Biohacking 2.0 vs 3.0: High Performance Practices for Superconscious Flow State, Stress & More

Nick Urban [00:00:07]:
Are you a high performer, obsessed with growth, and looking for an edge? Welcome to MINDBODY Peak Performance. Together, we’ll discover underground secrets to unlocking the full potential of your mind, body, and spirit. We’ll learn from some of the world’s leading minds, from ancient wisdom to cutting edge tools and everything in between. This is your host, Nick Urban. Enjoy the episode. There’s a way to shift your energy, your focus, your mood, your hormones, your neuroendocrine system, and many other facets of your biology and life experience without any substances. You can use it anytime, anywhere, and feel a difference in seconds. In today’s episode, we’re going to unpack the number one highest place that you can focus to disproportionately improve your health, longevity, your performance, specifically a couple core master practices that you can use immediately for high stress situations.

Nick Urban [00:01:16]:
We explore the evolution of biohacking two point o to three point o or, as I call it, the transition from biohacking to bioharmonizing. We discuss what to do when your health optimization practices stop working, when you reach a plateau, or you just feel a bit lost and confused. Then we make this all tangible with a discussion of the superconscious flow state and how to bulletproof you against stress so that you can achieve more by doing less. If you have any questions about these topics, go ahead and drop them in the show notes for this episode or DM me at mind body p performance on Instagram because we are going to do multiple parts to this series unpacking the different layers and levels of the system that we’re discussing today. Joining us is doctor Mark Atkinson. He is an internationally respected integrative medicine doctor, functional medicine practitioner, master coach, and human potential teacher. Doctor Mark cofounded The UK’s First professional training program in integrative medicine and was a former medical director of a company familiar to many in this space called Bulletproof. Doctor Mark Atkinson is also the founding co director of Optimal Mind International, an executive health and mind optimization company, and the creator of Human Potential Coaching through which he has trained over 850 coaches.

Nick Urban [00:02:48]:
Today, we’re discussing a brand new training program released by the School of Biohacking called the Optimal Health, Longevity, and Biohacking Certification Program, which gives you the tools, confidence, and certification to specialize in teaching energy, longevity, and personalized health, whether for yourself or to clients. I’m helping doctor Mark out with the program because I’ve looked at the syllabus and the different modules, and I can say it’s the most comprehensive training program of its kind that I’ve come across. The first ever live cohort of this program is going to begin on this 04/28/2025. You can sign up through the link in the show notes. And if you use the code urban, that’ll save you €500. If you’re tuning in after the fact, don’t worry. This is an evergreen program, so you can take it at any point even after the first live class has begun. This is a fourteen week training program designed to position you at the forefront of the next wave in health and longevity coaching.

Nick Urban [00:03:59]:
It doesn’t require any previous experience, but make no mistake, this certification program also goes deep. It’s a science backed and business ready program that will arm you with all the skills you need to build personalized, data driven protocols. It will also put you into a highly curated group of what I imagine will be the next wave of wellness leaders in the world. If this sounds interesting, go ahead and click the link in the show notes, or you can visit the School of Biohacking and use the code urban to save €500 on your certification program. And although I’m helping build out some of the materials, you better believe that I will also be in this first cohort of students making sure I sop up all the knowledge and refine my own skill set. So join me, and I’ll see you on the inside. I realize in hindsight that the conversation we’re having today really belongs in the second or third installment that we’re going to record, but this is where the conversation naturally led, and I think it’s probably the most efficient part of the biohacking and health optimization space. So despite that, I’m putting this one out first, and then we’ll cover the topics that everyone’s looking forward to, such as the diet, the exercise, the protocols, the supplementation, and technologies in later episodes together.

Nick Urban [00:05:24]:
Alright. That’s a long winded intro. Ladies and gentlemen, sit back, relax, and enjoy this conversation with doctor Mark Atkinson. Doctor Mark Atkinson, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:05:35]:
It is my absolute pleasure to be here, Nick. And I know what we’re gonna talk about, and I’m super excited because what we’re gonna talk about is super important.

Nick Urban [00:05:43]:
Yes. And I think you know more about what we’re about to talk about than I do. So it’s gonna be fun to explore that realm with you. At least I would hope that you you do. Yes. We first connected, I wanna say, about a year ago, and we had to delay recording the podcast because you are building what we’re about to talk about today.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:06:02]:
Yeah. That’s right. And there’s kind of a right timing for everything. And so when I circle back to you, it was like, okay. Now we’re ready. Let’s do it.

Nick Urban [00:06:10]:
So this might be a good segue into the rest of the conversation. But so far today, are there any unusual nonnegotiables you’ve done for your health, your performance, and your bioharmony?

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:06:22]:
Yeah. Great. So the way I kinda start my day kinda pretty typically is, I wake up typically naturally about 05:20AM. That’s my kinda sweet spot. It’s just really where my body wakes up. And a practice that I’ve been doing for at least the last fifteen years is before I go up into my conceptual thinking mind, which is already ready and primed to kind of crack on with the day, I just take a moment. I kinda rest in the center of my heart, and I just stay there for about a minute. So it’s just I call it resting and being.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:06:53]:
And what it does is really just kinda grounds me in the day. And then my routine is I then, hydrate. I then get in the car. I go to my gym, and I work out for an hour. And what that workout looks like depends on the day of the week. Then I’m back, and then I’m ready to kind of, you know, look after the children and and do all that kind of dad stuff.

Nick Urban [00:07:14]:
Okay. You didn’t mention either the practices I thought you were gonna mention. So we’ll save that. We’ll circle back to that later. But you’ve been around the biohacking world for a very long time. And you’ve shared a concept with me of biohacking two point o versus the next generation, next iteration, which is biohacking three point o. Will you share your experience in the biohacking world and how you came to realize that we’re it’s time for the next generation of biohacking.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:07:42]:
Yeah. It is. For sure, it’s time. So, so my professional background is, I’m an integrated medicine doctor, functional medicine practitioner for twenty five years. And my orientation to that work with working with patients has always been around what’s possible for them. That’s the kind of brain work that I see reality, myself, others. It’s just like, who are they, where they’re at, what is possible for them. So it’s always been a focus for me on going beyond symptom eradication.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:08:10]:
And, very early on in my career, as I did deeper level work with my patients, I started, creating a whole series of personal development workshops. I started running retreats. And as I entered into my own personal growth journey and and inner work, I became really just deeply passionate about what does it take to clean my life up, to, to enhance the way that I’m functioning as a human being, and to fulfill my potential. And so for the last twenty years, I’ve done a deep dive into that. And part of that journey was ended up actually working alongside Dave Asprey, founder of Bulletproof, and we worked alongside for about five, six years or so. So in that context, I really got to understand, biohacking, the world of biohacking by spending a lot of time with him and the biohacking community around him. And what I liked about the biohacking community was that they were taking responsibility for their health. They were being proactive, and they got a can do attitude.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:09:14]:
And and that I absolutely love. But but along the way, I realized that it was quite often exclusively focused pretty much on on the on the body, on physical optimization, and it was very imbalanced. And and so really over the last kinda couple of years, I’ve developed this three point o model that we’re gonna unpack in this session to really address the balance and to make sure that when we are improving our health, fine tuning our health, or optimizing it, that then we’re placing that in service of our inner development, and bringing our life and our lifestyle and our relationships into coherence, into a state of balance and harmony. So that that’s the kind of big picture.

Nick Urban [00:10:00]:
Beautiful. And this also applies to people who don’t identify as biohackers, people who just are, I guess, health enthusiasts, health optimizers, bioharmonizers. It’s really just it’s like the integrative, holistic, connected version of health.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:10:15]:
Yeah. Right. Exactly. It’s just like, if you care about your health and you want to understand how to become healthier in a balanced way and in a way that addresses all dimensions of your health, so the physical and the cognitive. So that’s traditionally whereby hacking will focus, but equally important with the emotional and mental health as well. That’s the kind of optimal health model that I’ve been developing and teaching over a period of time. And so it really just comes down to people who care about their health and wanna be healthy and stay healthy for as long as possible.

Nick Urban [00:10:52]:
And then what do people notice when they go along this journey? Because for a lot of people who are just doing the physical, perhaps mental biohacks, they might get a certain level of results, and perhaps the results stagnate, and then they’re looking for a way of overcoming those plateaus. Perhaps it’s just waking up feeling more inspired and ready taking it late.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:11:13]:
That’s part of it. So once you start doing the inner development and will impact what that means, and you start working more skillfully with your mind and your emotions and your nervous system, the consequence of that and the consequence of committing to living more in integrity with greater self honesty is a couple of things. The first thing is your capacity to experience joy and ease goes up. So what is really plain to see, and for sure was the same for me for a long, long time, there’s a lot of people who were tense, uneasy, and discontented. And so one of the consequences of engaging in this kinda inner work is that pretty much more often than not, you’re actually in contact with a sense of inner ease. And there’s just a fundamental sense of contentment, in a reese. You’re still motivated and engaged in life, but it doesn’t come from this conflicted, pretty tense, grasping kind of way, which really, as we all know, does not feel good, and negatively impacts on relationships and their capacity to experience joy. And I think the other consequence is you start to feel a lot more connected to yourself, to your body, to your being, to the deeper dimensions of you, and then your capacity for intimacy, relational intimacy, emotional intimacy, for fun, for spontaneity, for a sense of freedom, that all increases over time.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:12:43]:
And your stress and your anxiety and that kind of quite neurotic, drama filled stories that part of our conceptual mind likes to create, that eventually over time kinda starts to go a lot more quiet.

Nick Urban [00:12:57]:
You said a couple of things there such as the importance of emotions and inner work. And, of course, that’s gonna scare away a lot of high performers who just wanna focus on what’s ahead of them. Your own journey and your experience of working with people, because you’ve been in the human potential and human performance optimization space for a while. How do you help people see that doing the inner work might seem woo woo and confusing and less tangible, but it has, like, demonstrable impacts?

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:13:26]:
Yeah. Well, you know what it is is, at some stage, most of us kind of really have to do the inner work because the way we’re living is not working. So people are very reluctant to give up their patterns and their behaviors until it goes wrong. Right? So it’s unlikely to get a high performer who feels fantastic and is, you know, doing well in life to engage with this deeper level inner work because they don’t have a compelling reason to do it. From a developmental perspective, it’s easy to frame, which is from a developmental perspective, the first half of our life is really about achievement and about filling up on concepts and ideas and making life happen. But then what tends to happen for the majority of us at some stage in our life, something goes wrong or something happens that’s out of our control that fundamentally shakes the foundations of ourselves and our world. And that can be a failure. It can be a loss.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:14:29]:
It can be an unexpected thing. And it typically happens in our thirties and forties, maybe fifties. And then when it happens, if you’re fortunate to have a mentor or guide, they’ll be able to actually guide you through that, not by doubling down on control. Because that’s what tends to happen is how can I double down the control to get control here? Right? It’s actually no. How can I allow this to deepen me and transform me? And that requires humility and trust in the process. And to be honest with you, the vast majority of people will not willingly walk towards it. They kind of find themselves drowning in it, and they kind of ignore the early warning signs. So things typically have to get quite bad before they’re willing to do the work.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:15:22]:
And the classic example is the high performer, who she didn’t train die, seems to be successful in achieving. And yet, if you were to watch the way they live their lives in their home and at work, and the way they are with other human beings, the way they are with themselves, you would see very clearly all is not well. Right? To the to the trained eye, it’s like, no. It’s kinda obvious. They’re medicating their pain and discomfort. They may be engaged in a whole bunch of addictions and compulsive behavior. There’s definitely narcissistic kinda traits going on here. They’re pretty unconscious, which is they’re operating out of their conditioning, etcetera.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:16:02]:
So I think we need to kind of redefine their understanding of what success looks like, and it really starts with self honesty. And that basically means, where within my behavior in life are things not going so well? We all have the domains that are not going so well. And the hardest thing in the world, and I believe the first step to doing the inner work is to admit it to yourself and to another, and then to be open to help and support. And then that typically is the bridge into the world of inner work, which is the bridge to what I would call biohacking three point o.

Nick Urban [00:16:46]:
We’re gonna get into some of those action items, things people can do at home to start making that transition to improve their health in all the different planes. I don’t know if I told you this, but when I when you first reached out to me and told me what you were building, I went to your website, clicked around a bit, came across your about page, and it says, our approach integrates wisdom and insights from biohacking, functional medicine, psychoneuroendoimmunology, internal family systems, acceptance and commitment therapy, exercise science, polyvagal theory, integral theory, self actualization, and nondual contemplative practice. And I was like, okay. Finally, a system that actually integrates everything together, but that’s a lot. It’s a lot to take on at once. Is there a particular place that most people do well to begin building a foundation? Perhaps they’re already doing some of the functional stuff, some of the movement. Where do they go from there?

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:17:41]:
Yeah. Well well, the place I typically start people at is you gotta learn how to skillfully use your mind. It’s the first thing. Right? So in my world and and the experience of, you know, teaching this to a lot of people now is, like, most people have a mind that is in charge of them. They’re not in charge of the mind. It’s like the mind is running the show. The conditioning and programming of the mind is shaping their experience and shaping their behavior. So the first thing to do is understand that at one level, the mind is an instrument that you we need to learn how to consciously use to navigate and experience life here on planet Earth.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:18:22]:
And so if it’s not under our control and influence, then that’s what we need to do. So there’s two foundational core practices that I teach pretty much everyone. And and just to be clear about this, this is now in the realm of kind of, what we call self mastery. And I would posit that you will always, bump up against your upper ceiling in life until you know how to work with your mind, your emotions, and nervous system. And the key to using the mind is to learn how to create what I call internal safety. So what happens is for a lot of people, they live in a constant state of threat and survival. And you can know that because you can see the level of tension, and you can see the level of urgency. And that when you look at their life, there’s very little spaciousness and and joy and and time for contemplation and and reflection, and the relationships aren’t doing so well.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:19:27]:
Their connection to themselves is not so great. And they’re definitely not in a caring, accepting relationship with themselves. Right? So so, what I’d love to do is kinda teach the kind of foundational practice and share this with your with your listeners because it really is the first step as I teach it to, taking charge of of your mind. So shall we shall we go for this?

Nick Urban [00:19:55]:
Yeah. Before we get started there, are there any other symptoms people can run through? I don’t like the word symptoms, but say signs that perhaps their mind is running the show, and this is worth them testing and implementing into the routine.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:20:09]:
Exactly. So there’s two ways of doing this. There’s acknowledging what is present, and there’s acknowledging what is missing. It’s actually the Latin that’s more powerful, but we’ll do what’s present. If you have a busy mind full of mental chatter that is distracting to you and causing harm or undermining your health or causing harm or undermining the health of others, then that’s an untrained mind. If your mind is not able to be focused on what it is you want to be focused, then that’s a couple of things. There’s sometimes part of an trained mind, but there’s also normally a neurological and biochemical component to that as well. If you tend to be reactive, so spontaneously reactive, and almost get a sense of regressing into an angry adolescent.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:21:10]:
Right? And and the way to kinda get your head around that is, next time you react to something, you just tune in with yourself. How old do I feel? And typically, if you’re honest and you got to be honest, it’s like, oh my gosh. I feel like a four year old or like a 13 year old, etcetera. So that just means the mind is yet to be stabilized in what we call the mature adult self. And that that’s okay. That’s just kind of feedback. And I think the other thing is if there are compulsive elements to your behavior and or thinking, which is, you know, you struggle with alcohol or work. You struggle to kinda switch off.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:21:51]:
You know you’re engaging in unhealthy behaviors, you know, porn addiction, sex addiction. You know, basically, when something is compulsively taking your attention away from the present moment, then that says there is a operating principle within your mind that needs to be addressed and acknowledged. So that that would be some of the hallmarks as to what to look for. But actually, the most powerful way is, is there an absence of joy? Is there an absence of stillness? Now if someone who was caught up in their thinking all the time will not have a clue what it is I’m talking about. Right? But it’s kinda like this. Imagine that you’ve been playing music in the room you’re sitting in for the last hour, and then you turn the music off. Then it goes still and silent. That’s what it can feel like when you’re in touch with the deeper levels of the mind.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:22:56]:
It’s kind of very still. There’s a lot of interior spaciousness, and you’re just kinda naturally present. So there’s the absence of stillness, and there’s the absence of love, which is, at some stage in your development, you’re able to spontaneously access a deeper level of love and is always available as a direct experience. So when we have a restricted ability to access joy, love, care, stillness, these are feedback to us that we are yet to train our mind and access the deeper levels of our nature to which these qualities are innate. So any combination of that would warrant kinda learning what it is I’m about to teach.

Nick Urban [00:23:46]:
Well, you set the stage nicely. And, yeah, for me, that the stillness component has definitely been the one, and I find myself liking to move, to consume information. So that is one that I’m aware of, and it’s, I guess, a good reason to do more of this. I already do a lot of meditation and biofeedback, and I get into deep states there, but I don’t integrate as much stillness outside of those sessions.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:24:11]:
Yeah. Exactly. So we went to get to an absolutely what is possible when you kinda do this work, is that it’s there the majority of the time so that you’re able to access stillness anytime. It’s just there. It’s just at at the core. And and so, really, the what what I teach, through the school of biohacking, are what I call the master practices. And the first one is called always welcoming. And what we can do is I can take you all through an experiment so that we can discover something about how a nervous system works.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:24:48]:
Okay? So here’s what we’re gonna do. And I’ll guide you through it personally, Nick. But, you know, whoever’s listening to this, imagine them speaking directly to you. And so what you’re gonna do is you’re going to repeat three words out loud if you can. And if not, you’re surrounded by others. Just do it quietly. But when you say those words, you’re gonna say them as though you’re speaking to every part of your body and being. So you have an internal world as though you’re broadcasting it to that, and they want you to notice what happens to your breathing, and the way you feel when you see those three words.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:25:27]:
So I’ll do it to you, Nick, and you can just share what your experience is. So the words are no. No. No.

Nick Urban [00:25:34]:
No. No. No. So what just happened to your breathing? It became a little more shallow, and I felt, like, a sinking feeling.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:25:45]:
Right. So that’s what a lot of people would explain, which is they either notice the breathing becomes very shallow, or even the breathing literally stops. And there’s a sinking kinda heavy feeling and the sense of kinda being really up in the head, kind of disconnected from the body. Okay? So that state of no is where most adults live most of the time. When we are saying no to the truth and actuality of our internal experience, I don’t wanna be feeling this way. I don’t wanna be here. This shouldn’t be happening. I shouldn’t be this way.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:26:25]:
This should be when we broadcast no, our nervous system neurocepts that as a threat is imminent and present. Our nervous system is always listening to what we are broadcasting. So here’s the antidote.

Nick Urban [00:26:42]:
To be clear, though, that’s fascinating because I always thought it was just when you speak out no or you’re going against something. But what you’re saying is a lot more impactful because it’s when we’re disconnected and we’re saying no to things going on internally as well. Like, I shouldn’t be experiencing this. This is wrong. I wish I was in a different situation kind of thing.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:27:03]:
That’s right. Yeah. It’s more important about what’s happening internally. Okay? So we’ll do the antidote, and then we’ll go a little bit deeper with it. So see what happens this time. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:27:20]:
So broadcasting, welcome. See what’ll happen.

Nick Urban [00:27:22]:
Welcome. Welcome. Welcome.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:27:27]:
K. So what happened this time?

Nick Urban [00:27:29]:
Well, I realized I didn’t really breathe either time because I’m just speaking out, but I did not feel the contraction. I felt more open to whatever it is.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:27:39]:
Yeah. Exactly. So when we broadcast welcoming, a couple of things tends to happen. We naturally, afterwards, will notice we’re breathing from our belly. Right? So just spontaneously, you know, so, okay. I’m breathing down there, and that wasn’t intentional. It just started happening. And then there’s a real sense of expansiveness, which is and now I’m much more in my body, and actually I feel much more expanded and connected.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:28:01]:
And if I tune in carefully, actually, there’s a little bit more joy there, which is kind of interesting or or more ease. So when the nervous system receives signals of safety, it shifts us out of survival and into connection mode. Right? And what specifically is we’re accessing a state that I would call presence. When we’re in presence, our awareness is in our body, the nervous system is relaxed, and we’re present, we’re open, we’re centered, and we’re expansive. So so that that’s the first part of this. So I want you to think of it this way. So a lot of us, as adults, will often say no to particular types of emotional experiences. So if you can think the infinite number of emotional experiences from sorrow and grief and sadness and anger and impatience to gratitude, to joy, to peace, to love, to anxiety.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:29:11]:
There’s all these kind of emotion. Now what happens is we have a very conditional relationship to them. So we tend to do some pretty well, but others not a chance. So some people, they do anxiety really well. Right? So anxiety is absolutely present. But if you ask them to contact gratitude in that moment, there’s no gratitude. Right? This this just inaccessible to gratitude. So so somewhere lodged in their mind and nervous system is a no to gratitude.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:29:49]:
If I said, can you access inner peace right now? They’ll go, what are you talking about? There’s no inner peace. There’s just agitation. I’m even agitated at the question. Right? Oh, so that’s feedback from your system. You got a no to inner peace. So it turns out so when I started learning all this, I had a no to inner peace, a no to joy. I had, yes to anxiety. I had a, a yes to false positivity.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:30:17]:
So false positivity is to the untrained eye, I’m happy and cheering all the time, and life is good. Right? That’s false positivity. Right? It’s very inauthentic, but it’s an adaptation, okay, that a lot of people cannot pick up. So what we’re doing here is we are setting the scene to always be welcoming of whatever emotional experience is showing up unconditionally. Now what’s the most powerful way to know when you’re being welcomed by someone? So they can say to you welcome, but, actually, it’s when someone smiles. Right? So when there’s an authentic smile, it comes from the heart and expressed through the eyes. Right? So the deeper level of practice. And when I learned this as a Dallas practice about fifteen years ago and started practice, this was a game changer because it actually reconditioned and rewired my entire nervous system.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:31:18]:
So I’ll guide you through what’s called the inner smile. So this is an extension of welcoming. So here’s what we do. Particularly if there’s a voice in their head saying, I don’t feel like smiling. I’ve got nothing to be happy about. And what I would say is, oh, that’s interesting. That is feedback from your nervous system that you’re not in charge. Because you see, when we train our nervous system, we can access these qualities in any given moment.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:31:48]:
So the way we allow an inner smile is we put our focus in the middle of our heart, And we allow an inner smile to expand and build. And as it expands, we allow it to fill our face and start expanding through our face and all of our body. And even though if it may be difficult right now, just practice a few times. You’ll be able to get to a place where there’s an inner smiling is happening. Inner smiling is present, and as the inner smile builds, you’ll notice a relaxation that your center of gravity drops down into your lower body. There’s a lot more expansiveness and aliveness and energy and joy. And so the first core master practice that I teach and is in the system is always welcoming. In any given moment, always welcome what is showing up inside your experience.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:33:01]:
And you can do that by saying welcome to it, but the higher practice is the inner smile. And you can get to a place. So you meditate. You can just be inner smiling for twenty minutes, and it can get so intense and so blissful. And the real key is as it gets more intense and more joyful and more expansive, more blissful, you allow yourself to dissolve and open to it. So the separate sense collapses, and there’s just the presence of inner smiling. And what you’re starting to is you’re starting to recondition your default setting. And so we go from a person who shows up in life, more often than that, broadcasting a no, to a person who shows up in life, broadcasting a yes.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:33:54]:
When you become a yes, when you access the yes state, it changes everything. It changes your fundamental neurological wiring. It changes your capacity to access presence and joy, and and access simplicity, the capacity to rest in the state of being. So that is the foundational move that I’ve taught, and the reason I teach it is because it’s easy to get. It doesn’t require much practice. You know, even after this podcast, we whilst listening to it, you can be in a smile, and you got a choice. You can be listening to this whilst in a smiling. Right? So you can always be doing the core master practice, and it changes everything.

Nick Urban [00:34:36]:
That’s cool. I’m gonna start playing around that. You stacking that with other things that I do. One thing I wanna ask you about is that oftentimes, when something severe, often negative, or has, like, a negative charge around it, say, like, a contracting charge, say, like, a death in the family or something, There’s something called spiritual bypassing where it’s very easy to say, oh, everything is love and light. Things are going great. Like, this is part of a bigger plan and picture and, like, not letting yourself feel, like, the sadness and the grief of the experience. How does this compare to that? Because to me, the distinction I’m making in my mind, which could be totally wrong, is that for the acute events, things that are one off, you want to, like, let yourself feel that temporarily before you like, I guess, process it before you move on. And this is more about the chronic everyday states and situations that you’re constantly telling yourself.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:35:31]:
When we are threatened by a sense of emotional overwhelm, it is natural for many of us to shut down and to be unable to process what is there. There’s plenty of people who’ve experienced a significant loss, who either been unable to grieve, or it’s kinda come out sideways. Right? And it it gets that that energy gets transmuted into distraction or or whatever it might be. Where we wanna get to is a place where we are an honest relationship with what is true within our emotional experience. So this is actually practice three. I call it the gateway. So here’s what you do. Rather than always getting caught up in the story about an event, instead, you turn your attention off the story into the body, and you ask yourself, what is true about the emotion that is here? And this is very simple, and I’ll cut I’ll just kind of guide you through it.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:36:34]:
It’s a beautiful thing, and and anyone listening here, you can just pick an emotion you know is inside of you in relationship to to something you care about. So say, for example, the truth is I’m disappointed about something. Right? So so the pseudo positive person is rarely gonna admit that. Right? They’ll just go into the adaptation of positive, we can do this, you know, and self rationalize. Okay. Well, let’s just move on to this, or we could do this. No. It’s holding the sec.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:37:09]:
From a development perspective, it’s always more important to acknowledge what is true before leaping into the adaptation. So it would look like this. I’m disappointed. And you just feel it. You don’t create a story about it. You just acknowledge in its simplicity the truth. In this moment, pardon me showing up, and there’s disappointment here. But now, we’re gonna use it as a gateway.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:37:33]:
This is where the genius of this is. This is why emotions are so important. Then we go from I’m disappointed to I am feeling disciplined. And then what happens is there’s a slight shift. Now we’re moving through. Now I’m aware of feeling disappointment. So aware presence has now come in. We’re still in touch with the disappointment.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:38:00]:
And then finally, I’m aware of being aware. And then we shift into presence. And then from there, we ask ourselves, is there anything I need to do? Take care of this situation. So so here’s the beautiful thing. The reason people don’t get in touch with emotions is because they’re afraid of getting flooded by them. But when you know how to work with your emotions in that way, turn towards them, welcome and acknowledge their existence, allow yourself to feel it, and in the gateway, move through it. It can be transformational. But grief is completely different.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:38:42]:
So grief is designed to transform us because it tells us how much we care about that person or thing. And so this is why grief is a vehicle of transformation or can be. Because when you allow yourself to grieve deeply and authentically, and you open up to it and dissolve into it, and you’re held and supported, then over time, it can actually fundamentally change who you are. And grief is very closely linked to spiritual awakening. What I’ve seen in so many of my students is they get so far in their spiritual development practice, then they encounter a belt of grief, and it doesn’t have to necessarily be personal grief. It can be grief relating to humanity. You can tap into the archetypal field of grief. You can tap into the pain body of humanity, and you just gotta stay with it, open to it, find your ground, be transformed by it.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:39:49]:
So that’s a whole another topic we can explore at some other time. Yeah.

Nick Urban [00:39:53]:
Because if you go too far into that and you feel it without transforming it and you just sit and linger in that for a long time, that I mean, a lot of the ancestral medicines, ancient medicines knew that that’s a cause of so many different diseases.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:40:05]:
Definitely. Definitely. So so here’s the truism. Emotion needs to flow. When it’s stuck inside of our system, then we have a problem. And the way we know emotion is stuck is that we will be trapped in a repetitious story. That’s that’s the feedback. Right? When I’m stuck in the story of resentment or frustration or loss or woe or victimhood, etcetera, % of the time, underneath and beyond that story within the body is stuck emotion.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:40:37]:
And so a big part of the training that I do with my students is how to reflow that emotion. How do you restore the flow of emotion and experience through, because that’s how you process it. But it needs to be done with kindness. It needs to be done skillfully. And ideally, there’s something very profound in transformation when we process emotion in the presence of others. So, you know, kind of hyper independent people. We like to do everything ourselves in the privacy of our four walls. Right? But actually, some of the most transformational work is when you’re actually doing this work in the presence of another who’s present to you, holding space for you, or you’re held in a ritual environment where you’re able to process it kinda safely.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:41:24]:
So, you know, that’s a whole another level of inner work and healing to be doing grief work or even learning how to work, very consciously with anger. So you could call it sacred anger work, in the presence of someone who can hold space and kinda guide you.

Nick Urban [00:41:41]:
What’s the relationship between these practices and cultivating flow state where everything is effortless or, I guess, not effortless, but everything is you’re more effective. I don’t even know how you describe flow state most accurately. How would you describe flow state?

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:41:56]:
Yeah. Well, when I teach about flow, I I teach about superconscious flow, which is the direct experience of your deeper nature beyond the narrative based sense of self. So when we come out of our thinking conceptual mind into our body in a way that is open and welcoming and grounded and connect to our heart and our lower belly or the lower dantian, then we access a deeper state of being, which is very present, open, connected, more joyful, and spontaneous. As you live more from that, which really is a developmental stage, I e, one of the consequences of doing the inner work, doing the inner healing work, learning how to, deal with the consequences of trauma you may have had in the past, deal with attachment disruptions, all that stuff, is that at some stage, you live more from your essential superconscious nature. And one of the experience of it is it’s life in flow. Right? So life in flow is there’s just an organic, smooth sense of unfolding. You’re still feeling very deeply, but you feel very connected into life. Right? So typically, in the flow state, it’s kinda tunnel in.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:43:11]:
It’s kind of a you’re immersed in the present moment, but there’s not much consciousness going on around it. It’s just you in the moment, but bad things could be happening in that moment. You could be an orchestrator with bad things, but superconscious flow is completely different because you’re connected to the whole, and the whole is serving the whole. So you’re not gonna harm someone from this place, but you just feel so much more connected. But there’s a sense of more often not ease, flow, and nonresistance. You see, when we are, inhabit a welcoming state of nonresistance to what’s unfolding within, then there’s just flow of experience. And then when we notice that we’ve been triggered or activated, then what you’ll notice is tension and heaviness in the body. And when you know how to reflow that, you go back into flow again.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:44:06]:
So I talk about kind of standard flow, which would be performance flow and superconscious flow. They are very distinct kind of states. You can access superconscious flow in a given moment as a state change. So as in the meditator and your feedback train, you’ve done that. Right? You’ve been where you’ve been superconscious and lucid and a real sense of inner harmony and harmony with all that is. Okay? So that’s a state change into the superconscious flow state. However, a stage change is a permanent relocation, so that is your default setting. And that is the consequence of of engaging the developmental journey, and that I kinda teach you around.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:44:49]:
Right? And there’s there’s five core stages, and the superconscious flow state tends to stop coming in stage four and five.

Nick Urban [00:44:57]:
Mhmm. And this is not some esoteric thing that has no application to real life. It’s like a lot of times, the people who are most effective, they’re not always grinding fourteen, sixteen, eighteen hours a day. It’s like they when they do something, because they’re more connected and able access different states of flow, super conscious flow, they’re able to really just do what matters and do it effectively and efficiently and then recharge. And this year and last year, I started noticing how many people who are really on top of their game don’t do what we’ve been led to believe is required by media and the hit pieces about how this person sleeps two hours a night, and they work seventy five hours. And then the weekend starts, and they work another twenty. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:45:42]:
It doesn’t have to be that way. My gosh. No. And and what it is, at some stage, you wake up out of the spell that’s being programmed into you to, in order to make life happen, I need to be in control, and I need to make it happen. That is absolutely a first half of life mindset. Right? Now when you go through this process of inner transformation that happens to most of us in midlife, and if you consciously go with it and you know how to work with it, then what you realize is actually, hold on a sec. This is not my life. There’s this vast intelligence called life.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:46:31]:
We’re gonna call it the ocean. And I’m a wave of the ocean. And in the early part of life, as a wave, I think I’m separate from everything, and I think I’m in charge. But at some stage, you say, no, my friend. You’re simply the ocean waving. The ocean is in charge and expressing itself uniquely through you and as you. And the process of inner spiritual, psychospiritual development allows you to know that in your direct experience that you are both the ocean and the wave. And that when you see other waves, which are apparently separate individuals, you’re not separate from them.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:47:15]:
This is just their unique expression of the ocean as well. And yet we get caught up in our judgment zone. They shouldn’t be doing that. They shouldn’t appear that way. Right? We get into all of that kind of stuff. So, basically, what happens is as we embark in this inner development work, there’s a softening. There’s a relaxation. More simplicity comes in.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:47:39]:
More depth and selflessness comes in. We become so much more sensitive to negative harmful influences. Our capacity to watch violence, engage in violence really falls away if we’re honest about ourselves. We start to really dial in as to what nurtures us and enriches us and what doesn’t. We become super sensitive to what is pro life, a yes to life, and what is anti life or a no to life. And just naturally, you start to change who you hang out with, how you spend your time, where you place your focus. You start to care a lot more. You’re a lot more connected to your heart.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:48:23]:
You put more value on relationships. So there’s this whole transformation of value system.

Nick Urban [00:48:29]:
It’s interesting that you’re articulating that because that’s been my experience. And growing up as someone who played American football and rugby, the, like, softness was never something that I embraced. I, like, fought against it, and I, like, refused to accept it. And I realized over the last couple of years, I’ve become more sensitive, and I actually I feel better. And it’s an overall, like, welcome experience, and life just seems seems to flow better now than it did when I was trying to go upstream and cut against the grain.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:48:56]:
Exactly. And I think that the most important thing for the listener is to ask myself, am I being moved on to the next stage in my development? Am I truly fulfilled in that peace and enjoying the life that I have? Or do I sense at a deeper level, it’s time for me to change things up? Right? To ask and inquire as to who am I really? What’s my life really about? To start to allow yourself to kind of move into more contemplative spiritual practices, to start inquiring as to what aspect of the way I live my life is not healthy in serving me anymore. It may have been serving you, like, a couple of years ago, but is it today? When you actually dissect your routines and your rituals, are they bringing out the best in you? Or is it doubling down on neurosis? Right? There’s plenty of people in the biohacking field, you know, who are neurotic, right, and ultra controlling. And and the consequence, remember, is the diminishment of authenticity, joy, stillness, and peace. Now if someone’s got a good set of routines and they’re taking great care of their health, and they’re really able to be intimate and honest in their relationships, and they’re not acting out through addictions and stuff like that, and there’s a genuine sense of inner ease and simplicity about the world, and and the world is much more integrated. Right? So not everything’s fragmented. Then these are all hallmarks of someone who is engaged in the work, and they’re living a lot more consciously. And so I call this under really the umbrella of what I would call self actualization.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:50:48]:
Right? And and so by hacking two point o was really about me optimizing me, fine tuning all the various con, controllable aspects of my environment and my food and my supplements in order to get a better me. Fantastic. You know, that that’s kinda where you start. But it can become an obsessive neurotic pursuit at the expense of the things that matter most. And so what we teach is that at some stage, starting with learning how to work with your mind and the emotions and nervous system, you wanna place all that energy you now have, all of that cognitive performance you now have in service of your development and unfoldment. And we call this the self actualizing impulse. Right? And this is what Abraham Maslow talked about, which is there’s an impulse with inside of us that will move us to unfold our higher potentials. And it does not unfold through control.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:51:58]:
It actually unfolds through engagement and through surrendering. We have to learn how to surrender. And the way I teach that is the somatic corolla of surrender is softening. And so softening is softening our eyes, softening our tongue. Now softening our tongue actually helps our mind to go quiet because it deactivates some vocalization, internal mental chatter. So when our eyes are soft, I’ve activated relaxation. My tongue is soft, my mind goes still. I soften my heart.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:52:37]:
I soften my belly, and that is the somatic correlate of surrender.

Nick Urban [00:52:45]:
Doctor Mark, will you explain how to soften these different parts of body? Because that’s an important thing that we can’t overlook.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:52:52]:
Okay. So let’s start with the eyes. So we hold a lot of tension in our eyes. And it’s possible a whole bunch of your listeners, as you bring your attention to your eyes, say, oh my gosh. There is a lot of tension there. So you allow your eyes to soften. And as you look straight ahead, without thinking, just notice the spaciousness all around you. There’s a lot of space that just notice that tune to it, and allow your eyes to defocus and just tune in to that spaciousness.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:53:28]:
So right now, we just activated the body’s relaxation response. That’s step one. Now step two, we’ll allow our mouth to be open slightly and the tongue to be completely relaxed and soft in the bottom part of the mouth. Keep your focus on the tongue, allow it to be completely soft, and what you’ll notice is the mind has gone quiet. The mind chatter has quietened. Now, we’ll do a little experiment. Now, go back to the front of the head, the forehead, and start thinking about a problem. And if you have no problems, you can make one up.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:54:06]:
The mind’s pretty good at that. And as you’re thinking about it, what’s just happened to your tongue? Right. It’s gone tight and tense. Right? So here’s what happens. Anytime our internal mental chatter is activated, the tongue enters into a corresponding tension pattern. We can actually pattern interrupt that connection by intentionally relaxing the tongue, and it stops internal mental chatter. So sometimes when I teach this, it’s like the first time in a long time people have actually experienced what’s like to be have a quiet mind. So that’s what it means to have a soft tongue.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:54:53]:
So you people can practice this just periodically think about something. Oh, there goes my tongue. Intense you soften your tongue. Oh my gosh. There’s peace and quiet. The mental chatter is gone. Right. Welcome to the quiet mind.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:55:05]:
Next. Be in the center of the heart. Now what happens is when our heart is guarded, we have a lot of muscular tension around it, and so you can just intentionally allow it to soften and relax. It’s kinda like, you know, when you have a gripped hand, and someone says, well, how do I soften my grip on my hand? We just say, just allow it to soften, I e, it naturally wants to. You just need to give it the intent. So so we do that with the muscular around our heart, and then same with our belly. So we have in the Western population this default setting of suck in your belly, tighten your core. Right? You’re never allowed to let it hang out.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:55:54]:
Well, hold it a sec, my friend. If you want to be able to be relaxed within your body, it’s completely okay to allow your belly, particularly lower belly, to completely soften and open. And then we realize, oh my gosh. I store so much tension down there. So what we’re doing is we have what’s called a soft front line, eye soft, tongue soft, heart soft, belly soft, but dignified back line. Dignified back line is I’m vertical. I’m present. I’m engaged.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:56:34]:
This is the posture of active surrender, which is I’m here. I’m with you, But my front line is completely receptive. But my back line is I’m engaged. I’m primed to respond. I’m here for the present moment. That is the somatic or, physical felt sense of what act of surrender looks like. And and what a beautiful thing is you can practice this next time someone’s speaking to you, soften your front line, and you immediately move into receptivity and connection. Right? What tends to happen for a lot of us, someone’s speaking to us, we’re up in our cave, the thinking cave, completely oblivious to really what’s being said, missing completely the nonverbal messages kinda going on, priming ourselves to intervene and say something.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:57:29]:
Right? So we gotta become a lot more skillful at modulating our state and doing that through this method. It’s a very simple way to do that. It just requires a bit of practice.

Nick Urban [00:57:39]:
And even if you’ve already become reactive, you can catch yourself in that, and you can shift.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:57:45]:
Yeah. I do that. I mean, when I get reactive, so someone will say something, and and it’s normally your kind of partner. Right? So there could be a life situation. Someone gets activated. And then what I immediately know is my frontline will become tense. The armor comes in. There’s a rigidity that comes in, and energy builds up, and then I’m ready to respond.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:58:09]:
Okay? Now you can recondition all that, which is when that happens, instead of acting it out, instead, you reprogram it, which is you immediately soften and smile on the inside. And then that shifts you into presence. And then from there, you proceed. And this is how we start to actively reshape our fundamental conditioning. And the second core practice we teach called pause and shift teaches you exactly how to do that.

Nick Urban [00:58:43]:
Yeah. And that’s so important because conflicts when both people are sympathetically active, sympathetically dominant in the fight or flight, it doesn’t usually lead to resolution. But if either person’s able to get back into their body and pause, then that’s how things can shift. And what could be a major blow up turns into a little blip in the radar.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [00:59:06]:
That that’s right. And and the other thing you’ll notice, if someone can practice this, you will feel like you’re a mature adult. You’re the one being present, holding space, not getting caught up, and then you’ll see the other and and and just from a point of observation, which is, wow, they’ve become a 14 year old. And that’s okay because right now they’re dysregulated, And that’s okay. And that’s the whole thing in relationship is ultimate relationship is to be there together in service of each other’s development, as well as having fun and co exploring life together and reflecting back to each other non integrated parts of ourselves and all that kind of amazing stuff.

Nick Urban [00:59:57]:
Well, doctor Mark, in your program, you also have you meet people where they are. If they’re ready for this, obviously, you go deep around all of the self actualization, the self transcendence, but, also, you don’t overlook the pillars that are typically seen as important parts of biohacking or health optimization. What are some of the things that you cover in the program?

Dr. Mark Atkinson [01:00:21]:
Yeah. Okay. Great. So, it’s a fourteen week certification program. We call it the optimal health, longevity, and biohacking certification. And, basically, I think the people who will really enjoy it are people who are passionate about health. There may really be a health or wellness or health practitioner coach, or there may be passionate biohackers who wanna start coaching. And, actually, the majority of it is focused on physical health and physical optimization because that’s really where most people are at.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [01:00:49]:
Right? So we teach people how to deep dive into physical health, how to assess it, both subjectively and objectively. We teach how to create personalized protocols for people based on improving sleep, resilience, energy, weight, loss, body transformation. We have a whole bunch of modules on longevity. So I would say two thirds of it is rooted in the fundamentals and how to create personalized protocols for people, but using a combination of both sharing expertise, but also coaching expertise as well. Because sometimes the best ideas come up from the client. And then how to build out a personalized program built around a framework that I call, objectives, strategies, goals, and tactics. So, you know, the kinda outcome part of it is you always wanna help the client have a very clear outcome or vision of what it is they want to experience ultimately. Then the strategies or the pathways to that, the goals or the measurable milestones, and the tactics or the how it’s gonna happen.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [01:01:57]:
So we teach this kind of framework. It’s pretty intuitive, but nicely structured to apply that to where the client is at. So we do a lot of focus on what I call the optimal health model. I teach you all about everything I’ve learned about what’s required for optimal physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, and mental health. That’s the kind of foundations. I gate I take you through biohacking two point o, the best of it, and three point o, the best of it. And they’re equally important. You know, sometimes we think three point o, well, that’s an improved version of two point o.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [01:02:33]:
No. It’s just an expansion of it. Right? It’s just expanding the biohacking mindset and principles to a focus beyond self optimization, to self actualization, and self transcendence. So we include that as part of it. And really importantly, it can be very, very challenging for coaches to make a living doing what they do. And, you know, I’ve told over a thousand coaches around this, and what I’ve seen conclusively is that you have to have a niche area of expertise and be a specialist. So what we encourage our people who train with us is to choose a specialism within what we teach. That could be longevity, could be sleep, could be energy, could be come to performance, it could be weight loss, and specialize in that.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [01:03:21]:
And then we teach them how to set up a marketing funnel and get clients to them, get good quality clients, that kind of stuff, how to conduct themselves professionally, how to run themselves as a, as a business. And a lot of people, they’ll just wanna do this on the side. So also just how to, you know, find your ideal clients, you know, charge appropriately. And the golden rule of coaching is don’t offer individual sessions. It really has to be like a program. Right? Because you shape the outcomes with your client according to the way you structure your program. So, like, you know, when people work with me, for me, it’s a minimum of, six months. Right? But you’ve got a discovery call upfront.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [01:04:07]:
And if you’re gelled in and you’re confident you can help them and the chemistry is there, then it needs to be a minimum of three month to six month process. And, really, that is where where the transformations take place. And it’s much more fulfilling to work with people in that way.

Nick Urban [01:04:21]:
Yeah. Yeah. I’m with you. That’s awesome. And this is really one of the first programs I’ve come across that not only integrates all the physical biohacks, but also the other layers, the biohacking three point o stuff as well. So I’m very excited, especially because you’re delivering it, and you’ve been around the block in the health optimization, human performance, self transcendence arenas. So it’s gonna be great. When does it start?

Dr. Mark Atkinson [01:04:48]:
Yeah. So from April, doors open. But the way we’re structured is so it can be evergreen, which means that you can start training when you want. There’s gonna be a lot of prerecorded material. There’s gonna be live coaching skills workshops that will take place on a Saturday by Zoom at different time zones. There’s gonna be a community of all the students together with the instructors. And that’s the other exciting of this. You’re gonna be hanging out with a lot of people who are very sincere about, optimizing their health, improving their quality of life.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [01:05:23]:
And so that supportive community is gonna be a big part of it.

Nick Urban [01:05:27]:
Exactly. And I think we set up a special for my audience.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [01:05:31]:
Yes. That’s right. So so we’ll be providing a a discount coupon code that your audience can use and access so that when they do sign up, make sure you use, the code that we offer.

Nick Urban [01:05:43]:
Perfect. Can we use the code urban?

Dr. Mark Atkinson [01:05:45]:
Yes. We can.

Nick Urban [01:05:46]:
Let’s do it. Yeah. And whether or not you decide you’re gonna work with other people as a coach or you wanna just learn it yourself, I mean, really, you should be your own first client anyway. So it’s you’re gonna gain a lot, and you can help people around you with their health whether you do it professionally or not.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [01:06:03]:
Yeah. I think that’s an important part of it. It always has to start with yourself. That’s what integrity is about, which is, you know, you’re only gonna teach that which you’ve applied yourself. And I would imagine probably about a third of the people that will train with us would just do it for their own personal development because they’ll find it fascinating, and they’re excited about doing it.

Nick Urban [01:06:23]:
If people want to check this out, how do they find you on the Internet?

Dr. Mark Atkinson [01:06:27]:
Yeah. So, you wanna go to the schoolofbiohacking.com. And then that’s got a list of our programs. And this particular program we’ve talked about, it’s the optimal health longevity and biohacking certification.

Nick Urban [01:06:42]:
Perfect. Couple more questions before we part ways today. What three teachers have had the biggest impact on your life and work?

Dr. Mark Atkinson [01:06:50]:
Easy to respond to that. Number one, my wife, hands down, of all the human beings on this planet has had the most profound influence on who I am today because of her deep courage to working through her stuff with me to access a whole different level of love and connection. So that that that’s really straightforward. Secondly, I’m gonna say my children because they have reflected back to me the parts of me that I struggled to embrace myself. It’s a beautiful thing with children as they grow up and evolve. At that stage of their life, the same issues we had at that same stage can come up as well. So that’s just being transformational. And I think in terms of kind of, impact and, and other people, well, you know, I think the first spiritual teacher who I really resonated, with was Eckhart Tolle and, The Power of Now.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [01:07:55]:
And that was the first book that stopped me in my tracks. And, like, it just enabled me to connect into a deeper dimension that just felt so true and real. And that really was just like, what? Wow. There is so much more to life than I was experiencing. So, so yeah. But there’s been many along the way. But for sure, in terms of impact, hands down, my wife.

Nick Urban [01:08:21]:
Wow. I love that. First time that I’ve gotten wife and kids as two of the top three most profound teachers in their lives. Makes makes sense, though. Doctor Mark, oh, what’s one thing that your tribe does not know about you?

Dr. Mark Atkinson [01:08:34]:
I guess it would be one of my greatest joys is going for hikes on the weekend with my family and just being in nature. And that is such a source of deep enjoyment to me. And and as I advance in years, whatever, it’s just like I just love being in nature, hiking in good company, and and that’s become an increasingly important part of my life.

Nick Urban [01:09:03]:
Beautiful. Yeah. I’m with you on that. Alright. Doctor Mark Atkinson, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. We’ll do more of these because there’s a lot to cover. We didn’t barely even touched on the physical side of biohacking today. Lots to cover, so I hope you can join me again for another episode soon.

Dr. Mark Atkinson [01:09:19]:
I will do that. Thank you so much.

Nick Urban [01:09:21]:
Thank you for tuning in to this episode. Head over to Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and leave a rating. Every review helps me bring you thought provoking guests. As always, you can find the show notes for this one at mindbodypeak.comslash, and then the number of the episode. There, you can also chat with other peak performers or connect with me directly. The information depicted in this podcast is for information purposes only. Please consult your primary health care professional before making any lifestyle changes.