037: Integrating spirituality while building an internationally renowned business w/ Udo Erasmus of Udo's Choice

The legendary Udo Erasmus is the co-founder of Udo’s Choice line, which  can be found in Whole Foods and other health food stores worldwide. Udo  designed the machinery for making oils with health in mind and pioneered  flax oil, a billion dollar industry. However, Udo walked a difficult path to  become the man he is today. Being a child of war, Udo’s life began with intense  struggle. As an adult, he got pesticide poisoning in 1980, leaving doctors at a  loss regarding treatment. Deciding to take his health into his own hands, Udo  began researching, and his discoveries led him to a passion for finding the  answers to life’s big questions which would hopefully one day bring him and  the world peace. 

Today, Udo is an acclaimed speaker and author of many books, including  the best-selling Fats That Heal Fats That Kill, which has sold over 250,000  copies. He teaches at events hosted by Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra, has  keynoted an international brain health conference, and has traveled to over 30  countries to conduct thousands of live presentations, media interviews, and  staff trainings impacting more than 25,000,000 lives with his message on oils,  health, peace, nature, and human nature. Udo has an extensive education in  biochemistry, genetics, biology, and nutrition, including a master’s degree in  counseling psychology. 

💫 We cover :

• Heart Led vs. mind-led leadership
• The backstory behind Udo’s Choice, available in Whole Foods and stores world wide
• Going from “striving” and “burnout” to sustainable energy that is deeply connected to source
• Udo’s background as a child of war and refugee, and how he’s gotten through the trauma to build trust in the universe and his own path
• Allowing your health struggles to be the path, vs. the obstacle 
•  How to build a super successful business as a deeply mindful leader
• Ways to move from imposter syndrome, fear, and doubts → forever
• Tapping into your inspiration and authentic voice
• Going against the grain as an entrepreneur
•  Building a mindful practice

+ so much more!

💫 To connect with Udo :

• Udo’s choice
• https://udoerasmus.com/ 
• @UdoErasmus 
• Linkedin

Transcript

Kasia: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to nourish. My name is Kasia and I'm an entrepreneur, a longtime meditator, and a student of Chinese medicine. My mission with this podcast is to share the tools and practices to help you integrate your whole self into every aspect of your world. As someone who is both a type A high achiever and a deeply spiritual, vulnerable, and empathetic being, I know firsthand how it feels to be living a double life.

Showing up one way at work, a different way alone, and struggling to reconcile the two. This disintegration of authenticity is one of the biggest causes of burnout, health flares, and anxiety. For me, understanding how the mind body connection is crucial to health and success. [00:01:00] Cultivating a strong sense of inner self and applying the healing philosophies.

of Chinese medicine and Zen Buddhism to my life has allowed me to lead from a completely heart powered place, letting go of other people's judgments and finding peace and allowing my multidimensional being to shine. My hope is that this podcast may inspire you to do the same. I want to call out. It is a practice.

It is a journey. But I believe it is the most important thing that we can do for our bodies, minds, and our ultimate potential. Enjoy.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the Nourish podcast. Today's guest is Udo Erasmus, co founder of Udo's Choice. which you likely have seen over at Whole Foods and other health food stores worldwide. [00:02:00] Hudo pioneered the flax oil industry, which is a billion dollar industry. He is also the author of a book called Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill, which has sold over 250, 000 copies.

As an acclaimed author and speaker, Udo has an eight step process that takes into consideration all the elements of nature and human nature, including physical health, mental health, presence, awareness, life, energy, and being in harmony with nature and humanity. Udo's background includes studies in biochemistry, genetics, biology, nutrition, as well as a master's degree in counseling psychology.

Folks, this conversation, I feel like I manifested out of thin air. Frankly, I had been talking to my fiance the day before I was introduced to Udo about really. Seeking out incredible leaders that have both reached that pillar of what [00:03:00] society calls, quote unquote, success, but leads from a different place, a heart powered place versus purely mind driven leadership.

Udo is a complete example of that. We dive deep on today's conversation. Y'all, we talk about, of course, heart powered leadership. We talk about. Udo's incredible journey founding Udo's Choice, how it actually came from a place of immense suffering and his own personal health journey, which sounds very traumatic, not even as traumatic as his childhood.

But he is somebody who has overcome adversity and not just overcome and powered through it with sheer grit, but completely approached it from a place that is just so in flow with love and harmony. He is somebody that is an example of a heart powered, mindfully driven leader. We don't see enough examples of [00:04:00] leadership like that in our day and age.

And it is so beautiful to witness and be in conversation with leaders who are examples of that and can inspire us to approach our own work, our own passions, our own priorities in life differently. So. For all you type A ambitious humans out there who have suffered from burnout are dealing with any sort of overwhelm, anxiety, and want to imagine a different way to create meaningful things in this world with impact.

This conversation is so for you. Enjoy. Uda, welcome to the Nourish podcast. 

Udo: Uh, thank you for having me on. It's going to be fun. Mm 

Kasia: hmm. I am so excited about this conversation. I had to pause us before getting started because we were really diving right into it. But before we do, because we have [00:05:00] a lot to cover, I want to kick it off with a question that I ask each and every guest.

And that is, what are three words that you would use to describe yourself? 

Udo: Content, loved, inspired. 

Kasia: Wow. I love those. First of all, I've never had a guest say content before. So I want to call that out. I want to name that, especially because. I'm so fascinated by your incredible background and all your accomplishments, but also some of what I've read about you on a personal level.

And so to have kind of a balance of that and to really feel content, that is I think what everybody strives for. So incredible word choice right there. Let's dive into it all. So Udo, you are the founder of Udo's Choice, which is available in Whole Foods. I love it. Co founder. Co founder. Okay. Co founder of Udo's Choice.

That's amazing. By the way, I think that's the best way to go. As co founder myself, seeking a co founder right now. [00:06:00] It's available at Whole Foods and stores worldwide, and you're also the author of Fats That Heal, Fats That Kill. Now, as a fellow entrepreneur, I would love to start with your backstory because I know that it is, it's a very twisty, windy road, kind of where the, the path that you went through to get to where you are.

And it all started with Something along the lines of four guys in a van, no AC, traveling across America. Could you walk us through that journey of Udo's Choice as a brand, that success journey? 

Udo: There were actually only two in the van. 

Kasia: Oh, did you lose two along 

Udo: the way? No, no, no, no. There were only two. I don't know if somebody of us.

And it came from actually, my marriage broke up, I was really upset, and I took a full time job as a pesticide sprayer. Wow. And I literally walked barefoot over lawns that I had sprayed, and the skin peeled off the [00:07:00] bottom of my feet. So I started wearing rubber boots, but I always sprayed in a bathing suit, because, you know, I'm fair skinned and I wanted to have a tan.

And so I was spraying, you know, and the wind would drift a spray on my back and three years of doing that carelessly. I even had somebody ask me, aren't you worried you're going to get poisoned? And I said, nah, I'm immune. And that's called testosterone poisoning. Happens to a lot of young men. You know, they take risks.

They're a little crazy, 

Kasia: right? All kinds of 

Udo: poisoning. Yeah. Until they have their first. Big disaster. And then they start to smarten up. So I got poisoned. I went to the doctor and said, what do you have for pesticide poisoning? She said nothing. And at that point it really became clear. I mean, it was sort of clear that your health is your responsible kind of, you know, you eat and you drink and what you choose makes a difference to how your body gets built.

So I kind of knew that, but That's when it really, the penny really dropped. Oh my God, my health is my [00:08:00] responsibility and if I don't take care of it, maybe nobody's going to take care of it. And I had background in biochemistry and genetics that came really out of the longer story of being born in a war and trying to understand how things work and figuring out how people can live in harmony.

That's been my driver all my life. Since I was six years old, I had the background. So I went into the journals and started looking at nutrition and health, nutrition and disease on the notion that the body is made out of food plus water, plus air. But I was just thinking about food. And the idea is that your body's always turning over.

That's why you have to eat. Right? So every year, about 98% of the atoms in your body are removed and replaced every year. That means if something goes wrong in your body and you raise your standard for food intake, then within one year, you will have rebuilt 98% of your body to a higher standard. And that's called [00:09:00] healing.

That's why healing works, because the body's always turning over. So you get better input, you end up with a better product. Wow. And so that's, so that's where I, and I was looking at minerals and vitamins and amino acids and fatty acids and all the different parts of, that are essential to health. And I got stuck on oils because it was so confusing and so contradictory.

One study I read said Omega 6 is an essential nutrient that you can't make but have to have, has to come from outside. If you don't get it long enough, it'll kill you, not getting enough. Right? And so it's, so I have, you, you have to have this thing. And the next study I read says omega 6 gives you cancer and kills you.

And I'm going, what? I have to have it to be healthy? And it gives me cancer and kills me? It was like, that doesn't compute. I started looking deeper and realized how much damage is done to our oils by industry when they make them. In order to get a long shelf [00:10:00] life, and of course also when we throw them in the frying pan, because they're the most sensitive of our nutrients, light, oxygen and heat damage them.

They need the most care of all of our essential nutrients, and we give them the least care. And more health problems come from damaged oils than any other part of nutrition. And more health benefits come from getting oils made with health in mind. Or your body needs an oil change from the dirty oils to the damaged oils to oils made with health in mind.

More health problems will come from making that change than any other change you make in nutrition. And then omega 3 were established as essential the year after I got poison. I got poison in 1980. 1981, it was established that omega 3 is also essential and 99% of the population doesn't get it enough for optimum health.

It is the single most widespread essential nutrient insufficiency of our time. Every cell needs them. They're a nightmare to work with. [00:11:00] And I got so excited. Oh my God, if we could make... with health in mind and bringing them back into the diet of people. Oh my God. We could help almost everybody. And, uh, I, I just like, I mean, I got so stoked and that was the drive behind the whole project.

I had no business background. I had good background in science, in biological sciences and biochemistry, but we were clear about standards. These had to be oils made with health in mind. We were going to treat them with care, and it's a pain to do that. They're stored in, uh, refrigerated in the factory, stored in the sto refrigerated in the stores, stored refrigerated at home, never used for frying.

If they're shipped more than two weeks, refrigerated in shipping. So this is like a completely diff different way of treating oils. With a lot more care and it's a lot more painful to do that, but then they don't get damaged and then they unfold their benefits for health. And so that's, that's what happened.

And then we got into a van without air conditioning in [00:12:00] 1988 and uh, went to a hundred and, uh, no, 85 cities in 101 days. In the hottest months of the year, so July, August, half of June, half of September and talk to anybody who would listen to us. And of course, we were excited. I was enthusiastic through the roof.

And that's what began. We began to make flax oil because that's the richest source of omega 3s. It just turns out not to be well balanced. So we had to actually shift from flax to blend to get that balance right. Yeah, that was the two guys in the van without air conditioning. Oh my gosh. Every few days we would get really hot and sticky because it was so hot in the U.

S., right? We would walk into a Marriott hotel like we owned it. And the guy who was my driver told me that's what we have to do. And I said, well, how do you walk into a hotel like you own it? And he walked, it's like military style, right? Arms swinging and you look like you're really focused and [00:13:00] you're like really pursuing a goal, and we then would go up to the showers and the workout places, and if they had a pool, we'd go for a swim in the pool, and then we'd take a shower, and then we'd take our clothes in, and we'd wash our clothes in the shower, and then we would pile back into the van, and off we'd go.

We literally worked all day, drove all night for 101 days. 

Kasia: Oh my gosh, I love it. And 

Udo: in two years, flaxseed oil, which was completely unknown, became the second highest selling oil in the natural foods industry where we were active in two years. From that enthusiasm, from setting the standards, we set Really clear standards, and we wouldn't work with people who didn't follow our standards.

So we had high standards, you know, you'd think that would hold you back. Actually, that made people even more excited. I didn't know that when I started, but so that's kind of the short story of the. 

Kasia: Oh my gosh, I have so [00:14:00] many follow up questions. And, you know, as you can imagine, this can go in so many directions from, you know, the details of fats through to this whole entrepreneurial journey.

But the immediate question that comes to mind for me is this, like you mentioned that at the very beginning. As somebody who suffered from pesticide poisoning without a solution, you started to search for a cure, and a lot of the information was contradictory, yet you still pushed through, and then when it came to bringing your product to market, you focused on standard, which perhaps is not, you know, the wisest thing to do when you want to focus on margins and scaling, and, you know, I imagine that if you started off, uh, spraying pesticides, it's not like this was a, um, Highly profitable operation from the get go, right?

You're really investing a lot in trusting your instincts, digging into the research, and kind of going against the grain. And I [00:15:00] would love to get your perspective on what gave you confidence to do that. You know, forget about the confidence of walking into the Marriott, although I think that's very cool, and that's going to be a new challenge I might take on for myself.

But just in terms of... Creating and innovating in a space that doesn't exist in a space that has contradictory information and you're trying to get to the, you know, the, the root of the science and then bringing it to market and making it successful. Like, what was your North Star? Like, what was pulling you and how did you get the strength and the confidence and the wherewithal to do that?

Udo: I would say I was just desperate enough for making something happen for my health. And I have a certain kind of confidence, like I know what I know. There's a lot of things I don't know. There's a lot of things I don't have any confidence in. When it comes to science and molecules, I have confidence. And I literally never, ever thought about money.

This was not about money. This [00:16:00] was about, oh my God, we could help so many people. And there's something that feels so good in the heart when you can help people, independent of whether you're going to make money or not. And the money then comes as a result of that. And I never did any calculations and, you know, what are the margins?

I didn't do any of that. I had somebody else who, who was into that. The only thing that was, I was sure of, Like about confidence, the only thing I was sure about it, we could get this done. It was like, I have no doubt. I honestly, I mean, I sometimes I got a little tired. I said, Oh, geez, my, all my friends are partying and I'm writing a book, you know, how boring, you know?

So I, it was like, but then something would happen that would say, no, no, no, you're on the right track. Keep going. So it's a mixture of like enthusiasm for being able to help. And maybe a little bit of divine intervention for when, but I don't remember having, having like huge doubts. It was like, Oh, and we were so, we were so on fire.

It [00:17:00] was, and it was fun. And we worked all day and drove all night. And it was like, I don't remember ever saying, Oh God, this is so much work. I don't remember ever feeling that we were just doing it. And it wasn't like I didn't pump myself up to do that. You know, sometimes there's certain things, it's kind of like when you fall in love.

You get obsessed, right? You didn't, you didn't sit down and structure out, you know, it just, it just happens. There's something that you get obsessed with it, and that obsession drives everything. And I think all really good projects that don't burn you out, You know, come from a place inside that is about serving.

And this is, again, not head tripped. You know, and, you know, to get into that, we have to go to the longer story. You know, because your state of being is the power behind every accomplishment, every one of your accomplishments. And that state and that accomplishment will look like your state of being. So if you're half [00:18:00] baked, your project will be half baked.

If you're, if you're, if you're really present, your project will be really present, and any weaknesses you have will show up in your, in your business, because the business is just an extension of your state of being. You can't but bring your state of being to expression. So I'll just give you an example.

If you're content, and I say I am, so you feel peace. Okay. When I feel peace, I can sit in the room, I can sit in the traffic and say, Oh my God, peace is everywhere. And so when, when I feel the peace, then I will live into peace in the world. But if I'm angry, I will see enemies. And then even there might not be any enemies, but because I'm angry, I'll see enemies.

And then I'll begin to live into the world, creating enemies if there aren't any, to live into a world where anger is appropriate, or, you know, where there [00:19:00] are enemies and therefore I have to be aggressive. Or if I'm fearful, then I see danger everywhere. Oh my God, what if my house falls down right now? Oh my God, what if my, the lights that I have here, what if they electrocute, I don't know, you know, I could come up with something.

So then you see danger everywhere. And then you live into the world like it's a dangerous place. So your state of being automatically comes to expression. And so what do you then, then what do you have to do? You need to find within yourself. The place where you are whole, where you are inspired, where you feel taken care of so you can actually take care of somebody else, that you feel loved, that you feel peace, and when you go there, then it's not like, oh, let me do uncomfortable things.

No, no, no. First find the comfort within your being, and don't ever let go of that comfort in your being. And then go and do what you need to do from that state of being. Ugh. [00:20:00] 

Kasia: Oh my gosh. First of all, so beautifully, poetically, eloquently stated. I mean, what comes to mind as you're describing this is it sounds like you tapped into and even your energy right now is tapping into this really powerful, clean, heartfelt energy as opposed to dirty energy, right?

Like the stress, the cortisol ridden energy. And I think that is just so powerful. It's something that I think a lot of children experience when they're playing, but I have to ask you and not challenge you on this, but ask you because I'm genuinely curious. You talked about states of fear and states of, you know, kind of approaching things from a different energetic space.

And I do feel like, especially when it comes to putting something out there that you care about, a lot of entrepreneurs, artists run into this stickiness that comes up as fear [00:21:00] or doubt or any sort of anxiety. May it be around the outcome, may it be around the viability of it, may it be the reality of their lives and they have to provide, you know, day to day and they're taking this risk.

I'm curious, how do you tap into that state of mind? And I know, and I want to call this out explicitly, and I will be recording the intro afterwards. So this will be included, but you come from a history of extreme hardship as a child of war, right? And an immigrant. And so I'm curious, what is that for you?

Is it the perspective? Is it practices that you've tapped into? How do you tap into that contentment, you know, when, when things are, are, when you're also struggling at the same time, or is it a reframe on struggling? I'm so curious. 

Udo: Yeah. I was two and a half when the war ended and we were refugees fleeing out of Poland, uh, westward, uh, with the communists chasing us in tanks and trucks.

We were on [00:22:00] dirt roads in horse drawn hay wagons, mostly mothers with young children. I was two and a half. It was winter. And the Allies, who are supposed to be the good guys, they were shooting at us from planes, using the refugees as target practice. And so, I just remember not feeling safe, not knowing what I could depend on because every day was a different story.

My mother eventually, there were dead horses and dead people in the ditches. My mother eventually got off the road and started walking through the fields. She had six kids with her, six years and younger. And she couldn't handle six kids, so she left four of them behind. And can you imagine having to do that as a mother?

I was one of the ones left behind and eventually my, my mother's sister, uh, you know, she got out and survived and I ended up in an orphanage someplace. And then my aunt, my mother's sister actually went and found us and brought us out [00:23:00] after the end of the war. So I basically was born like it was, it was crazy then, but now I look at it, what a gift.

I don't wish it on you, but what a gift, because I learned very early how bad it can get when people don't deliberately cultivate peace, or cultivate cooperation, or cultivate friendliness, or cultivate kindness, when they have the luxury to do that. So we tend to take it for granted. And that's why. We had a Second World War, because if we just started cultivating it at the end of the First World War, there would not have been a Second World War.

And so anyway, I was, you know, I was in, in Germany, listening to adults have these stupid, intense, angry arguments about things that I thought were really trivial. And this thought came, like, there must be a way that people can live in harmony. And a little cocky voice from a six year old who doesn't know how complicated everything [00:24:00] is, I'm gonna find out how.

And that's been my driver all my life. That's why I got into science, because I was always like nervous and shy, and I liked books because books were safe, you know. But I also wanted to understand how things work, because that made the world manageable. So I got into science, then I got into biosciences, then I got into psychology because I wanted to know how thinking works.

Then I got into medicine because I wanted to know how health works, but they only teach about disease. So I went back into biochemistry and genetics because in biology, you learn about how normal creatures work in normal situations. And it's actually the study of health, although nobody calls it that, right?

And then I left because, uh, you know, I wasn't finding everything I was looking for. In particular, the, you know, the confidence, the inner strength, that came later. I had some very powerful experiences. There was a, one was a being made of light after I got treated [00:25:00] very badly by some Christians because I thought these were my brothers who were all trying to figure it out.

And we'll, we'll all get together and we'll tell our stories and we'll all leave enriched and it'll all be, be very cool, right? No, they, they judged me very harshly, kicked me out, you know, and 

Kasia: What age was this as you were kind of seeking the 

Udo: community? Yeah, by this time I had done my university. So I was in my late seventies, 1970.

In 1970, so I was 28. And so I went to clear my head in nature and this being came because I wanted to know what was the experience the masters had, like whether you talk about Buddha or Krishna or Christ or even Socrates. What do these people experience out of which came their stuff? You know, what they did and what they said, right?

And I thought that was a good thing to, uh, you know, like a good, good topic of study. And so this being came and it embodied a message, and the message was, I am come not to judge, but to love. It's [00:26:00] right after I had been so harshly judged. That was the message. All of my confusion was disappeared, and I honestly, it feels to me like it reset my entire life.

The war baby stuff and all the stuff I learned as a kid, it just reset me. There's, because what is, what is I am come not to judge but to love? Your life talking to your body or a master talking to humanity. Same, same. Life is the master within you, right? And is unconditionally loving, is empowering and unconditionally loving.

And the closer you get to that in your focus, in your feeling, in your experience, Bye. Bye. Bye. That's where you, that's where the confidence lives, in that place, indestructible, always there, 24 7, 365, unconditional love. Right? And when you, you're in, when you get in touch with that, there's nothing left to do in your life except to help.

Then everything becomes easy. What, what needs to be done around [00:27:00] here? Wow. How can I make the biggest splash for good with what I know and what I've experienced and what I've been given and what I've learned and what I have an affinity or a talent for, right? And then the, the, the oil project was a project like that, you know, that came along, you know, and it was like, oh my God, it was like, okay, so this is a disaster.

And sometimes you go through negative stuff. Right? But it wasn't self doubt, it was, it more came out of self made disasters, because I'm stupid sometimes, right? And then out of that came the problem, and that problem pushed me deeper to, again, a better state of being, because the state of being that got me poisoned was probably not the best state of being a person could be in.

And so it took, it drove me deeper. And then this thing showed up and I was in the right place at the right time. So you have to say there's more to this than, Oh yeah, it's just me being cool. It's much bigger than that. You know, [00:28:00] you're connected to a very large universe and the forces in that universe, probably 99% of them we're not even aware of.

Kasia: Mm. I truly needed to talk to you today. That's all I'm going to say. And I know a lot of listeners are probably feeling the same way. You know, I'm hearing you say that kind of similar to what we talked about earlier, that when we, we think about how do you get into that state, move away from the state of fear and tap into that state of knowing and confidence and clean energy, it sounds like a lot of it is behind the intention, like shifting the intention.

Right. If I'm hearing you correctly, like to come at it from a place of love, like what is it like if you tap into that as opposed to when it comes to starting something new and you have all these fears and you're worried about the outcome and you're worried about. Whether or not people will like it or if you'll fail or if you'll end up in debt doing X, Y, and Z with like all [00:29:00] those like worst case scenarios, which aren't necessarily your current reality, you know, of course, depends, but it sounds like reframing the intention is really powerful.

If I'm hearing you correctly or yeah, it's 

Udo: a little bit different from that because we get taught when we do our business courses. And I've done a bunch since then, but we always get taught that it's about mindset and then you talk yourself into it and you talk yourself out of it and you have some negative thoughts so you replace them with positive thoughts.

I'm talking about getting out of your head and getting into a pure experience of energy. There is no negativity in light. There is no darkness in light. If you can live from that light in you, that is actually who you are. Where should the doubt come from? But if you're tossing ideas around and, you know, and if you, if you're focused on the success, you know, there's a saying, you have the right to [00:30:00] action, but the fruit of action belongs to the universe.

You're not responsible for the outcome, but you want to be responsible and then you create stress around it, right? So for me, it was, it was just like, you know what, this needs to be done. We should be making oils with health in mind. Oh my God, we could help so many people. Let's just do it. So I didn't get in my head about it.

I was sure that I could do it. So you 

Kasia: felt, it sounds like, in your body, that knowing, as opposed to the logic in your head. Yeah, because 

Udo: the power that is life can do what I'm talking about. The power that is life, the power that is love, the power that is God within you. However you frame that, that is unconditional love within you, that power is capable of doing whatever you set out to do.

Hmm. Right? Yeah. And then, and if you take time to sit still and take your focus from out there or [00:31:00] in here in your head or in your outside world, and you bring it into your breath. Or you bring it into the space that your body occupies and the energy that's in that space and you start to feel that energy or see that energy or hear that energy.

It's not stuff, but it's more solid than stuff. Right? It's not matter that you're talking about, you're talking about energy. Energy is ephemeral, but energy is more stable than your body is. And that energy is who you are, and that energy in you can do whatever energy can do. And what doesn't energy do?

There's nothing energy can't do. Energy is the power behind everything. Something moves, it's energy. You know, sound, it's energy. See colors, it's energy, right? And energy runs the entire universe. And if you look at all the things in the universe run by the same energy, right, that energy is capable of unbelievable stuff.

Every [00:32:00] creature, every leaf, every galaxy runs on that same energy. And that same energy is what runs you, is what runs your body, right? And you take a, you know, I'll even take you away from your parents. You know, you come through your parents, but you don't come, you don't belong to, to your parents. You belong to life.

Life uses your parents to bring you in, to have a short, a temporary time where water and dust and air gets mixed up into what you call your body. You get to experience being human or being in human form. Because water can't have as much fun as you can have. And dust can't have as much fun as you can have, and air can't have as much fun as you can have.

But when they're all mixed together by the genetic program that life also made, right? And then there you are, three buckets of water, a handful of dust, and a little bit of air, right? And you can smile, and you [00:33:00] can laugh. And you can get goosebumps and you can, you know, all, everything that's possible, but you only get a little bit of time to do that.

And to be present, to be fully present in what that is, is purpose one for living. And when you do that, you feel so whole, you feel so cared for, you feel so content that there's nothing left to do. Then it's not like, Oh, how can I make a million dollars? Who cares? You got more than a million dollars in the experience of being alive.

Then it's like, okay, where can I help? What needs to be done? How can I make it? Splash for good. And that'll be pretty easy to identify, because half of the time it's just talking to somebody, or helping them across the street, or giving somebody a quarter, or whatever it is that, you know, where you can help, right?

And that's the second purpose. So the first purpose is to be fully present in all of your being and your world. And the second purpose is help where you can, help where you can. 

Kasia: So [00:34:00] I deeply love what you are saying, like I'm nodding my head, I'm smiling. It sounds so comforting, so safe, and it definitely sounds as though it, it is, there's something that's connected here that is so much deeper and in my life, but yeah, but I mean, it's, there's definitely is a buck coming because I also want to ground at home for a lot of listeners who perhaps.

Frankly, my son, I do want to call out also myself included. I met it. I meditate. I try to practice the art of training my mind and my body to become more present, right? Or and to even allow like the good and the bad things to flow through me not associate with some of them and and the inner dialogue can be super intense.

Sometimes the inner critic. A lot of people as they're probably hearing this, they, they might be relating to what you're saying on a tiny level, but it might feel so inaccessible to feel so much in flow. And I think this is [00:35:00] also why you're such an incredible person to be speaking about this because. Not only do you sound so tapped into what is a bit ethereal, but you also have, whether you intended to or not, have built up an incredible, tangible, like in this material plane business.

And so I'm curious for people who are hearing this and saying, okay, Udall, here's the but, like, but how, how do I tap into that? How do I tap into that when my day is filled when I feel anxious or I feel overwhelmed or I wake up and my mind's already racing or I frankly, I may or may not even realize this, but I'm addicted to my email or my phone or Instagram or whatever are the things that I'm doing in my life to numb out the other stuff.

How do you tap into what you are describing, the sense of connection, like what are some tangible ways? 

Udo: Yeah. Okay. So I have a, I have a quote. I say, you know, Google will get you [00:36:00] everything you want except yourself and your devices will get you all kinds of connection to the surface of the outside world.

But it will not give you a connection to yourself. It's the only thing you can't get through technology is the connection to yourself. But here's the good news. That if you say, well, how do I do that? Well, guess what? It's already within you. All of that that I'm talking about is already within you, within every human being, whether they're in jail or whether they're in a mansion in the, in the Pyrenees or every human being that's alive.

has that wholeness, has that contentment, has that unconditional empowering love, has that inspiration within every human being. So the question then is, where's your focus? Oh, focus is in my device. Yeah. Well, you will not find your wholeness. In your device, because your wholeness lives inside your body, [00:37:00] you might have to put the device aside for a minute and sit down.

Now, how do you get inside is another one, because you talk about overwhelm, you talk about anxiety, talk about stress, talk about heartache, and we don't like it because it's painful. We feel it in our chest. And it's painful and we don't like it. And so we say, Oh, we've got to do something to distract ourselves, or we try to ignore it, or we try to explain it away, or we try to put a belief over our head.

So every time it comes along, then we just, that's a distraction too, or we blame it on somebody. So what if you just sit with your heartache? What if you sit in your overwhelm? What if you sit with that ache? Because it gets you out of your head, that's a good thing. It gets you into your body. And what that heartache is, there's lots of things that trigger it, but the heartache is actually your disconnect, the feeling of your [00:38:00] discontent that comes from your disconnection from yourself.

It's like thirst for water. Heartache is for wholeness. Right? Now, how did that happen? Well, when you were in your mother's womb, I call it the Buddha tank, when you were in your mother's womb, there was nothing to do, there was no place to go, everything was taken care of, you didn't have to pee, you didn't have to poo, you didn't need a blankie, you know, there was nothing to do.

So where was your focus? Well, your focus had never gone out. So your focus was at rest inside, in the core of your own being, and you were in deep meditation for the nine months that you were in the Buddha tank, in the womb. You were actually in the experience that I'm talking about, and it's the same experience that all the masters recommended.

We find. Our way back to, right? So you were in that place. So you're hanging out. You didn't know your mother's name. You didn't even know there was such a thing as a mother. You had no beliefs. You [00:39:00] had no words. It was boring as hell in there. But you weren't bored. You were in bliss. You were in peace. And sometimes you see a picture of a fetus and a little smile.

It goes on the face. Right. And just floating around, you know, and then you came out. Where you got pushed out, right? And then you have to get to know the world. And so your focus goes out through your senses into the world that you have to get to know because you need to survive in it. You need to learn how it works.

And in the process, you went from being present inside and absent outside in your focus, in your awareness, to now you're present outside and absent inside. And that change is where heartache began. That's the foundation of heartache. So then we say, sit with the heartache, because it brings us so close to where you need to go.

It's like that far, less than a hair's breadth behind your heartache is your wholeness. But it requires you to make time for it. Stillness practice, five minutes every day. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, an hour every day. [00:40:00] Every day a little bit. You know, a little bit, a little bit, because you get good at what you practice, right?

And if you need help, there are people who help people go there. But first, try it on yourself. Try it on your own, see if you can do it by yourself. Because if you haven't tried to do it by yourself, then you may not be open to the help when it comes. Because you don't know that you need the help. But when you've gone as far as you can go and you say, I actually came to a point where I said, you know, I know there's a perfection within me.

I know I'm not connected to it. And I need to find someone who can show me a step because I'm not getting it. And the, the moment I was clear about it, I heard about this guy a day later, like the, I said it in the evening and I heard about this guy in the morning in a location where I should have never, ever heard about it, but it was just like, and then I checked it out and then I learned a way to, to make it a little easier to bring it inside.

And I've been doing that practice now for 72, so this year in [00:41:00] August it'll be 51 years. Every day, spend a little bit of time coming home, coming closer to yourself. Because what's in you is more fulfilling than anything you do on the outside. It's more fulfilling. You have more in you than the world will ever give you.

So well said. It's just true. I mean, it's, you know, and then when you, when you know that, then you always know when, when there's something doesn't work in the world, it's not that big a deal. Because if you know how to get back to yourself, there's nothing wrong with you. Nothing will ever be wrong with your existence.

That peace will always be there. That peace is not affected by all the chaos and all the changes and all the unhappy endings. The love is not affected. No, it doesn't matter what goes on. Even if you lose a leg, that love continues. Right? And the inspiration comes out of that. That's just your shine, the shine of the love that you are into the world.

And so to cultivate that, it doesn't [00:42:00] change you, because that's always in you. But it changes what you're aware of, and that changes how you act into the world, and what you do, and what you think is worth doing, and how you affect the world, and what the outcomes are going to be. 

Kasia: So interesting. Thank you for explaining that so eloquently and I just also want to reflect that I think it's really powerful that you mentioned that there's actually a sense of peace per se with sitting with the uncomfortable emotions because, you know, meditator.

Now I meditate for like 30 minutes every day or so. I'm so consistent about it. I've been on meditation retreats, but when I started, especially when I was doing five to 10 minutes, all I felt was discomfort, right? It felt so uncomfortable and it was only once I started to. You know when I felt the anxiety like open my heart and I even [00:43:00] remember saying in my mind like I welcome this like I hug this like I embrace it like I allow it it's then that it started to shift and what you're sharing in terms of what it looks like to be somebody who.

Truly, it sounds like lives that kind of an experience and how your practice has helped you get there. I think it's so important, as you wisely noted, that it doesn't always show up as comfortable states. Some of them are uncomfortable. To get to a place of contentment. Does that sound 

Udo: true? Well, yeah, and in part it seems uncomfortable because we're addicted to doing.

And when you, and so you have to sit out of the addiction. You have to sit through the addiction. And it's the addiction that when there's nothing happening makes you say, oh, this is so boring. I say to people, well, notice how peaceful the boredom is. And recognize that when you're bored you're on the right track because you've gotten out of the doing doing doing and you haven't quite made it into the being [00:44:00] but you're but you're heading in the right direction so consider that a good thing you think boring is bad it's only bad in terms of doing.

But it's good in terms of being. Yeah. Right? Yeah. And I went through that, too. And I've had days when I do my practice, I do an hour, more or less, sometimes more, sometimes less. Just depends on what's going on, right? But I would sit for an hour, and at the end of it, say, I didn't experience anything, but I noticed that my day went better.

So there was something going on, even though I wasn't impressed with my performance or my experience. And there weren't any flashing lights and all of that. But I noticed I was calmer and my day went better, even though I thought I didn't have any experience. That's interesting. You know, and then you, you start to see that, you know, it's like, okay, well, I didn't think I had an experience, but my day went better.

So maybe it's okay to sit down and do the practice and not feel [00:45:00] like I had an experience, but do it anyway. Cause your day will go better, 

Kasia: right? Oh yeah. I feel like anything less than 20 minutes for me, I can feel the difference. Like there's even a difference between 15 to 20 minutes. And so I just, I love that you called out, but it doesn't always feel like this big miraculous boob.

Actually, most of the time it is pretty boring or it's uncomfortable cause you're anxious or whatever thing is coming up for you. But I love just the kind of story behind it evolves and it's a coming home. And, you know, it also brings up the thought of if you don't accept those uncomfortable parts of yourself, the anxiety that comes up, how will you ever feel?

Safe in the world, right? Like at the end of the day, like you live within your own body. And if you reject that, if you push that away, if you fight away from that, this literally just is coming to me as we're talking, how will you ever feel safe? And like, safety is a huge anxiety of mine that comes [00:46:00] up a lot.

And so you just really helped me recognize that connection. 

Udo: Yeah. So there's the safety was always there, you know, I didn't feel safe because I was focused on all the things that are flying around in the war. Right. But the safety was there too. So that you're in the middle of, of all things, all kinds of things going on, but they're all going on in peace, in safety.

Right. Peace is everywhere. Peace is everywhere. The war in the Ukraine is taking place in peace. But the people who are in the war are not focused on the peace. They're focused on, you're my enemy, I'm going to kill you. And then the other side says, you're my enemy, I'm going to kill you. And in the midst of peace, they put that into the peace.

That peace is the foundation of the universe, and it's the foundation of your existence. Same piece. When you connect to that piece in the core of your being, and then you ride it out, you recognize that that piece is not limited to your body. You are a center of peace, and that [00:47:00] piece goes out to infinity.

It has no content, except it's peaceful. It's peaceful, it's, and it has, it's present. And it feels... That's amazing, right? And your anxiety also takes place in peace. So can you be on the anxiety, and at the same time, can you also focus on the peace? Because that anxiety is very small, and that peace is very, very big.

Kasia: Oh my gosh, Udo, I could keep chatting with you. I really could keep going, but we are actually over time, frankly. And so I want to be mindful of your time. 

Udo: And I told you at the beginning, we probably need to take three hours to really, to really get into this. 

Kasia: I sent you like a very long outline, we tackled this much of it, but this is such a beautiful conversation.

Before we wrap, I would love for you to share, and I'm going to deep link everything below in the show notes for anyone listening, but where can people find you? Do you have something exciting that you want to [00:48:00] share with the audience around? How can they connect around this topic or your book? Please just put it out there.

I know folks are going to want to go deeper. So, yeah, 

Udo: I have a, the oil that I work with. We've developed oil, making oils with health in mind because that was not being addressed. We addressed it. It still hasn't been addressed by anybody else properly. Uh, that, and I work with digestion as well, enzymes and probiotics.

So that website is udoschoice. com, U D O S choice. com. And we talk about the products and we talk about how we do it, did it, and you can check it out. And then I have another website that's TheUdo, T H E U D O. That's a work in progress. All the other, other stuff is there. I have some stuff on stress and some stuff on, on human nature.

My big project now is to turn human nature and human health into teachable fields. You have to talk about awareness [00:49:00] as the core, then life energy as the unconditional love that powers it, then inspiration, which is the positive part of mind, then the body, then protection, that's the protective part of mind, then social group, then natural environment, and then big picture.

Each one of those eight is part of your nature, and they're all different. They have different nature, different function, need a different kind of attention, go off in a different way, and respond to a different kind of intervention. So that stuff I'm, I'm working on, it's, uh, it's a quite a, it's a huge project.

And we've never done that in 200, 000 years. We've never actually nailed down what is health. Isn't that important? If you don't know what health is, you don't know how to get away from disease. So then you're just roaming around in disease and you wouldn't recognize health if it hit you in the head. So you need to know what health is, what the components are, and how do you make [00:50:00] sure that you bring in and optimize all the components.

And so the same thing with human nature, we know more about our neighbors than we know about ourselves. Oh, yeah, there's something not right with that. 

Kasia: Oh, yeah. Oh, my gosh. I need to hold myself back from starting a whole segue on to. 

Udo: Yeah, 

Kasia: it is so true. So true. We could keep going. There will be like 4 more, frankly, and I absolutely just want to shout out.

Thank you for. Addressing and diving into health as something that isn't just your physical body, your biomarkers. It is so much deeper than that, and we need more leaders thinking about it this way. So thank you for the work you do. Yep. Yeah. Thank 

Udo: you. And, uh, if you want to continue to set up another one.

Oh, 

Kasia: yes, yes. There will be part two, part three, folks. Stay tuned. Thank you, everyone, for listening to the Nourish podcast. And I will see you next time. Bye.[00:51:00] 

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