MUD\WTR: Trends with Benefits

Dreaming can be a form of overnight therapy, helping us creatively problem solve and process difficult emotions. Unfortunately, we chronically disrupt our sleep with too much screen time, alcohol, and caffeine, and not enough sunlight and exercise. Would you like to build better habits so you can tap into the healing power of dreamwork? Then check out today’s pod to help you design your newest rest ritual.

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For our hundredth episode I asked myself, “What does the MUD\WTR fam need most right now?” We’re creative, curious and care about our well-being, as well as the world around us. But even with all our mindfulness, we still make mistakes and have vices we haven’t been able to shake. We break our hearts trying to force ourselves to change before we have the time, energy or skillset to make different choices. For this special episode, I want to show you how to be more compassionate so you can stop the self-flagellation and remove any obstacles to being your best self.

What are your life-draining habits? 

What are you not ready to change?

What obstacles can you remove to create a state of readiness for change?

If you dig this podcast please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts. It takes less than 60 seconds and helps a bunch.

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Dr. Jeffrey Durmer knows sleep is of prime importance. As a sleep neuroscientist, neurobiologist and neurologist, he’s an authority on how sleep creates physical, mental and emotional resilience. He says, “If you're going to build a house, you want to build it on the best foundation you can possibly make,” and that means prioritizing healthy sleep. While he works with elite athletes on sleep protocols for optimal recovery, he has plenty of suggestions for the rest of us—including how to create a simple sleep sanctuary and a restful nighttime routine. And by the way, Daylight Savings Time has got to go.

If you dig this podcast please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts. It takes less than 60 seconds and helps a bunch.

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Our consciousness exists within—and is shaped by—space and time, our parents and peers and the larger culture. We can invite ourselves to notice what we include in our awareness, what we leave out and how our contexts impact us. In that awareness, we can develop a value system, which helps us define our sense of self. Once we design where we place our attention, we can shape our experience; then our lives begin to change.

Do you have a consistent reflective practice?

What do you include in your awareness? 

How does what you notice shape your experience of yourself, the past, the present and what you want for your future?

If you dig this podcast please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts. It takes less than 60 seconds and helps a bunch.

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Living in a human body comes with its unique set of limitations. We have the capacity to soar to great heights, but also sink to some serious lows. Sometimes it takes all the energy we have just to get out of bed, shower or feed ourselves. So how do you make yourself feel better when it feels like you can’t do anything? Today’s episode offers some low-effort interventions that can help.

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Self-love needs to be a practice before it becomes an embodied state. But where to start? We thought it meant taking bubble baths and eating chocolate, but rituals of ease and pleasure only scratch the surface. So instead of giving you a list of strategies you’ve already heard before, I want to ask you: Who are you? What is love? And why does self-love matter to you? Nobody can answer these questions for you, but I can show you some possibilities.

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We know the fungi cordyceps can infect ants and manipulate their behavior. But could cordyceps evolve to control us? That’s the premise of the post-apocalyptic TV drama, “The Last of Us.” The show inspires mycelial horror as a mutant cordyceps infection causes human society to collapse. It flips the script on how we typically think of cordyceps, which is consumed to improve many aspects of health and cognitive performance, including learning capacity and memory. I talk with Matt Held, senior research and development manager at MUD/WTR, to discuss what the show gets right, and what it gets wrong, about this zombie fungus.

If you dig this podcast please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts. It takes less than 60 seconds and helps a bunch.

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Shane Heath—founder and CEO of MUD\WTR—shares a ritual for how to overcome the voice of doubt as well as how to make the most of the 4,000 weeks of life each of us has, on average, on this planet. We also talk about the power of “Atomic Habits” by James Clear as we dive into MUD’s new book club.

If you dig this podcast please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts. It takes less than 60 seconds and helps a bunch.

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We all want to be wanted, but sometimes we become so enmeshed with others that we lose our sense of self. Our boundaries waffle, our preferences dim, and we play host to other people’s emotions, feeling grumpiness or anxiety that isn’t actually ours. Today’s episode answers a listener's question about how to separate what’s yours from what’s theirs so you can connect from wholeness, not habit.

If you dig this podcast please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts. It takes less than 60 seconds and helps a bunch.

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Psychedelics blur where we bump against the limits of the self as an individual and something else begins. They inspire a sense of being connected to something larger than ourselves, of being one with each other and earth consciousness. How can we relationally and responsibly engage with psychedelics? So what’s our responsibility to the plants and people and planet that make all transcendence possible? 

Go down the rabbit hole:

https://doubleblindmag.com/colonialism-by-another-name/

https://decolonialfutures.net

If you dig this podcast please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts. It takes less than 60 seconds and helps a bunch.

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Ever wanted to battle it out with your partner at night but they were too tired, and then the sound of them drifting off to sleep enraged you? Maybe you exchanged prickly words right before turning down the covers and wound up curled away from each other in fetal position, being careful not to touch. Rather than losing precious REM to talk things out, what you may need in these situations is a good night’s sleep. Think I’m dreaming? Then listen to today’s episode on how to shut your eyes—and mouth—for less processing and more peace.

If you dig this podcast please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts. It takes less than 60 seconds and helps a bunch.

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Change is hard, it can stress us out and disrupt our routine. It takes energy and sometimes giving up on a new habit is a guilty relief because we have a chance to recover from all that effort. But failing is part of the practice. So how do you pick yourself back up and try again? If you need a spotter, I got you, with six steps to a more compassionate, and realistic, approach to change.

If you dig this podcast please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts. It takes less than 60 seconds and helps a bunch.

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Reach out and send voice memos to podcast@mudwtr.com.

We’ve all heard about how beneficial it is to have a gratitude practices. It improves your mood, health, and relationships by focusing on the good rather than dwelling on the bad. But what if you aren’t able to feel grateful? What if you’re stressed out, disappointed or angry? If forcing yourself to feel grateful is aggravating your anxiety instead of alleviating it, help is on the way. I have a practice designed to help you take a small step back toward your center—instead of trying to pole vault into gratitude.

If you dig this podcast please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts. It takes less than 60 seconds and helps a bunch.

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In The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Medicine it is said: “People and nature are inseparable. In nature the cyclical movement of the heavenly bodies produces atmospheric influences that exert control over the rhythms of the seasons and is responsible for change to the myriad living and nonliving things…the coldness of winter forces inactivity and storing.”

Do you feel like you’ve been inactive and storing this winter? Or do you feel like you’re running around, doing too much, without enough daylight to get it all done? Of course the seasons affect us. The question is: what can we do when culture prevents us from responding to nature’s changes?

If you dig this podcast please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts. It takes less than 60 seconds and helps a bunch.

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The story of María Sabina, a curandera who helped bring psychedelic mushrooms to the west, shows the pleasure and pain that results when ancient medicine suffers a culture clash. So for all of you self-experimenting with entheogens to explore altered states of consciousness to be your best self, great! But…how are you helping those that help you help yourself? 

Sara

:microdose host

If you dig this podcast please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts. It takes less than 60 seconds and helps a bunch.

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Do you spend most of your time feeling indecisive, second-guessing yourself and stressing over the smallest decisions? Chill. That just means you’re a human being responding to a world that’s been turned upside-down. Still, we need to be able to figure out what to make for dinner, which jobs to turn down and who to build community with.  In today’s episode, I offer some general guidelines for how to make more satisfying decisions—big or small.

Sara

:microdose host

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We all have core needs, but each comes with its own potential benefits and costs. We build towards stability, but crave variety; in order to create authentic connection, we need our individual integrity. To create a life of purpose and meaning, we need to find our personal balance between these complementary, yet contradictory motivations. Luckily, some wise guides have created a map of the six core human needs to show us how we can choose our own adventures. 

Sara

:microdose host

For weekly stories visit Trends w/ Benefits and sign up for our newsletter.

Reach out and send voice memos to podcast@mudwtr.com. 

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Want to join our cold plunge group chat? Here's the link.

FREEZE OUR FOUNDER: MUD\WTR’s Shane Heath faces his cold plunge challenge TODAY at 4 p.m. PST. Place an order in the MUD\WTR store before then, and we’ll add a little extra time to Shane’s total plunge time. Tune in to watch it all go down on IG Live: @drinkmudwtr 

We're also donating 5% of all new sales to the MINDS Foundation, a group that provides mental health resources in India.

While you’re stocking up on mud, listen back to our conversation with Shane where he tells the story of how a hyperbaric chamber nearly killed him.

For weekly stories visit Trends w/ Benefits and sign up for our newsletter

Reach out and send voice memos to podcast@mudwtr.com.

Stalk us on Instagram.

Want to join our cold plunge group chat? Here's the link.

Some aspects of modern life are just flat-out exhausting. Working a job where you’re underpaid and undervalued. The ongoing climate catastrophe and never-ending systemic oppression. And of course, our digital devices that keep us locked in a loop of competition, comparison and a compulsion to be constantly plugged in.

But other things sneak up on us, slowly but surely draining us of our vitality. Sara Russell offers three tips to stop your mind from leaking your life force, so that you can flow into focus and creativity.

If you dig this podcast please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts. It takes less than 60 seconds and helps a bunch.

For weekly stories visit Trends w/ Benefits and sign up for our newsletter.

Reach out and send voice memos to podcast@mudwtr.com.

Stalk us on Instagram.

Want to join our cold plunge group chat? Here's the link.

Hollywood loves to sell us the romance of friends falling in love with each other.  But how do you go from friends to lovers when you don’t have writers and directors telling you what comes next? In today’s episode, I give you a script to follow when your best friend starts giving you butterflies so you have a shot at your own happily ever after.

Sara

:microdose host

Relationship Anarchy Smorgasbord

If you dig this podcast please leave a short review on Apple Podcasts. It takes less than 60 seconds and helps a bunch.

For weekly stories visit Trends w/ Benefits and sign up for our newsletter.

Reach out and send voice memos to podcast@mudwtr.com 

Stalk us on Instagram.

Want to join our cold plunge group chat? Here's the link.