288. Koa Smith: You're Facing Your Fear the Wrong Way. A Top Big-Wave Surfer's Method

29:18Gary Brecka:you brother i mean none of us is bear grills you know we're like all you need is a buck buck knife and some toothpaste i mean some floss and you can like kill a bear and you know but but yeah you know that would be so cool to actually really be able to live off the land like truly be able to take like five items and go into some terrain and live for a month. I mean, you figured out all this. You can figure out that. I think you'll be okay. Soon it'll just be landing in your lap, you know? We all spend one third of our lives sleeping. One third. That's 25 years of your life on a mattress, breathing it in, absorbing it through your skin.

29:57Gary Brecka:The U.S. mattress industry is the most chemical heavy in the entire world. 96 % of mattresses contain petroleum foams. 92 % use chemical flame retardants. You wouldn't eat that, so why would you sleep on it? The ultimate snooze is different. No petroleum, no fiberglass, no boric acid, just GOTS certified organic cotton and wool. 100 % natural Talalay latex and made in America. It's the only mattress that I back, Gary Brecca, because it meets my standards for human optimization. Sleep chemical free. Visit theultimatesnooze.com and use code ultimate for 10 % off. Now let's get to sleep. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

30:38Gary Brecka:So you go into this place and, you know, thank God for, you know, like Joe Rogan and some of these guys like DJ Shipley and some of these Navy SEALs and these foundations that have really started to bring psychedelics, you know, into the mainstream. Because I think everybody thinks about psychedelics as just going and tripping your balls off or Burning Man or partying. But the truth is that, I mean, they have real physiologic impact on our brain's ability to heal and their ability to take us out of the present and put us into a dimension where we can independently and truthfully evaluate ourselves.

31:17Gary Brecka:I've never done it, but but I've studied it and it seems like what it does is it removes your ego. Like all those protective mechanisms that you have around yourself that say why you shouldn't do something or why you should do something or why you're not good at something or why you're going to fail at something. But it also puts a bright light on who you really are and it like helps you take ownership of the things that are beautiful in your life and also the things that are not so beautiful in your life. And, you know, I had a major shift in my life when I realized how damaging my ego was and stopped caring about being wealthy and I started caring about people's well-being and then as a consequence became wealthy, which was kind of odd.

32:06Gary Brecka:But I want to hear about this because I think psychedelics are becoming more, it's such a timely podcast because they're coming more into the mainstream. Trump just signed this executive order to accelerate the testing on it. And like I was telling you on the balcony, man, I know so many people that I hold in such high regard, like meditation, that have had life-changing experiences with psychedelics. So you're in this depressive state. You don't feel a connection to the people that are around you. You know you have a good relationship with your girlfriend. You've got a great family around you.

32:42Gary Brecka:I really forgot who I was. Yeah, forgot who you were. I was in this state for so long of just like survival mode that I forgot who I was. And I think that was a big thing. But so the intention was to go up the valley. We were sitting in this most beautiful pond, me and my brother. We were naked in the sun. And we took about maybe like three grams of mushrooms, which is not like a heroic dose, like five grams. But it's it's. A rogue dose. It's enough, you know. It's enough. A hero's dose. I love that. I mean, that's what they call it, a hero's dose, because you've got to be a hero to really let go all of that and go in.

33:27Gary Brecka:You're a little soft that day, but that's okay. But so I was doing Wim Hof breathing. I was just calling it on, and it can be – it's intimidating, you know, because you're taking something. Yeah. And it's taking you and making you feel it's the unknown. It's an unknown tsunami. You don't know what's going to happen and you're not driving the ship, you know? So you have to be very okay and very like just surrender, surrender, surrender, surrender. And I was just like Wim Hofing, bringing it in, welcoming it, you know?

34:09and all of a sudden, I mean, I don't know how deep you want to go into it. I mean, let's go.

34:15Gary Brecka:Okay. Yeah. My audience wants to hear it. I remember like, I don't know if you've gone like to an indigenous place before, but like Fiji for an example, when you go to a place, a village or whatever, they hold a ceremony for you. You know, they sing, they dance, they share their food, They share their, in that situation, their kava or their ava. And they like, they have this ceremonial celebration sharing with you their culture, right? And as these, as the psilocybin started to hit, it was just like this beautiful ceremony of like beautiful colors. and my eyes are closed here. Beautiful colors, beautiful like, almost like beautiful women, like kind of coming in, like slowly entering my system.

35:11Okay. And then as it got more and more intense, all of a sudden I was in this landscape of, it was almost like, this is just going to sound, we're talking about a psychedelic trick. Okay. Yeah. Let me just be very clear.

35:28Gary Brecka:It's a judgment-free zone, brother. Yeah, okay, okay. The judgment curtain's lifted. So all of a sudden, I'm on this. My eyes are closed, and I'm on this. There's this landscape of, like, the Egyptian pyramids, okay, in the distance. And I'm kind of, like, up here on the top of one of these pyramids. And I look beside me, and there's a bench right there. And two of these large light beings, like, they just look like the sun. They're just here appeared next to me. And in a voice that was very vibrational said, sit down, sit down, like demanding. It's like, oh, fuck. Okay. And sit down. And it, it ended up taking me back to my childhood, who I was when I was five years old, that, that like joyous, just so excited about life, surfing, hanging with my friends, just so in love with life.

36:30And it reminded me in a voice that was pretty intense, like Koa, like this is who you were. You're a good person. You're here to do good things. Like you are loved. You are just and it started getting so intense. you know what to do you have all the tools you just got to apply them and all of a sudden there was like this explosion in my heart wow my heart just went boom and that sensation went throughout my whole body and I could feel again so that numbness of not being able to feel any of those emotions just bathed my and went through my exploded through my whole body Wow. And after that experience, it was very, it gave me very clear instructions in which I followed that healed my head injury.

37:29So the instructions were like your diet. There's no, no room for cheating.

37:43caffeine like no caffeine no no stimulants so nothing that's gonna affect your natural energy levels because you are on a healing path you need to know where your baseline is and

37:57Gary Brecka:you need to slowly slowly grow that baseline what i found with my head injury is it wasn't like a knee injury where you can kind of feel your knee and be like i could do a squat you know that doesn't hurt that bad. With the head injury, you don't really know. Like some days you feel good, you'll go for a run. And then at the end of the run, you're like, oh shit, I went way too far. And you're in your bed for the next week. So yeah, it was like breath work, meditation, journaling, ocean time, forest time, very clean diet, sleep. Like don't do anything that you don't want to do like don't go to the barbecue because you're invited like take care of yourself and really like own your situation so wow i applied that such a metaphor for life man so many people think that self-care is selfish um you know they develop something called caregiver syndrome just constantly putting the needs of everybody else before the needs themselves and one of them is you know socially like i know my friends will have a better time if i go out with them so even though i don't want to go i'm going to go so they have a better time it's like you just sort of keep giving yourself away it's like those those those those withdrawals from the account without any deposits so it's i mean that's really good advice and came from somewhere um but at the time that you needed it the most for sure so you just heated it because this is such a uh surreal experience yeah and um that like numbness and depression um disappeared i never felt that again and after that i was i was so happy like it was pretty crazy literally coming out of those woods that with your brother 100 100 your brother noticed it right away too 100 dude you're different Yeah.

39:52And I was just happy. I was inspired. I was reconnecting, reconnected with myself. Could have been a glitch. But when I went back to civilization, my face ID didn't recognize me. Could have been a glitch. I don't know. But we'll add that to the story. And then I was surfing in the next month. And then I ended up two months later getting a crazy wave at Pipeline. And I just had been healing ever since following that journey.

40:20Gary Brecka:Was that the one where you put the GoPro camera in your mouth? I mean, I do that. I do that a lot. But there was one, like, famous 29-second wave. No, that was in Namibia in South Africa. Okay, yeah. Yeah, I read about that. That was wild. Yeah, I mean, and I think another one that's interesting is, like, I was always asking people's opinion on how I can heal. What can I do? What can I not do? And then in the end, it was just, like, just trust yourself. trust that voice and do it you know because people don't know what you're going through i mean obviously if we're talking to you yeah that helps for sure yeah there's so many people if you ever hit your head again you're gonna be a vegetable don't surf anymore yeah i'm just like oh what like don't tell me that yeah yeah exactly and that probably framed a lot in fact that probably drove a lot of the depressive state that you have because basically what they said is don't be who you are for the rest of your life yeah and i mean when you sort of reframe that conversation i mean you take away what's actually given you so much life and i don't mean from an egotistical standpoint where people are looking at you like oh my god look how great surfer you are but just you you don't reach that level without having a love for what you're doing and so it's not what you do it's who you are yeah so someone told you you're not that person anymore yeah then who am i I thought I knew, but...

41:47Gary Brecka:Yeah. Yeah. So you really credit that journey with a total pivot and change in direction in your life. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. That is so analogous to so many stories that I hear. You know, I don't know that I've ever actually heard someone in a deep state of struggling with drug addiction, alcohol addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression anxiety uh ruminating thoughts that hasn't gone on a similar journey and had a just a profound experience is what you're saying yeah yeah i mean it's such an amazing tool and and to me like i've i've i've um since kind of went down that path of psychedelics experiencing ayahuasca and like different different psychedelics because i was like if that healed me maybe this is my path of you know just experiment experiencing these different experiences and when you do these experiences you just feel like you're like taking a vacation and just talking to the creator and it feels so natural when you're doing it it's just like you weren't freaked out you weren't scared you weren't like make this stop yeah yes potentially you know it's it's not easy like it shows you stuff that's disgusting and shows you stuff that's godly and beautiful but in the end it makes you feel like you're a part of this all that connection you know you really they were all connected yeah you realize that you're a part of it all yeah and i feel like that's one of the the biggest things with humanity right now is they're not feeling the connection and they're so caught up in this right here and that the way they look, their job, how much money, matter, you know, all of this.

43:44And they're not connected to what's beyond. Source. What's beyond. They're not connecting to source. And that can come to you in any religion. It can come to you in whatever you want to call it. But it's there. And if you just spend time connecting with it, your life gets a lot easier. because then all of a sudden you realize that it's all fucking good.

44:09Gary Brecka:Yeah. You can't really, like, it's going to be all right. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. You know, years ago I had a vacation. I took my kids on an extreme vacation in Costa Rica. An extreme vacation? Yeah. Oh, I like that. Yeah, so it was like 10 days. My sons loved it. My daughter hated it. but we did like rappelling, whitewater rafting, canyoneering, spelunking. We did everything that was dangerous in Costa Rica for days. And I had a speaking engagement in Miami and I had to leave the jungle and fly back to Miami before the family left. And I landed and it was actually this$100 million mastermind event at Live Nightclub during the day.

44:54Gary Brecka:I never forget I woke up in the jungle in Costa Rica and at like 5, 6 o 'clock at night I was walking into Live Nightclub and it felt so surreal like this is all just fake this is just this is a distraction this is all meant to distract us like I had one of those very weird like I wanted to get back to the jungle like I wanted to go back so bad just get back on the plane and I remember that experience and I think I guess that's as close as I've had to a psychedelic experience, but I know what you mean when you look at the natural world and somehow you've reframed it from this experience. So you look at life completely differently after that.

45:37Gary Brecka:You know, I'm all about optimizing performance. And lately I've been using the ion weighted vest during my workouts and it's been a game changer. It isn't your average weighted vest. It's designed to fit like a second skin, activating your core, improving blood flow, and even helping you with recovery while you train. What I love most is that the weight is perfectly distributed. It doesn't pull on your shoulders or throw off your alignment. Whether I'm doing strength training or cardio or just taking a walk, I'm burning more calories, building muscle and pushing my endurance even further. If you're serious about leveling up your training and unlocking your full potential, check out the Ion Weighted Vest at iongear.com.

46:16Gary Brecka:That's A-I-O-N gear.com. And you can use code ULTIMATE for 10 % off and start training smarter today. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. Yeah, and I think that's where I really enjoy meditation nowadays. People are like, oh, you are a big mushroom guy. You probably just eat mushrooms all the time. Yeah, you trip your way through life. Yeah, let's go eat some mushrooms. I'm like, no. If I'm doing it, I'm going all in, and it's probably like once every three years now. You know, but for me, meditation and going really deep takes me to that realm. But like I said before about like the insights you get, the insights become very clean and clear where when you do psychedelics, it's a tool that like if it if you need it, it'll it'll show you it.

47:15But you can also get there and it's a lot more mellow with meditation. And like you're driving the ship when you're meditating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If stuff gets too hot, oh, I'm back, you know. Yeah, yeah. So I think that's an important engagement that I'd like to tell is like psychedelics are there and it's a very powerful tool. If you need it, use it. But also there's you can get there through meditation, but it takes a lot more self-realization, a lot of facing yourself a lot of surrendering letting go dealing with with your stuff and then

47:48Gary Brecka:you can get there right there so so you know getting rid of the stimulants getting rid of the crappy food um now you're on this journey uh with parazanthine um parazanthine journey well i mean it's part of your journey right yeah no for sure great um and which is a caffeine metabolite and I've had some experience with it before, but it actually gives the same kind of feeling as caffeine without jitters, without crashes. Was that because of this experience that you had where you're like, I'm going to get all of these stimulants out of my life, fix my diet? Yeah, I think slightly like that's what started the path.

48:35but I think what you said about your experience coming back to reality from the jungle and realizing like all the distractions I think nowadays we've been fed that we're just misled is is what we've been we can't trust like oh well I thought this was good for you oh that gives you cancer oh I thought this was good for you nope that doesn't help you at all yeah and I mean being a professional surfer like I mean it's kind of funny being a professional surfer like you got to do what it takes to make money and a lot of people are sponsored by red bull and monster and like all these energy drinks and i was sponsored by celsius at the time and then all of a sudden

49:15Gary Brecka:i realized i was like i can't i don't want to be a part of this anymore yeah like i don't want to all the hard work i do all the self work i do in the training and the diet and all these sacrifices I'm not going to be like oh and I drink Celsius and that's why I feel so good so that was part of it why I got introduced to Gianni he saw one of my mud water documentaries where I talked about this whole experience and he wanted to start an electrolyte energy drink but a natural one but a natural, exactly, powered by parazanthine to help people get the right energy, the energy that is going to make you feel connected and focused and clear, not just like, which is fun sometimes.

50:10Gary Brecka:That's why I've always hated the pre-workouts, like C4 and the high, like Mao Wong and caffeine and like the NO2 boosters. I mean, I took them years, years ago and like coming out of college and like I always felt terrible on them. Maybe. Yeah, you're kind of like, this is what successful people are taking? Yeah, exactly. This is working for them? To do this to succeed, yeah. But I think there's an age of truth and like being able to provide, I feel like perizanthine is going to be like the future, right? It's like when I take it, I feel so clear. I feel so motivated. And it helps me tap into that like creative flow state more where other caffeines will out jitter me and then almost like I'm just anxious and afraid to do anything.

50:59Right. So, yeah, it's been a really fun journey and hearing the feedback of it, of getting people off of those crazy energy drinks and realizing like, oh, I can actually tap into my own energy. This makes me feel like so clear and so good. Yeah. I mean, we're all here. We're playing the game. We have to make money somehow to fund this life. and if I can do it in a way that's like bringing good to humanity,

51:27Gary Brecka:it's the way I want to do it. I love it. So tell me about your brand journeys now that you're on because I know you've got a lot of things going right now, but it's nice to know the story that leads to the brands because I think most people, you know, everybody's a capitalist at the end of the day, right? I mean, we have to fund our lifestyle like you said. We need our hyperbaric chamber, you know, in our house. Yeah. That's true. But if we can get it from leading people to feeling better and more connected, then that's the problem. I think I've ever done a podcast like this. There we go. My team's like, you don't have shoes on.

52:04Gary Brecka:Like, you just killed the brand right there. Censor the toes. Gorgeous toes. That's for the VIPs. My wife's going to be like, you did not just put your toes on the podcast. Like, she's going to kill me. Oh, my gosh. But, yeah, I mean, like I said with my brothers, we were kind of on the forefront of the, or we were healthy. We were watching our diet at a very young age. Yeah, the sunlight, you're exercising, you're breathing whether you want it or not. I mean, like, you know, when you're surfing, you're almost doing like a Wim Hof style of breathing anyway. We also live in Hawaii, which is like the most natural environment.

52:41We're surfing, we're so healthy. I think it really started hitting us when we started living in places, other places in california and this where our natural routine wasn't giving us all of this and we weren't feeling super strong and healthy and powerful so then we had to start learning how how to do it on the road you know what i mean but um one of the first endeavors my brothers and i and um our good friend koa rothman started a little cafe on the north shore of Oahu. It was just like healthy smoothie bowls, bullet coffees from Laird Hamilton, basically. And that has been a 10-year process now.

53:25We have five locations on Oahu, and then we just franchised. We sold 13 districts in California. So it's getting to the point that it's growing, and it's turning into something, and it's kind of scary,

53:38Gary Brecka:and it's really, really cool. But the goal with that was just, you know, when we go to a store and it's getting easier nowadays, but 10 years ago, if you're not eating at home, you're not really getting a good meal, right? That's so true. It's a little easier nowadays. A little bit easier now, but still, yeah. But the goal is, you know, creating a cafe, it's seed oil free. It's, you know, it's got good fruit, good coffees, good environment, just like happy, positive vibes. Like it's yellow, it's bright, it's like super positive affirmations everywhere. Yeah. So that's been a cool process. Yeah.

54:18Gary Brecka:And tell me about the parazanthine drink. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I think, yeah, like I said, wanting to create something that's healthy and just available for people. It's called Foreign Waters. Foreign Waters? Foreign Waters. Yeah. and it's an electrolyte energy drink. We combine like, yeah, hydration, vitamins, parazanthine, minerals. Right now it's just in a packet. You put it in your water. We're coming out with four new flavors right now. You can't have to fire me up on some. I hope there's some in that bag for me. Oh, we brought you, yeah. Okay, good. I would love to hear what you think about.

55:00I will be the judge of this. Exactly, yeah. I mean, I'd be stoked to hear what you think about the ingredients. I mean, we have an excellent team and we're trying to bring like really high quality ingredients, which is hard because people don't want to pay a lot of money for things, it turns out.

55:16Gary Brecka:Yeah. But, you know, I love these passion projects that turn, you know, passion turned entrepreneurialism, you know. You know, I'm a capitalist too. And I really wish the biggest, most profitable, impactful brands in the world were in service to humanity. You know, they really cared about what was going into the bodies that they're serving instead of the chemicals and synthetics and pharmaceuticals. I mean, you can make money doing that too. But there's no reason to not find a path to make a better, you know, better place for humanity and be a capitalist at the same time. One is not evil. The love of money is the root of all evil, not money.

55:55Yeah.

55:55Gary Brecka:And it sounds like your journey really shaped your entrepreneurial path. 100%, yeah. And, you know, you've had a lot of struggles and overcome a lot of things, especially going from being such a highly regarded and performing professional to then, you know, essentially being told that you're not who you are anymore. Coming back from that, it's no surprise to me that you've reframed that journey. And, I mean, I think you're going to be really successful in all these. I just feel it. Appreciate it. Yeah. But so how does my audience, if they want to know more about you, how do they find you? Yeah, mostly active on social media.

56:35Koa Smith on Instagram. It's Koa Smith on YouTube and TikTok.

56:41Gary Brecka:Okay. And, yeah, we're playing that game. Yeah. You got to play that game, right? Yeah. But I bring a lot of, like, my wisdom and insights that I learned from the ocean um try to just pepper that through my um entire social media i have my own school it's called the way of the surfer wow where i'm starting to like i'm starting to try to put all these things that i've learned that um that helped me just feel connected and good like guided breath works um simple guided diet like i'm just what does your diet look like like yeah um just whole foods yeah basically i mean i'm to the point where i feel so strong that if i whoa if i have chips it's not gonna like destroy me right if i eat bread i'm gonna be okay right there was a time though where i was like so sensitive to everything right but a lot of grass-fed steak i mean i followed paul saladino's program for like six months and i felt the strongest best i've ever felt.

57:49I feel like it healed a lot for me, but now it's like a little bit more balanced with a lot of fruit, a lot of, um, not a lot of vegetables, but sweet potatoes, a little bit veggies, a lot of steak.

58:03Gary Brecka:Yeah. No, that's great. I mean, it sounds very much the way that, that I, so I, I, I wind down all my podcasts by asking my guests the same question. Um, and there's no right or wrong answer to this question, but what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? To be an ultimate human, I feel like the pursuit of being an ultimate human makes you an ultimate human. Where you are constantly open to new potentials. You're constantly exploring your own potential. And you're not letting fear, like, restrain you in this life. I don't know if that's a word. but you know what I mean. It is, yeah. Yeah, I mean, we talked about how fear narrows our ability to make decisions.

58:53Yeah.

58:54Gary Brecka:You know, I think it makes everything worse and there's no way to go through life without it, so we've got to figure out ways to manage it. Yeah. And harness it. Thanks to people like you, we're going to, in the next five to 10 years, we're going to learn what an unlimited human is. Yeah. And like, what are we capable of? and I think that's the mission right now. It's like if we were truly trusting, unlimited, doing all the right things and aligned, what are we capable of? And I mean, I go back to like the ancient Hawaiians and the way that they lived. They were like perfectly in balance with life and a lot of cultures had psychedelics in it.

59:47Ancient Hawaiians, I think they had one light psychedelic, but they also had kava, which would like relax them a little bit. But they were so connected and they were, there's stories of like people being able to communicate from island to island with telepathy. and like there's these this next level of connection and human ability that becomes accessible when you're when you are living in that natural flow so i'm interested to see in the next like 10 years what we all discover of like what is an unlimited human ultimate human that's great

1:00:27Gary Brecka:man that's maybe one of the best answers i've gotten on my podcast thank you koa thank you for coming on the ultimate human podcast man you're a legend thank you um i think your story is going to resonate a lot with my audience um and until next time guys that's just science