. I think nowadays with people going through so much that have such unique journeys, it's impossible to assume what someone's going through.
A deep listening needs to occur for a natural evolution to take place. What I love most about myself as a leader, and at the end of the day, I am a leader.
I'm in positions of leadership all the time. And I've accepted that because I create a space for everyone to be a leader if they're open to leading.
I'm always like saying, hey, listen, you want to speak? Go ahead and speak. It's your turn.
You need something? Let me hear what you have going on. You want to go do this? Absolutely.
It's okay. And it's more of a uniting of everybody's flame.
That's the most important thing to me more than me sharing wisdom or leading itself. But for example, let's say if you notice someone's dehydrated and they're not drinking water, if you're naturally inspired to say, hey, listen, drink some water because it's good for you.
Is it for you to tell people what to do? It's not, but do you get the inspiration to invite someone to something healthier? Then do that. So there's a spiritual maze that occurs when you have knowledge because you can't just tell everybody what to do because you think it's healthy because you're going to eventually collect their karma and then have to deal with the things that they're navigating.
It's this weird thing that occurs where you just tell people the secrets all the time. For one, they're not asking for it, so it's not going to resonate with it.
And then you have to deal with thinking that you know what to do. So what happens is you create questions and dialogue that inspires people to come up with their own answers.
And then once they have their own answers, if they act on it, that's when evolution occurs. I think the new age leadership is like many of us being leaders.
Like the moms are leaders, the dads are leaders, the kids are leaders, the homeless people, the people that have homelessness on the street, their leadership, right? We can't assume what they need or that they want. And the more space we create for more voices to be heard, I think we're going to come to these simple truths that we're all more connected than we are different.
And this is how we make the world a better place. Thank you for sharing that.
And where I'm trying to go with this is you can look at a lot of people's social spaces and especially those with large audiences and how they're moving people. And I think for a lot of the male dominated ones, there's this image of dominance or a power or of those things.
And when I looked at your Instagram, one of the posts that really stood out to me is there's this picture of you with these letters written over your face. And it wasn't words of dominance.
It was words of love, peace, compassion, understanding. And when I read what you wrote on this, it was really telling.
You wrote, what is in your veins? Only a certain quantity or quality of information can get into your brain at a time. And you talked about when I changed the way I perceived the people in the environment that you were around and you got connected back to yourself, only then did your energy open up and flow.
So you started to change the way you saw the world by being attuned to your consciousness to let more beauty be into your life. And when I think where I'm going with this is you have the chance to influence people.
You have the chance to project different things, but what you're projecting there isn't the projection that we see coming out of a lot of male role models. But I think it's one that more people need to see because I think that's where true beauty and death lies.
And that's where I was really trying to go with this question. Thank you for valuing that.
It's what I value as well in leadership. The reason why I lead the way that I do is because I've known a lot of leaders in the past and the ones that have been extraordinary are the ones that have created a lot of safety for me to be myself.
And I tried the dominance thing. I was one of the top physique, not competitors, but physique models in the world.
I was a D1 wrestler. I was a bad ass mother shucker.
And it was force things into existence, be aggressive, as aggressive as you possibly can, and then achieve. And it's when you're in the healing work, you realize people heal through being held.
You realize people heal through almost feminine energy, right? So if you want to be a good leader, it's really the ability to shift states from the act of doing and achieving and also being present and sensitive and allowing what is to unfold. And that is empathy.
That is compassion. It's from the heart.
And it doesn't break someone open to be better. No, it just allows them to create safety within what they're experiencing that might be uncomfortable so that they know who they are at their core is beauty, is love, is peace.
And once you realize that, I mean, listen, I honestly, I think the aggressive masculine mentality is a little silly. I do.
I think it's, I think it's, I think it's silly. I don't think it's – I think it's special to build.
I think combativeness is good in regards to building energy. What I mean by that is disagreeing with someone.
So I think disagreeing is good. I think that's healthy.
But as far as moving the pendulum forward, it's allowing yourself to be totally available for whatever is. It's really goes to the heart and core of you emphasizing the power of presence and awareness.
And by doing so, it makes the world a better place. I think one of my favorite compliments that I get is people feel like they're at home and can be their fullest selves when they're around me.
And really, my default program is try to just be in a personal state of love for myself and then allow whatever that the people around me want to do to be okay. I'm not trying to change them.
I'm not trying to make them better. I'm not trying to perceive them as limitation.
Even when they say, I'm experiencing this, I don't have the confidence for this.

I don't see them like that. I just see them with the confidence that they want.
I see them with the love that they have. And it has a lot to do with how you perceive reality.
And I think that shines as leadership, because people are being seen in the way that of who they actually are. And I learned that actually, very similar to the quote that you brought up that I about the, the pictures on my face is I was in an environment in public.

And I remember I could feel all the insecurities of the people around me.

And I go,

cause my empathy was like really on and I could see different mannerisms. And then all of a sudden I was guessing on what they were experiencing and

projecting. And then I started saying, I'm like, well, what if this, I just see this person as someone that's happy? And then immediately all the energy shifted in my body, right? What if I just experienced this person as being confident, all the energy shifted in my body.
And I realized when I thought I was being empathetic, picking up on all these things, it was really just parts of myself that wasn't fully awakened yet. And that's a really powerful place to be because you begin to take responsibility for everything, but not, and then let go of any sort of it not being personal at all.
Like I think it is, it is now more important than ever to see the healing within the people and then allow them to choose

it themselves instead of seeing the limitations and then trying to fix them. Make sense?

It makes sense. And really the overarching thing I'm hearing you say is that too many people today

are not leaning into their weaknesses. They're not acknowledging the things that they do

when they're wrong. And I think part of this goes to, we don't like to admit our vulnerabilities.
What you're really saying is that vulnerable, it helps us break down the walls. And when we break down the walls, it helps compassion and care break through and allows us to be more empathetic is basically what I'm getting from you.

And this goes back to really Emma's research as well.

She did a study with horses where children would go up to a horse, and because horses are animals of prey,

they would all of a sudden act really scared if the kid had anxiety around the horse.

But as soon as the kid with anxiety said, hey, I have a little bit of anxiety,

the horse began to calm down because the kid was authentic. And this was a fascinating study to me.
So when we have these emotional things that arise throughout different circumstances, I think what is going on? How are you feeling? Is there anything that's keeping you from being present? And then starting a conversation from a baseline is super important. Brian, thank you for sharing that.
And the last thing I wanted to ask you about is you've been one of the first breathwork instructors to explore virtual reality in conjunction with breathwork. How do you see technology, including VR, shaping the future of mindfulness and connection? Oh, I think we're just getting started with it.
I have a lot of big plans for the VR space, especially with haptic suits and vibration. And when you're in VR, your imagination is immediately activated.
You can, in meditation, for example, I do this thing where I have people envision their guardians around them. And even the act of envisioning their guardians in a meditation creates reverence.
These icons are depicted throughout history for a reason, because they have this kind of texture of power associated with these different icons. So in VR, you can have pretty much any sort of visual, right? Accessible, any sort of color accessible.
And then now we're getting to it where you have these, you know, we're going to eventually get these haptic suits where imagine vibration on your belly and then just breathing into the vibration that you're experiencing and teaching you how to breathe deep into different parts of your body. I mean, the future is going to be absolutely incredible.
I have so many ideas for this. What I've personally done in the past is more simple where there's an orb on the screen as it expands and turns into sacred geometry, you're inhaling, you're filling yourself up with breath.
As it contracts, you exhale and it controls the pace of the breath. And that can really very quickly teach someone how to regulate their nervous system.
Well, thank you so much for sharing that. And I really appreciate you joining us today.
If someone wants to learn more about you, your work, et cetera, where are some of the best places to locate it? I'm at Bryant Wood on Instagram. Please come say hi in the DMs.
And then I have the spiritual biohacking community launching in about a week. So come join us on school.

That'd be great.

Brian, thank you so much for joining us today.

It was really an honor to have you.

Thank you, John.

I so appreciate your questions and where we're going with all of this.

And I think they're really important to discuss.

And that's a wrap.

What an extraordinary conversation with Brian Wood. His journey to deep healing is a powerful reminder that true strength isn't about suppressing emotion.

It's about embracing vulnerability, connection, and self-awareness.

Thank you. His journey to deep healing is a powerful reminder that true strength isn't about suppressing emotion.
It's about embracing vulnerability, connection, and self-awareness. Through his wisdom on breathwork, emotional healing, and redefining masculinity, Bryant has given us tools to reconnect with ourselves and live with greater authenticity.
As we wrap up, I encourage you to reflect on a few key takeaways from today's episode. Are you showing up in life as your most authentic self?

What small shifts in your mindset or habits could help you cultivate deeper inner peace?

And how can you strengthen your emotional connections and create a greater sense of belonging in your life?

If this conversation resonated with you,

please take a moment to leave a five-star rating and review.

It's one of the best ways to support the show

and help us continue bringing impactful conversations like this to the PassionStruck community. If you know someone who could benefit from Brian's insights, share this episode with them.
You never know how much one conversation can change someone's life. And for all the resources we discussed, including Brian's work, visit the show notes at passionstruck.com.
If you want to go even deeper,

be sure to watch the video version of this episode on my John R. Miles YouTube channel, where you'll find more enriching conversations just like this one.
And while you're there, hit subscribe and become part of our growing community. And if you're looking to bring these transformative insights into your organization or team, visit johnrmiles.com speaking to explore how we can work together to create intentional change.
Coming up next on PassionStruck, I'm joined by Nir Eyal, bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable. In a world filled with distractions, Nir will break down the psychology of habit formation, the hidden forces that control our focus, and how to reclaim your time and attention in an age of constant demands.
If you've ever felt like your life is being pulled in a million directions, this episode will give you the tools to take back control and design a life of deep focus and intentionality. So make sure you're subscribed and get ready for another transformative conversation.
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