Bryan Osuna | The Power of Intuition

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:00:01]:

Welcome back, everybody, to the Weird and Strong podcast. This episode was a long time coming, and very special to me, we've got my brother Brian Osuna on the show. We talk all about his background, from collegiate wrestler to becoming an inventor to now working in the sound healing space, and all of the exciting things that come with that and all of the side stories that we get into this whole podcast. I'm excited for you to listen. So without further delay, let's get weird, folks. Welcome, Brian Osuna to the weird and strong podcast. How are you doing today, brother?

Bryan Osuna [00:00:39]:

Feeling great, man. Feeling alive, as you got to witness a little bit thriving in the midst of the chaos, which is being a dad to two young boys and feeling good about it, man. Feeling resourced. And I'm feeling energized about talking to you today.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:00:56]:

Oh, yeah, I'm excited for this. It's been a moment since we've been able to reconnect, and so it's great to see you, great to hear your voice. And I have a weird question for you. Are you ready?

Bryan Osuna [00:01:07]:

I'm ready.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:01:10]:

Yeah. I was considering this for so long, of which question do I ask Brian? And we're going to go back to an oldie but a goodie, which I love, is a quesadilla, a grilled cheese sandwich? No. Okay. Why?

Bryan Osuna [00:01:32]:

Well, for me, it comes down to the essence and the experience of a grilled cheese sandwich versus a quesadilla. Okay. And also, I guess part of it is a personal answer because to me, a grilled cheese sandwich is more of like a wholesome kind of like, rainy day food that your mom would make you. But the big differentiating factor for me is the bread. Right?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:09]:

Okay.

Bryan Osuna [00:02:10]:

Like, the experience of the bread really makes the grilled cheese sandwich a grilled cheese sandwich.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:16]:

So, like, the thickness of it, the fluffy yeah, got it.

Bryan Osuna [00:02:19]:

The butter slathered on it, and there's some crunchiness to it. There can be crunchiness to a quesadilla, of course, but there's something about the experience of the bread that my brain just goes in, my spirit goes no. Quesadilla is very different.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:02:36]:

Okay.

Bryan Osuna [00:02:36]:

And for me, quesadilla is like in college, it was like my go to after party food. Just put anything you can put in a tortilla with melted cheese. Call it a quesadilla. Sometimes it turns into a burrito. But yeah, what it boils down to is the experience of the bread. Totally different. Totally different foods.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:03:00]:

All right. Yeah. So you're saying the experience is what drives it more so than the structure for me, but yeah, that's cool. It's always an interesting exploration of what people think.

Bryan Osuna [00:03:16]:

I'm curious, what's the tally in terms of what people have said about this question?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:03:25]:

It's been primarily no.

Bryan Osuna [00:03:28]:

Okay.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:03:29]:

The no's are in the majority of that, and also some people have walked themselves through it. Well, structurally, it's got some similarities where a tortilla can be wheat based. It's breadish or it's a type of bread. It's done on a flat top grill. It's got cheese in it. I could see where there could be a confusion of if we had to break it down to its structural elements, that they are very similar in a lot of ways.

Bryan Osuna [00:04:06]:

I say we stage a debate.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:04:08]:

Stage a debate? Yeah. We'll take over this hot dog sandwich question, and we're going to go into quesadillas.

Bryan Osuna [00:04:18]:

We got to bring in a chef that specializes in quesadillas and a chef that specializes in grilled cheese sandwiches, and we got to eat them live. And then we got to have a heated debate.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:04:33]:

Yeah. And then you'll have a weirdo like me that will come into it and say, well, it could be a sandwich or it could be a grilled cheese sandwich, but it doesn't matter because they're both salads.

Bryan Osuna [00:04:44]:

Perfect. What is a salad? A salad. Can we define a salad depending on.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:04:50]:

Which definition that you go based off of? One of the definitions in Miriam Webster particularly is that it is an incongruous. Yeah, we well, so there's an entire GitHub project out there called critical salad theory or just salad theory of looking at how salady something is. Is it a true salad? Is it a hyper Saladoid, or is it a little more soupy? Right. They've created an equation to tell how much of a salad something is based off of the number of ingredients and the number of those ingredients. So if you have a lot of leaves of lettuce and a couple of croutons, it comes out to being fairly high on the salad quotient.

Bryan Osuna [00:05:44]:

Got it. So you're saying most atheists would say that the universe is a salad.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:05:52]:

I don't know if most probably the stark minority that would say that the.

Bryan Osuna [00:05:57]:

Universe is valid by definition.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:06:00]:

Yeah. If we would take that light of thought, then yes.

Bryan Osuna [00:06:07]:

Who made the salad? You got to ask the hard questions, Jeremy.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:06:17]:

A self aware salad.

Bryan Osuna [00:06:21]:

Self organizing.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:06:22]:

Yeah, exactly. Well, we've talked a little bit about food, which is one of my favorite topics, but we're going to talk more about you, Brian, and we talk about all the things that are unconventional and weird about individuals. You have a very interesting, like, I'm very interested in your path as a person of all of the different types of roles that you have fulfilled, and that, as you described, that you're very much multidimensional of being able to shift in between these roles very well. So tell us a little bit about where did you get your start coming out of high school?

Bryan Osuna [00:07:03]:

My start?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:07:05]:

Yeah.

Bryan Osuna [00:07:05]:

Well, what specifically about my start? Do you just want to hear?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:07:12]:

Yeah. What was your driver right out of high school? Where were you going towards? What was the start of adult Brian's life like?

Bryan Osuna [00:07:23]:

Yeah. Well, on the know, I was still all in on wrestling. I got a scholarship to wrestle at UC Davis which is a school in Sacramento County in California. But I would say underneath the hood, I was really starting to realize that there was a lot more to life to explore. And though I didn't have a lot of healthy guidance and example in that moment to guide me in terms of how to explore that healthfully, it was the way that my path took me. And so going into college, I kind of went full party mode and started to explore those aspects and parts of me that didn't really get a lot of attention and nurturing in high school or before. I guess the curious parts of me that wanted to explore relationships, women, intimacy, having fun in different various ways and just kind of following what was alive in the moment versus just being head down, grinding it out on just one sole focus, which was athletics. Specifically wrestling.

Bryan Osuna [00:08:57]:

And so college was a messy, beautiful, wild time for me. I did end up wrestling five years in college, so I red shirted, and I had a blast, man. My body was breaking down from a combination of 15 years of wrestling and then not resting enough. We talked a little bit about you're from North Dakota. North Dakota is a very well recognized landmark in the wrestling world because that's where the freestyle and Greco Roman Nationals happen. But I remember one specific moment where I had just returned back from Nationals, and I think it was like three or four days later, I was in the wrestling room training already, and we had no I was back in high school. Calvary Chapel alumni, he just saw me in the room. He's like, dude, go home and rest or live your life or something.

Bryan Osuna [00:10:09]:

And I was like, yeah, whatever, man. I got to do this wrestling thing. But that stuck with me remembering that years later about the importance of rest and balance. Even if you are laser focused, dialed in on something that is so important in your life, in the long run, if you want to keep doing that thing, if you want to feel alive and imbalanced in your life, you got to take those breaks and you got to tend to those other parts. And I learned that the hard and slow way bursting into flames and kind of hitting rock bottom after college and then slowly, over time, over the span of 14 or so years, really starting to learn what it's like. To be committed to being devoted, to being laser focused, but having balance and taking care of and nurturing all parts of you along the way. And so I'll pause there for questions or anything you want to double click on because, of course, my journey continues and gets even more interesting after college. But I'll pause there for you to yeah.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:11:28]:

So in remarking this moment from this alumni of go live your life, how long did it take for that lesson to finally because you remember it all these years later? How long did it take for that lesson to become present for you or for you to really notice it and say, I might as well give that a try?

Bryan Osuna [00:11:53]:

Well, I think I explored it in a way in college, right. Because I did put time, energy, and attention into other things. It just wasn't necessarily healthy from a physical standpoint. I think I really unleashed the floodgates of interests and curiosity and allowing parts of me to explore and express. Like I said, I didn't have a real healthy example or guide in that time. But I think, in a way, it was healthy exploring what I explored. I just think to the extent and I guess the intensity in which I explored partying relationships, having other hobbies and things in my life, I think I just went way too hard into all of it at once. And so I think, in a way, what it did is it gave me permission to be like, all right, there's more to life here than wrestling, but I had to kind of figure it out in the hard way.

Bryan Osuna [00:13:08]:

And then I don't think it really landed as to what did he actually mean of take care of yourself after going super hard. An analogy that I love now is living your life like a lion, right? Of, like, go 110% and then rest, like, full rest mode, right? Go all in. I don't think we're designed to live life like lions all the time, but to have that lion mode, I think is a superpower, and it does give you the ability to accomplish and to live in balance in life. Right. I've recently started reading an older book that kind of illuminated this whole idea of why we're kind of slowly killing ourself and why chronic disease is on the rise is because we have the ability to stress ourselves out psychologically. Right. This book called? I think it's called Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers. It was written in, I think, the 80s.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:14:16]:

Yeah, that's a familiar title, and I've heard it referenced many times. Yeah.

Bryan Osuna [00:14:21]:

And it was a real seminal, pivotal piece in the world of psychology because it really illuminated that. Oh, wow. We have this double edged sword, our ability to really focus in and have a heightened sense of urgency and effort towards something. But we have a very poor ability to turn off the stress response. Right. And this fight or flight response automatically kicks on for us. And if we haven't practiced turning it off, if we can't register, like, oh, we don't actually need to fight or run away from something, then we get fixated in this state of stress. And so I don't remember where I was going with all of this, but something I really started to learn after college is, like, learning to be intense and then to really shift down and to rest and just be present with other things in life that aren't so intense.

Bryan Osuna [00:15:36]:

The visual of the cats just laying under the tree like lounging and stretching and yawning and acting like they don't give a fuck about anything for long periods of the day, and then it's time to go hunt. All right, let's go. Let's flip the switch. Right?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:15:55]:

Yeah.

Bryan Osuna [00:15:56]:

And so that's just one aspect of myself I've really valued and developed, is to have that on and off switch, but really being able to turn it off and to come into a state of relaxation and rest, what's that looked.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:16:13]:

Like of learning to do that. And how does that look, not only from a modern lifestyle perspective, but how does that look for you now as a dad, to be able to find those switches when you may not necessarily be able to turn them on and off fully at your decision or fully on your timeline?

Bryan Osuna [00:16:36]:

Yeah, well, when it comes down to it, the switch has to be an internal one. It has to be, at least for me and for someone who still has a lot going on in their life, a lot of responsibilities that they're committed to, that they're devoted to, that still require action and attention, such as kids. For me, the process we're taught the world has taught us, and this is changing, but historically, in the past, the world has taught us that rest and relaxation has to be like going somewhere on vacation and your environment being the full dictator of what that means and what that looks like. And I argue it's the exact opposite. It's what your internal landscape and what's going on under the hood. Right? So being able to regulate your nervous system, being able to understand what's going on in your mind, this is no secret to you being able to understand what stories, what beliefs, what patterns are kind of running here and what's coming up. Am I being triggered here by something? Is something externally stimulating a trigger for me? Am I running a habit pattern or story or belief that's causing me to get stressed out? But more importantly, what's my nervous system doing, right? I can be running around, cleaning up, making sure my kids aren't killing themselves and destroying the house, but I can actually be in a state of internal harmony, in a way. Right.

Bryan Osuna [00:18:27]:

My body's in action, but I don't feel this sense of fight or flight, right?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:18:32]:

Yeah.

Bryan Osuna [00:18:33]:

And I can be the opposite. I can be laying on the couch. The house can be as still as possible. The kids can be sleeping. But underneath, I'm stressing myself being like, oh, man, this is terrible. Why am I here? I'm not getting anything done. And so to just have that internal awareness and those internal switches, to be able to switch, to be able to regulate my nervous system, obviously, using breath. Initially, breath was big for me.

Bryan Osuna [00:19:04]:

It's become a little less now for me, just the way I hold my body and then feeling tension patterns in my body are probably the biggest thing. Right. Notice how a contracted shape or state of my body, as well as muscular contraction and tension and then just noticing where my heart rate is at. I've developed the ability to just kind of take a moment to just down regulate and kind of shift gears internally, but a lot of it's mental as well just quieting the mind. In a way, it's the same as parenting a toddler. But internally, when the chaos like those really old patterns and parts of me that have learned that have kind of staged stressed out or kind of like getting triggered and riled up, it's the same process as parenting an emotional toddler, but just parenting those internal parts, like, hey, it's okay. We're good. We got this.

Bryan Osuna [00:20:17]:

And just kind of like giving them a little internal hug and noticing how things can shift and regulate internally.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:20:25]:

Yeah, we get those parts that jump on the hamster wheel in our head and start running us, seeing how fast they can run and for how long. Something that was interesting as you're talking about all of this, of like I'd come across this I'd seen this little factoid or this little observation before, but it's come up again and been really interesting that we rest for about 42% of our lives and many people will see that and go, well, that's a lot. 42% of my entire life. So if I live to 100 years old, 42 years of it is rest. What about that could be freeing in that regard of like, I'm supposed to be resting, I'm not supposed to be trying to running the hamster wheel physically. We like to imagine that we can outsmart our own biology, right? No, not at all. Not even close. Of being able to say, well, I can because if people could take a pill to not sleep, they have these.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:21:39]:

But if they could take a pill to not sleep and still get the effect of it, it would be the most widely available. Like everybody would take it because it allows them to live. Everything from either an observation for people or for yourself of like, what is that? What what is a primary driver of this lack of wanting to rest? In your experience or in your opinion?

Bryan Osuna [00:22:07]:

That's a really great question. Yeah, I would say that it's the deepest seated or rooted beliefs as well as wounds. Right. When I say wounds, these are emotional wounds. Spiritual, maybe most of them. I wouldn't say all, but most happen at a young age. Right. Based on what we were taught, what we were given or not given in terms of our needs and wants, things that were directly said or indirectly said to us.

Bryan Osuna [00:22:50]:

These things largely shape our beliefs, what we believe about ourselves and what we believe about the world and how we relate to it. The biggest limiting belief, and I would say core wound for me that constantly pushed me to always be in action is that I am not loved and lovable unless I'm performing and performing well. Right. And so I had this constant drive and kind of sometimes smoldering, sometimes bright burning fire, but that was always there pushing me to perform, to succeed. And it didn't register probably until around 30, late 30s, late 20s, maybe 30, that it's all coming from this faulty belief that unless I'm performing at a world class level at something, whether that's athletics, education, business, whatever, or whatever the task I'm doing, that I'm not loved. Yeah. And after true basic physical needs, air, water, food right. For a young child, love and emotional care and attention, nurturing is what they need the most.

Bryan Osuna [00:24:34]:

Right. Almost to the point that children food almost starts to become less and less important if a child doesn't really get nurtured at that emotional level. Right. We could explore this topic in depth. And there's been research and studies showing that children who do not receive love and nurturing in that way physically don't actually develop and grow. Right?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:25:07]:

Yeah.

Bryan Osuna [00:25:08]:

And we can look at that impacts all of their lives. But for me, the main thing that it did was it just made me so myopically focused on performing that I couldn't slow down because subconsciously that would mean that I would not get as much love and attention.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:25:31]:

If there's no achievement, there's no love, there's no reward, there's no reason to live. If we put it the starkest way.

Bryan Osuna [00:25:40]:

Possible, there's no place for me in the world. Right. And that's a branch or articulation. Right. I struggled with loneliness and feeling like I didn't belong in this world. I think it was a branch or articulation of the same core wound. But yeah, for me there was this belief that if I wasn't performing at a high level, there's no place for me. Like the world didn't need me, it didn't value me.

Bryan Osuna [00:26:10]:

So it's the only place I really felt where I let myself feel valued.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:26:15]:

So a podcast that I was listening to on some recent travels highlighted something that you're talking about in a different way of looking at where that took you into this drive towards achievement and a continual drive to keep doing and to keep going. Whereas I can imagine for a lot of people who have that similar core wound or this component of themselves can actually fall to the other side of it. So we get this very extreme all or nothing. And what I'm going towards with this is I believe it was Peter Tia had mentioned this on a podcast of things like addiction to drugs, alcohol, food, pornography, whatever substance or activity you want to put into that, and to a point that it takes you into decrepitude, especially if that results in deaths, that these are diseases and deaths of despair. And as you were talking about this, on the other side of the achievement, I was like that was bringing up this idea of what can do for any of us who have this component to ourselves, of driving towards one way or another, of this idea of feeling alone in despair and driving. So for you, of looking at this for yourself, was there a major turning point that allowed you to identify this and make a change? What did that look like for you?

Bryan Osuna [00:28:04]:

Great question. First of all, props to you for using a word I've never heard. Decrepitude. Maybe I've heard it, but now I've really heard it.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:28:14]:

Yeah, now you're going to hear it everywhere because you're a you're keyed up towards it.

Bryan Osuna [00:28:24]:

That's a great question. And I don't know for this specific, I guess, path of healing in my life, there wasn't so much a pivotal moment. I do know, going to my first men's retreat in I don't want to screw this up. It was probably 2018 or 19. I think it might have been late 2018. And first of all, just getting the chance to really connect with people and understand that this is actually a very common feeling that you're feeling. This is common. You're not alone in feeling this.

Bryan Osuna [00:29:16]:

Right. Which is paradoxical, because it's like, well, I feel so alone, and surely I'm the outcast or outlier here, but it's like, actually, no, the majority of men are feeling something similar to what you're feeling. Right. When we're really honest about what we're going through.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:29:36]:

And the irony of all of these men, if you get them all in a room all feeling alone together.

Bryan Osuna [00:29:42]:

Yeah, right. Here we are alone together. And the process largely was catalyzed by learning to to just feel the depths of all of the feelings and emotions that were there and never fully felt and acknowledged over the decades. Right. I truly believe that all of our parents did the best they could, given the circumstances, and they were on the path that their soul chose to live. And I fully embraced that. But I wasn't given a lot of examples or what I felt was safety to express my emotions and feel my feelings completely. And so decades of not feeling my emotions fully and in fact, feeling, I guess, ashamed for having these deep, intense emotions.

Bryan Osuna [00:30:58]:

So really the first and most important step was reconnecting with my emotional body and my emotional self and starting to learn that it's safe to feel my emotions and feel right. I believe that stories, beliefs and emotions, there's kind of like a two way street, meaning stuck emotions or unfelled emotions can keep limiting beliefs and stories anchored. Right. And stories and limiting beliefs can perpetuate emotions right.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:31:42]:

Keeping them stuck.

Bryan Osuna [00:31:43]:

Yeah. Right. So we've kind of got this two way street, and I really think you can go about unpacking and healing and rewriting this stuff from either way. Right. You can approach it from the route of exploring more of what would be the mental component of it. Right. Making sense of, like, well, I can see and I can understand that I have this limiting belief or this core wound, and this is the meaning of it. Or you can start by having no idea about the meaning and be able to articulate it.

Bryan Osuna [00:32:20]:

Not be able to articulate it, but just know, like, I need to feel the magnitude of all of this first. And I think that's the route that I chose. I really had a deep you can call it an exorcism if you want, but a profound unpacking of emotions and feelings and energy that had been built up at that Men's retreat. We did a Psilocybin ceremony, wasn't the most organized, or it was pretty improvisational, and it was exactly what I needed at that time. And it was beautiful. I was able to be witnessed and held in my grief and in my expression, which was pretty wild and intense. But that was probably the pivotal moment because I was unable to move stuck energy and unpack some deep grief and sadness and other emotions that had kept me stuck energetically, emotionally, and in turn, mentally as well as physically.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:33:44]:

Yeah, that's really great. Thank you for sharing that journey. So you're talking this experience at this Men's retreat in 2018, being able to recognize some of these patterns and opening yourself up to the full experience of human emotion from that moment on. What changed for you? How did that impact regular life going forward? Was it, well, that was a cool experience back to where I was, or were there radical changes that started to come through?

Bryan Osuna [00:34:27]:

Yeah, that's a great question. There was, as many of us experience in certain aspects of our growth or our journey, or at least I imagine most experienced at some time, is this feeling of, like, two steps forward, one step back, or even at times, like 50 steps forward, 49 and a half steps back.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:34:50]:

The messiness that is just being a human in the world.

Bryan Osuna [00:34:56]:

Yes. It did, in a way, create a lot of instability. And when I say that it's not a negative thing, what a lot of people don't realize or they maybe don't embrace because it's super uncomfortable is instability is an essential component to transformation. You cannot transform anything without instability. Right. What do I mean by that? You could simply say you take a lump of clay, a static, stable it's in a single formation, and you want to shape it into something new and beautiful. You have to destabilize it completely and then shape it and then restabilize it into that pot or the statue or whatever it is that you want to transform it into. Right.

Bryan Osuna [00:35:49]:

Same thing. Another analogy I like is a log. A log is a very stable form in one shape or state, and then if you want to turn it into a piece of furniture or anything else. There's a lot of instability that needs to happen before you stabilize it into something new. And so I went through a multiple year period of wasn't exclusively instability, but there was a lot of instability as things kind of broke apart. Right. And then I experienced myself as somewhat fragmented in a way, but I was really starting to make sense of all these different parts of me and learning to, I guess, tend to and hold in my awareness more of myself, right. New parts that hadn't been tended to and that was messy.

Bryan Osuna [00:36:55]:

Right. In the same way that when the jump from one to two or even more kids can be quite destabilizing and messy because like, whoa, I've got a whole nother needy, messy life form to take care of, is very similar in this process. Internally, as you open up and expand yourself through this transformation process, it's like taking you're now, caring for, intending to more parts of yourself. And it's incredibly beautiful. And I use the word expansive. It did start to lend me feeling more spacious and expansive in my experience of myself and my life, because I wasn't so myopic enclosed off in this tunnel vision, right. But the big thing, like I said it did, catalyze, is like now I had started to feel I started to feel safe, to feel my emotions as they come through and to tend to those parts of me in real time as experiences happen. So I started to come more online, somatically and emotionally, which anyone who's gone through that process, that's really coming back to life, right.

Bryan Osuna [00:38:13]:

We experience our life in this human form through our senses somatically largely, right. So when we're shut down and parts of us are shut down.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:38:29]:

The way.

Bryan Osuna [00:38:29]:

I see us, each part of us is like an octave of the same song, right? We can go down this. If you want to take the turn into the sound healing journey, this would be a fun segue. But the way that I experience and believe us, if you play Mary Had a Little Lamb, those of you that understand music theory, and you go up an octave and you play it, or down an octave, either lower or higher pitch, right. You're still going to recognize mary had a lilly. It's the same song. And so I believe that the different layers of us as beings is just octaves. We are infinite because you can octavize a song out infinitely. And so our song, the densest part of us, the physical, is our song at the physical plane.

Bryan Osuna [00:39:30]:

And then we have octaves of us at different levels, right. And so we're largely here to experience this one octave, which is the physical realm, but there's many more parts to us as a being or as a song. And I don't even remember why I started saying this, but I think I was talking about coming. Back online at a physical sensation level. So much of my somatic experience was shut down from this emotional wounding and trauma. And I definitely had a ton of physical trauma from wrestling and sports, not to discount that, but I do think the most impactful, most impactful to my life was more so at the emotional level. But when we shut down emotionally, we do start to shut down in many ways physically and somatically right?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:40:32]:

Yeah.

Bryan Osuna [00:40:33]:

And so coming back online, I think, in those ways is what really blossomed and allowed me to continue on on this growth path. Feeling like, wow, this is what it feels like to feel more and experience more and these different parts of me and these different emotions which I haven't really let myself or been able to feel like, okay, now I can continue on knowing that this growth path is leading me somewhere important and beautiful.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:41:10]:

Yeah, I've got many thoughts going in many directions and I love where this is going because it's got my nerd brain going, especially when we're talking about music. But I love this visualization of we can talk, or this level of experience of being in octaves or many times I've heard of people talk about self development. Like this idea of one day the ceiling that you break through is going to be the floor that you stand upon. But even in that experience in an octave situation too, you're ascending through the scale into the next octave. Ascending through the scale into the next octave. That was a visualization that was coming up for me as well in people's journeys and paths. One of the things that we talked about before we hit record was in this sense of intuition and developing that we were talking about your journey of getting into this fragmented version of self, into this unstable or unstable part of your life. How much did learning to find that intuitive voice for yourself, how much did that play a role for you?

Bryan Osuna [00:42:28]:

Yeah, it's been huge. Intuition, did you have more?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:42:33]:

And then we'll dive into some nerdery of all the sound things because I'm really interested to hear more about that.

Bryan Osuna [00:42:42]:

Perfect. Yes, intuition. Interestingly though, I didn't even initially register it as intuition at first. Looking back, it started to play a huge role and I think it did parallel this phase of healing. 2018 19 2020 because a lot of intuition does come through via subtle sensations in the body. One way I explain intuition and I'd imagine intuition comes through different for everyone and the same for some people and might have a cough coming. I need a cough button like Joe Rogan has. They actually make for me, intuition feels like I don't know if do you ever play trivia?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:43:47]:

Sometimes. It's been a while, but yes. I used to like trivia quite a bit.

Bryan Osuna [00:43:50]:

Or any kind of game where there's a question asked or there is an answer that needs to be given and you remember or you know the answer, that moment where you're like, oh, I know. And there's a feeling in your body, right?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:44:10]:

You may not even know why you know it, right? Where did that even come from?

Bryan Osuna [00:44:14]:

Right? And so it feels a lot like remembering the answer to a question, but for the first time, right? And what do I mean? It's like the same sensation in the body where someone asks a trivia question or you're playing a game and you're like, oh, I know the answer. Pick me. Hand up, professor. Pick me. I know it's that same excitement and knowing in the body aliveness, but you're doing something for the first time.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:44:50]:

But.

Bryan Osuna [00:44:50]:

You just know that you've got the right answer, right? And so that's the way that I experience it. It would be interesting if I could unpack at a nuanced level what that feels like, but I know what that feeling is. And so one of the first times so I'm assuming you know Mike Salemi.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:45:14]:

Yes.

Bryan Osuna [00:45:15]:

Okay.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:45:17]:

He and I have had a chat, and we met in person in Austin after the retreat where we met in Mike Bledsoe's living room, ran into each other.

Bryan Osuna [00:45:30]:

Amazing. So Mike has become a dear, close friend of mine. I think, as I mentioned, I'm going to be co facilitating a retreat with him next. You know, I do remember clearly one of the strongest hits of intuition I felt was the first time I was in a room with Mike Salemi. There was just an excitement in knowing that I had to meet and get to know this guy. And at the Was, I considered myself highly introverted. So I wasn't the kind of person to go out of my way and expend energy to talk to someone new. I would say rarely did I do that, but I just felt a strong call to do that with this guy.

Bryan Osuna [00:46:20]:

And believe it or not, though I was deeply immersed in the fitness and strength world, I didn't actually really know who Mike Slimy was. I just stumbled upon this guy, and lo and behold, he's become not only a dear friend, but he's been catalytic in my growth as a man around my physical health. And he's been right there next to me in terms of unfolding and opening into this new version of myself and showing up in the world in this way. And we've kind of been what I perceived as like our paths have been paralleled in a lot of ways, but simply said, he turned out to be a very important person to me, as my intuition told me. Another part of my intuition was going forward with this invention, this foam roller that I invented back in 20, 13, 14 Ish. Though the roller was arguably not the most successful product, it was extremely pivotal. Me following my intuition into making and starting a business around this product was so pivotal, in me going in a certain direction in my life that now, looking back, I'm like, holy crap. Had I not done this, there's so many things in my life that probably would not have happened and I would not have been in the right place at the right time to experience these things that was so important for me.

Bryan Osuna [00:48:06]:

Listen to this intuition, this pull, this excitement, to take this turn and to start making this product and starting this business. And so those were two examples. But unlocking or reconnecting with my body and my sensations and feelings was pivotal for this because now my antenna is much more attuned and that when I get the signal. I know, like oh, I can feel that. Right. I'm much more alive and connected to my body and sensations now and I know what intuition feels like.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:48:48]:

Yeah. And I can imagine that makes decisions for a little more simple. Then you don't have to live up in this thinking side and try to come up with the most clever version of whatever solution you need to come up with. You can trust that you'll find it.

Bryan Osuna [00:49:07]:

Yeah. I still get stuck in my head. I still do. I'll still spend a few weeks at a time being all in my stories and in my head and that's part of the learning and growing journey. But I am little by little over time getting I have built up the trust, like you said. I'm now able to almost always have at least some level, if not high level of trust that even when I'm observing myself stuck in my head that I'm still connected, I'm still on the path and I still have everything I need right here. It's just like right now and I'm stuck in my head. I'm running these patterns in these stories and I'm acutely aware of it, right? Which does make it a lot easier.

Bryan Osuna [00:50:01]:

And because I've accumulated enough reps of knowing that I make the best decisions and follow my intuition at the end of the day for the big things, it's not as stressful and I don't get so hard on myself and I don't feel like existentially lost when I get kind of stuck in those heady patterns. Right. But I still do. I still get stuck in there.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:50:28]:

Yeah. Which I think that's a component that many times when we talk about when I listen to things on self development, podcasts, programs, books, is that's an area that often gets glazed over of like even the people who are the best at this. We still have one of my favorite stories that gets told, or that I heard this year from Rondas of being despondent, sitting in his car on the beach after his swim and I forget who it was that walked up to him taking a look at the person and saying we're all fakes. You're fake too. Of like having these darker moments of ourselves. But then the response coming back and saying, yeah, but we're real fakes of like, okay, yeah, all right. Even the people who are at whatever pinnacles we like to put others people on, they're still on their own journey. And that there are going to be times where we don't have it all perfect.

Bryan Osuna [00:51:42]:

It's been so interesting and nourishing for me to meet a lot of high profile, profile people over the years and be like, whoa, they are as human as anyone else I've ever met, right?

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:52:00]:

Yeah.

Bryan Osuna [00:52:00]:

Yes. They've developed some amazing skill sets to show up in certain ways. And they wear different hats, and they have certain abilities that they've learned that any of us can learn if we so desire. But they're as human as all of us, right? Every single one of them. And even so, I've had the pleasure and the opportunity to be in some deep dive, intimate containers with some really high profile people and been able to see what's going on underneath their hood and get to relate to them in these deeper, more intimate ways. And it's really allowed me to, I guess, relate to a larger variety of people in more compassionate and connective ways. But yeah, at the end of the day, everyone more or less has the same wants and needs when you distill it down to their essence. And we all struggle with more or less the same things.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [00:53:20]:

Yeah, very well said. Switching the focus a little bit. So going from inventing a product, running a company post wrestling career, getting into this development journey for yourself, what led you or how did you find this journey into sound healing?

Bryan Osuna [00:53:43]:

Yeah, well, this is fun because we're already talking about intuition. And in 2021 let's see, my years are correct here. No, it's probably 2020. In 2020, I had that same intuitive hit, but it was probably one of the strongest intuitive hits. Meaning I felt the classic signatures of what intuition telling me something feels like. But for the first time that I could remember, there was no information in terms of, like, the signs not telling me to go this way. There's nothing actually for me to put my finger on what it is. But what I was able to extrapolate and precipitate was, oh, something big and new is coming for me.

Bryan Osuna [00:54:44]:

Like a new calling. I don't know what it is, but right now I'm just being asked to stay open and to embrace that. But it was as clear as anything that something new is coming and embrace it when it comes. Right. So it was actually pretty fun because I was like, what is it? I got to spend a few months in this kind of almost like pre birthday or Christmas, excited, like little kids, like, oh, all the gifts under the tree, what's in the box? And two things happened where they were AHA, moments. One was the first one was a guided psychedelic experience that I had where I did some psychedelic medicine and received body work. And the body worker was like a really safe person for me to go deep. And for those of you that have done medicine work with psychedelics, I imagine most of you have had those moments where you're faced with the opportunity to let go into expansiveness, into new, maybe scary or just different experience or kind of contracts and hold on and try to hold on to the known.

Bryan Osuna [00:56:19]:

And so I had that pivotal moment where something totally new was unfolding and I could have contracted and tried to hold on, but I let go. And I basically had about 45 to 60 minutes where I only experienced myself as light and sound. And for those of you that have also done deep medicine work, you may have had the experience where the medicine space is just as, if not more real than everyday reality. Where it's so vibrant and alive and convincing that there's no way, at least when you're experiencing it in that moment, that it can be like a hallucination or made up. Maybe it can be, but that's what it feels like. And so the way I explain it is I was like a cross between the aurora borealis and like a keyboard, where every part of my body was a different note, a different frequency, and I was able to clearly experience it as sound. And as I was receiving the body work, I was making sound, right? So I was expressing, I was emoting, and I was able to notice how every time a different part of my tissue was worked on, I was making a different sound. I could experience it at whatever level I was at with the medicine and I could see it as different colors, right? So I was able to just straight up experience myself as light and sound, which most of the longest lasting, well established traditions, whether it's Vedic or whatever, there's this belief that we're basically just light and sound, right? And one could argue that physics might say the same thing, definitely just vibrating particles, but I was able to experience that if I tried.

Bryan Osuna [00:58:46]:

There was the ability to come back to the knowing that I was a physical body on the table. But when I really just let go, my experience itself was of light and sound. And coming out of that I was like, holy crap, if we're just light and sound, it's clear to me that we should be. I'm shooting on us, I'm going to shoot all over us for a second. I should say that it made clear sense to me that addressing disease, health, well being and growth, you could call it enlightenment, whatever you want to call it, all happens at a vibrational level. Sound and light is all vibration. That was kind of an AHA moment. I didn't have a clear understanding that the way that I would be integrating and moving forward with this new information and experience.

Bryan Osuna [00:59:58]:

And then a few months later I heard a podcast. The guest was a sound healer and it was just immediate. As soon as I started listening to that podcast I just knew that that was the thing. Right? That intuitive hit of something new and so unlike almost I would say the vast majority of people that I talk to and know who got into some alternative form of medicine, healing or growth work. Most people had a profound healing experience or exposure to a modality or a tool in which case they're like I need to do this now, this is my calling. That wasn't it for me. I had not experienced anything regarding close to nothing I should say around sound therapy, sound healing, energy work, very little sound based shamanic work. But all of a sudden I just knew that that's something I needed to explore.

Bryan Osuna [01:01:09]:

And so I kind of just dove in headfirst and I started exploring Tibetan bowls which I kind of say are my sole instrument. I just kind of knew that those instruments and I started working with them and haven't turned back. I've made that one of my key offerings to the world and now I am doing what I call transformational sound therapy. I primarily use tuning forks, Tibetan bowls and gongs to help people move stuck energy and create energetic or vibrational coherence in their whole being.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:01:51]:

That's really cool and it's really interesting like you were saying of not having this big moment, this big experience of it just trusting yourself and when the right path opened up well I'm going to walk this path because I know it's right. That's such a cool thing. That's something that I'm assuming for many people is quite rare but regardless, it's still powerful on its own.

Bryan Osuna [01:02:26]:

Yeah, it's been a lot of fun too because I would say everyone that I can remember off the top of my head got into sound therapy or sound healing in one of two ways. They were a musician, right? So they had an affinity for music and sound and then they transitioned into sound healing or they had an experience of healing or growing through that modality and that led them to getting into it. I was neither, I was not a musician. I loved music, I had a strong affinity for music but I was not a musician or at least actively creating music nor did I have a big experience with sound that led me to it. And so that made it a lot more fun and exciting. And it was really great to hear from one of my teachers that in many ways people that don't have a musical background can have there's advantages to going into sound therapy specifically because he has found that musicians oftentimes have a hard time letting go of it sounding perfect. And it's rare that the structure of the sound in terms of music theory is what's catalyzing the healing in a sound therapy or sound healing context. And so to get out of your head and to be able to just tune into what sounds and what energies are going to serve this person or this group best without it needing to sound any specific way in a music context is really helpful.

Bryan Osuna [01:04:11]:

And musicians oftentimes have a hard time getting past that barrier.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:04:14]:

Yeah, I can imagine that as somebody who studied music and musicology and music theory primarily as my area. So I've had another sound healer on the podcast and remarked this of the number of times and I believe your experience that you delivered at the retreat that we were at was my first sound healing experience. And I remembered and remarked particular times of picking out intervals of like oh hey, there's a minor third there's diminished 7th. And then slowly over time, as I've experienced it more and more of letting go of that, letting go of the label that we put on it.

Bryan Osuna [01:05:04]:

Right.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:05:04]:

Especially because it's one music system anyways, it's the Western European music system of these semitones anyways, it's all made up. It's just our structured way of understanding what we're experiencing. So I can definitely resonate with your teacher's observation there because I know if I would try to find it to make the structure work for me and not the other way around. Yeah. Getting on this path of sound healing, where has that been taking you?

Bryan Osuna [01:05:45]:

Well, the room I'm in right now is the room that I do most of my sound work in. And so I've fairly recently woven in this system or framework called Biofield tuning, which has completely transformed how I relate to sound work, energy work, healing, and pretty much everything in reality. And I've been able to, I would say, cross the threshold from primarily focusing on things from a conceptual philosophical standpoint, and now experiencing everything as energy. Right. And I'm able to in almost real time, either primarily or at least be able to keep it with me all the time of understanding and experiencing everything as energy. And when I say that, it's not like all of a sudden that moment where Neo in the Matrix is like, I wish it was like that. Yeah, well, there's the moment where right before I think it's near the very end of the first one, where all of a sudden everything's in the green streaming zeros and ones, and there's this pulse coming out of him. That moment super duper becomes fully self.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:07:26]:

Aware of what he can possibly do.

Bryan Osuna [01:07:28]:

Exactly. And that's kind of the switch that I'm talking about, fortunately. And unfortunately, it's not to that extreme where I'm not literally seeing everything vibrating, but there's this heightened awareness that I keep with me all the time and I'm I'm just processing everything through that. Right. I'm I'm processing interactions with people, I'm understanding my thoughts from a vibrational standpoint, my feelings, my physical body, my health, everything that's happening in my life. I'm understanding that everything is influenced and dictated by fields of energy and information not too far off from the matrix, although I don't think it's quite exactly the same. It's much different. But in the same way, we are immersed in swimming in these fields of vibration and energy which hold information and which are largely influencing how we think, how we feel, how we show up, our health, what information we have access to, right? And we can go down that rabbit hole of like I believe that just like a cell phone, right? You could put a cell phone onto airplane mode and you can turn off the cell service and the WiFi, and there's still information there that's just like the information stored on our brain.

Bryan Osuna [01:09:05]:

And then we have access to these vibrational fields which are our individual field, which might be more like WiFi. There's not a perfect analogy there, but we have information directly off our body existing as standing wave, electromagnetic, magnetic standing waves, which is information which is always informing our body and vice versa. And then we contribute to and are part of these larger fields which goes to the collective, right? And this is why many people have realized over time that there are shifts in the way that they're thinking more in the macro. And how they're feeling oftentimes doesn't make sense from the standpoint of what's happening in their life. And that's largely because we're being influenced by these fields of information, that they're global, they're at the human level. And then we can get into each species has its own vibrational field. There's what's called morphic fields. And this is why a single animal can make kind of an evolutionary shift in terms of learning.

Bryan Osuna [01:10:24]:

And immediately on the other side of the world, another animal on the same species can make the same leap is because they're sharing information through a field. And so I'll leave it there because I could probably rant for like 4 hours about this.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:10:38]:

Yeah, we will definitely, if you were open to it, open up a much more deep dive into this topic since we are running a bit on our time limit, unfortunately, because otherwise I would just be like, all right, keep talking, professor. Asuna I want to absorb this because I love absorbing information and I love being able to share it in ways for others to absorb it as well. So as we come up towards the end of our time, any final thoughts that you want to leave the audience with or any items that you've learned, nuggets of wisdom that you want to share with others from your path and from your story?

Bryan Osuna [01:11:22]:

Well, one of the most valuable, I guess, tools or I guess superpowers that I've carried with me is just curiosity. So say, like staying infinitely curious, right? I still get skeptical. I would say I was highly skeptical about everything I just told you for the first two years of it being in my awareness. So still holding space and understanding that the skeptical parts of you are valuable, but just staying infinitely curious at every level that you can be curious is a superpower. But one thing I'll say is like, if anything I said like really sparks true curiosity in any of the listeners what I'm trying to work on. And I imagine next year or the year after, I hope to have a very simple framework which I think I'm calling the Resource Coaching Framework, where my hope is to help people understand in a very simple level how to start looking at everything as energy and working with your energy anywhere, anytime. Right? So I think one of the most valuable things for me in the last few years is just starting to understand at a very basic level how everything is energy and everything is connected. And a simple step for people to start doing this is noticing how specific thoughts in your head directly affects your emotions, which directly affects your physical state, which directly affects how you interact with and shape your environment.

Bryan Osuna [01:13:26]:

And you could do it in the opposite, noticing how a shift in your environment makes a shift in your physical body, which makes a shift in your emotional body, which makes a shift in this thoughts and stories and language in your head and start to trace.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:13:43]:

These.

Bryan Osuna [01:13:44]:

Energy pathways in your experience. And once you are able to start making these connections and tracing these shifts in energy, you can have a lot more autonomy and empowerment over how you navigate life and show up and the tools and resources that you have along the way.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:14:06]:

Very cool. Yeah, this is rad stuff, man. If people are interested in learning more about what you're doing with this and your sound healing, how can they learn more?

Bryan Osuna [01:14:21]:

Well, how can they get in touch with you? Yeah, so my website, which is still a work in progress, but there's enough there for me to send people there. It's thebridgevibe.com so thebridgevibe.com I feel comfortable throwing out my email. So my email would be Brian@thebridgevibe.com, and it's Brian with A-Y-B-R-Y-A-N. I'm not super active on social media, but I am planning to post more on Instagram and then I have started my own podcast which is called the Resourced Podcast. So that's mainly on Spotify now and that's less about the sound healing stuff, but it's more of that practical energetics which I started to share at the end, which is practical growth and kind of self coaching tools or just general tools and resources that help you optimize your energy for the same reasons that I just described.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:15:30]:

Awesome. Thank you so much for being here, Brian. This has been such a pleasure to be able to not only have a quick reconnection with you, but to listen to more of your story, more of your path and the things that you have going on. So thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for showing up, and thank you for being you.

Bryan Osuna [01:15:50]:

You're very welcome. Jeremy, I've been excited to chat with you since the retreat. I really felt some resonance with you and really just enjoyed dropping in with you at that experience. So I'm really excited we got to do this.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:16:03]:

Yeah. Awesome. And like I said, stay tuned. We'll get a part two where we get to dive into some deeper, weird stuff.

Bryan Osuna [01:16:12]:

Round two, baby. We'll put on our nerd glass is for that one.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:16:16]:

Yeah, I've got some sitting around here somewhere.

Bryan Osuna [01:16:19]:

Yeah, perfect.

Jeremy Gruensteiner [01:16:21]:

Anyways, thank you all for listening, and until next time, stay strong. And most importantly, stay weird.