WWII Refugee Udo Erasmus, Has Trained Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra on How To Make Life Brighter | PoP 566

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What does it mean to cultivate the good? How can you take intentional action “back to yourself”? Why is caring for yourself ultimately good for the world?

In this podcast episode, Joe Sanok speaks with Udo Erasmus about how to make life brighter.

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Meet Udo Erasmus

Udo Erasmus is the founder of Udo’s Choice products, found in Whole Foods and health food stores worldwide. Udo first pioneered FlaxSeed Oil after deep research as a result of being poisoned by pesticides.

He also invented the machinery and method to bring healthy oils to the marketplace. Udo is an acclaimed author, speaker, and expert on TOTAL SACRED HEALTH. This 8 step process considers all the elements of whole health, including our mental health, presence and awareness, life energy and being in harmony with nature and humanity.

Udo is a presenter at Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra’s events. He has sold over 250,000 copies of his books.

Visit his website. Connect on Instagram and Facebook. Subscribe to his YouTube channel.

In This Podcast

  • Cultivate the good in yourself
  • Work with your awareness
  • Taking deliberate actions towards yourself
  • Udo’s advice

Cultivate the good in yourself

When people do not actively cultivate cooperation, harmony and peace, and neighborliness, the world ends up in war.

This is the same on a smaller scale in people: when we do not care for ourselves emotionally and mentally and leave trauma unattended, our mental, emotional, and physical bodies end up in war too.

We need to take the opportunities we have – outside of war, outside of personal breakages – to cultivate cooperation and harmony amongst ourselves so that peace does not become an antidote for war and personal unnecessary suffering, it becomes a mechanism against its existence in the first place.

We tend to be neglectful of the things we need to work for, and that’s how we got into a war. We’re in a situation like that now too [where] things are getting worse because we’re not taking on deliberately cultivating what is good in us and what is good in other people, and in my view that would be an educational or a counseling function. (Udo Erasmus)

By cultivating the good within ourselves, we get rid of the urge to steal the “light” from others and cause harm because by working on the “light”, the good energy within ourselves, we each see and respect that in one another.

Work with your awareness

Being present, fully present, in the space [that] our body occupies and actually experiencing what that feels like is what every really wise person in the history of humanity has said should be job one for us. (Udo Erasmus)

“The greatest gift” in Udo’s words is the moments where we are called to experience awareness of ourselves, the moments that we go through when we experience strong pain or loss.

The reason why a “gift” because if it wasn’t for that feeling that keeps calling us home to ourselves we would get lost and never find our way back. I say to people “sit with that feeling, be with it, allow it and don’t judge it, embrace it” … because that is your heart calling your attention to come back home inside to its source in life … that is where your wholeness lives, that’s where your fulfilment and satisfaction is. (Udo Erasmus)

The access that we have to our “light” and to our core is through those moments because we are called back to ourselves, to remember that we are human and finite and that we can have infinite experiences in a finite body.

The journey home, the journey inwards, is not automatic – it is a deliberate choice and needs you to take deliberate action to get there.

Taking deliberate actions towards yourself

Sit quietly with yourself:

  • See how still you can become, physically and mentally,
  • Sit with the discomfort,
  • Cry if you need to, but sit with it,
  • What do you notice in this space inside of you when you do this?

We are good at being aware on the outside because we do it all the time but we struggle with practicing internal awareness because we do it so seldomly. It is like learning to walk: the more you do it, the deeper you go, the more you discover, the more you feel and the more clarity you find.

Once you get to this point, everything changes, because your perception of yourself and the world changes. Before this point, you are mostly concerned with what you need to do to make yourself feel safe.

After this point, you learn that you can feel safe with yourself, and now you can give your energy and help to the world instead of constantly seeking and fighting for the care you thought was external to you.

When I learned how to do that and started feeling it, I was like “oh my God, it’s not about me anymore, I’m good and if I don’t feel good, I know where to go to feel good because it’s within me [and] it’s always there, always waiting for me to tap in. Because I feel take care of, it’s not about me anymore”, now the question is “okay, where can I help? I’m taken care of, where can I help? What needs to be done? What’s the biggest splash for good that I can make in one body, in one lifetime?” (Udo Erasmus)

When you feel secure and safe within yourself, and you know that you can provide yourself with at least the baseline levels, you free yourself of the desperate need to be loved, liked, and understood by everyone around you because now you love, like, and understand yourself.

Other people then become wonderful partners and friends instead of sources of the love that you lack to give yourself.

The question is why do we focus on the problem and not on the wholeness? And that’s because we live in a world that is disconnected from self and always needs to either imagine a problem into being, or having imagined a problem into being is then trying to fix it in a way that doesn’t get fixed because you have to unimagine the problem by imagining something better in order to fix the problem. (Udo Erasmus)

Make time every day, like you do for going to the bathroom, for making breakfast, for cleaning your body, to also maintain yourself, your thoughts, emotions, and your mind. Make time every day, for five minutes to start with, to do nothing, to sit and breathe and feel what it feels like to be alive.

Udo’s advice

If you could live your life fully present in all of your being, there are five pieces to it:

  • Awareness
  • Life energy
  • Inspiration
  • Body
  • Survival smarts

And your surroundings:

  • Social group,
  • Environment,
  • Big picture,

If you can be fully present to all of these and live your life that way, it would be mind-blowing and beautiful. Every person born deserves this because this was given as a gift.

Useful Links:

Meet Joe Sanok

private practice consultant

Joe Sanok helps counselors to create thriving practices that are the envy of other counselors. He has helped counselors to grow their businesses by 50-500% and is proud of all the private practice owners that are growing their income, influence, and impact on the world. Click here to explore consulting with Joe.

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Podcast Transcription

[JOE SANOK]
Right now we are accepting applications for Next Level Practice. Next Level Practice is our membership community that is aimed at helping you from the moment you think I want to start a private practice all the way up until you are at six figures. We bring in experts like Lori Gottlieb and Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, and Pat Flynn. We also have over 30 e-courses that will walk you through that startup phase. We have small groups and accountability partners, and we help you by working with you on what’s working right now. So if you’re ready to grow a private practice and you want to take the confusion out of it, apply today over at practiceofthepractice.com/invite. Again, that’s practiceofthepractice.com/invite.

This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok session, number 566. I’m Joe Sanok your host, and welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. I am so excited about our guest today. But also in just a little bit here on the 14th of June, we are opening up Next Level Practice, our next cohort. This is our membership community is aimed at you from that moment that you think, oh, I want to start a practice all the way until you’re at six figures. We support you. We’ve got e-courses, live events, we have small groups for you, accountability partners, all sorts of things that are going to help you. So make sure you head on over to practiceofthepractice.com/invite to get your invite.

So I am just so excited about our guest day today. We have Udo Erasmus. He is the founder of Udo’s Choice Products, which are found in whole foods and health stores worldwide. As well, Udo is a presenter at Tony Robbins and Deepak Chopra’s events and has sold over 250,000 copies of his books. Udo, welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast.
[UDO ERASMUS]
Glad to be talking to you.
[JOE]
Yes. You know we’re going to talk a little bit about your story of adversity and things like that. I feel proud of the two of us. We just overcame some tech adversity and as I feel like already, like we’re in this together. So let’s just start with World War II. There’s a lot of adversity that came out of that with you. Tell us your origin story in regards to just some of that adversity. We’re talking about living a brighter life and that’s kind of where we’re going to get to, but I think understanding the context for our listeners is so important. So where do you want to start that?
[UDO]
Well, I was born in 1942 in Poland, which was then part of Germany because there was a war going on and Hitler basically took a piece of Poland just because he could. My parents had had left Latvia and Estonia because the communists moved in there and they took that over. They loved the Russians and they hated communism because they took everything away from everybody. My background is German Swedish. So I was born on this stolen farm, as I call it, in 1942 and by the time I was just under three, we were refugees fleeing out of Poland, westward with the communists, chasing us in tanks and trucks and the allies, the good guys were shooting at us from planes. They were using refugees as target practice. Because these roads were basically dirt roads, horse-drawn hay wagons, women with little children, most of the men were off at war and they were basically shooting at us.

So we were in the middle of all of this craziness and I don’t remember a lot other than the confusion, the fear, the anxiety, the hunger, sometimes, you know they never had time to stop. The horses didn’t eat. I mean, it was really crazy and then eventually my mother went through the fields because it was safer in the fields than it was on the road and I got left behind and a couple of, she had six kids with her, six years and younger. She could only handle two so she left four behind. I was one of them and eventually we got reunited. But for me, it was like first of all, I don’t recommend that anybody raised their kids in a situation like that. And it was awful at the time, although I see it as a gift now, because what happened in that experience is I got my nose rubbed in what happens when people don’t cultivate cooperation and harmony and peace and neighborliness, when they don’t do that, when they have the luxury to do it. And we tend to be neglectful of the things we need to work for and so that’s how we got into a war. And we’re in a situation like that now too. Things are getting worse because we’re not taking on deliberately cultivating what is good in us and what is good in other people. And that’s, in my view, that would be an educational or a counseling function.

When I was six years old, I was in, we were in Germany and adults were arguing, again. They were always arguing and I disliked those arguments. It was always so intense and it occurred to me, man, there must be a way that people can live in harmony. And then like a six year old who doesn’t know how complicated everything is, I said, “I’m going to find out how,” and that’s been my driver all my life. So when it came to studying, I did science to understand how things work and then I did bio-sciences to figure out how creatures work and then I got into psychology to figure out how thinking works and then I got into medicine for a year to figure out how health works. But we only learned about disease so I went back into biochemistry and genetics, and then after almost eight years of that, I still hadn’t found what I’m looking for and so I left university and then I eventually got into self knowledge because what I really needed to know was how I work.

So that’s basically is my background. What came out of that is I tend to think globally. 8 billion people could live their lives lit up from within because the light’s already inside of us. It’s a matter of looking into it instead of looking away from it. And most of the time we look away from it. If we did look into it, we would feel so cared for because life takes perfect care of the body 24/7/365. If we felt that care, we would feel so good that we wouldn’t need more and we wouldn’t steal other people’s stuff and when we stop stealing other people’s stuff, we can live together in relative harmony. When we live in harmony, we can make sure that everybody’s basic needs are met on a long-term sustainable basis. That’s the goal that I look at all the time, and then anything I can do that can raise quality of life, because it could be so much better, there’s so much more quality of life in us than we are aware of that we benefit from. That —
[JOE]
Tell me more. What do you mean by that, that there’s so much more in us than we give value to?
[UDO]
Okay. So your body is a bag of chemicals, more or less. I think we learned that in Biology. If you bought all the chemicals that your body’s made of, it costs you 10 bucks made out of dust, air, water, light, but the quality is always an experience. What is it possible to experience given that you are a human being? You know, I just saw a squirrel run by my window. So if you’re a squirrel, it would be a different kind of quality. If you were a tree, it would be a different kind of quality. You’re a human being. What is in you? If your awareness, if you could bring your awareness into the space that your body occupies and look at what can be felt there, seen there, heard there, tasted there, what would that feel like? That’s what I’m asking, talking about, because we didn’t live for 4 billion years and now we’re here for maybe a hundred, if we’re lucky.

And then for 4 billion years, we won’t be here again. What is the point of this a hundred years? What is the richest way you can live your life in those hundred years? How much peace is there? How much contentment is there? How much love is there? How much fulfillment is there? What actually is there? And there’s so much. I mean, we can create all these emotions that we struggle with and we can imagine just about anything into being. We’re like very creative machines and being present, fully present in the space our body occupies and actually experiencing what that feels like is what every really wise person in the history of humanity has said should be job one for us.
[JOE]
Yes. I want to go back to that six year old you, that sees all these adults fighting, and there’s the complexities of the world and you say to yourself, “There’s got to be a better way.” Do you feel now that you’ve done all of this work, this research, this self-learning, you’re kind of, on the other side of it,, do you go back to that it really is kind of simple like you saw it as a six year old? Because it kind of reminds me of like, Rob Bell is a podcaster I respect and he’s talks about light, heavy light, and the idea that there’s a lightness for most people, maybe not for your childhood, but there’s a lightness when you’re naive to the world and it’s almost like a fake lightness. He then talks about kind of going into the heaviness of the world and then having a lightness on the other side event. He uses like Desmond Tutu or the Dalai Lama, as an example of you might be light at the beginning and then you go through a lot of adversity and then you, on the other side of that adversity often have a new depth of lightness.
[JOE]
So when you think about that six year old saying, it’s got to be more simple than this. Like, are you back to that in a different, more mature way or does it still feel complex? Do we make it too complex? I know there’s a lot to that question, but talk about that.
[UDO]
That’s a great question. I love that question. So first of all, you’re right when you say my childhood wasn’t that light, although the first couple of years, which I don’t remember probably were, because we were just on the farm and stuff like that. But I look at, I go a little more further back, when a child is in a mother’s room, I call it the Buddha tank, just because that sounds good. The Buddha tank, in the Buddha tank when you’re in the Buddha tank, there’s nothing to do, there’s nowhere to go, everything’s taken of, and it’s relatively safe. So where is your awareness when you’re in the Buddha tank? Well, you never had to go anywhere. You never had to look at anything, figure anything out. So your awareness was at rest inside within your body in life.

So you were you were basically living in the light and when Buddhists talk about enlightenment, that’s what they’re talking about getting back to. So every kid that’s born, spent their pregnancy mostly internally with their awareness internal and not external, never had time to go out. Didn’t even know there was an out to go to. And then when we got born, then we had to get to know the world, our awareness automatically went out through our senses into the world to figure out because it’s for survival. You have to figure out is this friend, is this a foul? Is irrelevant and then act accordingly. So we learned that and in that process, we went from being present inside, absent outside in our awareness to being present outside and absent inside. That disconnection lead to what you just called the darkness.

Something was missing, you lost something, we lost something. And what did we lose? We lost our experience of ourselves, the inner experience. So then we go on out and then we thought, then that heartache comes from that, like an uneasy feeling in your chest that you get when somebody dies, or somebody betrays you or something that you cared for ends. And there’s 10 pages of names I have for it. Longing, striving, yearning, emptiness, restlessness, blues, loneliness, heartache, thirst of the heart. There’s a lot of names for it, depending on the trigger that sets it off. But that feeling is not about the trigger. That it’s the trigger. When something ends that you invested yourself in, you fall back to your default position, which for most of our lives, until we find our way back is the loss of our connection to ourselves.
[UDO]
And every time we lose something, we’re reminded of our loss of ourselves. It’s not even about grandma. Grandma’s okay. You know, it’s about us. Something in us is not okay and it’s a feeling of loss, grief, I mean, and that’s, I call that the greatest gift we’ve been given other than being alive. The reason why gift is because if it wasn’t for that feeling that keeps calling us home to ourselves, we would get lost and would never find our way back. And so that I say to people, sit with that feeling. Just sit with it, just feel it, just be with it, just allow it. Don’t judge it, accept it, embrace it because that is your heart calling your attention to come back home inside to its source in life. And that’s where all the goodies are. That’s where everything, that’s where that’s where your wholeness lives. That’s where your fulfillment is. That’s where your satisfaction is built in as a state of being. That’s where your unconditional love lives.

The love that life has for your body, unconditional. The perfect piece that has always been everywhere but our access is in the core of our being. And when we find our way back to the core of our being, then yes, we are back into the lightness. So that’s the Buddha space, the enlightened space, or the way, in the Christian mythology, if your I becomes single, your body will be filled with light. Your body is filled with light. It’s filled with light, it’s filled with sound, it’s filled with love, and it’s even felt with sweetness. And you can experience all those through your senses, but the journey to get back home to yourself is not an automatic journey like the journey out was. The journey home has to be deliberate because there’s nothing inside you going, “Look at me, look at me.” No change happening that attracts your census inside those —
[JOE]
Yes, and I want to talk about the deliberateness in a second, but, so I want to just make sure I understand the model. So it sounds there’s a trigger that causes some feelings. That feeling could be heartache, pain, but you’re then saying that it then really is a reflection of a journey back to ourselves more than that it’s about that heartache of something you’ve invested in or whatnot. And then there’s deliberate choices we can make and do to then get back to ourselves. Does that kind of capture it?
[UDO]
Sort of. Let me see if I can fill that in a little better. When we disconnect from ourselves that disconnection and the discontent that comes from it is our driving force. So that everything, but now we’re doing everything on the outside. We don’t even know that we disconnected inside and have to reconnect inside. So we’re in the world and something’s not right. I feel restless. I need to go on a trip of, you know I need to go on a tour or I need to make, do some project or if I get the girl or if I get the money, or if I get this or that, then we hope consciously, unconsciously, subconsciously that when we succeed in what we set out to do, then we will feel whole again. And it never happens because what we get is we get three days where we say, “Oh, yay. I did it. I did it. I did it.” And then on day four, that restlessness is back and then it’s like, okay, well maybe it wasn’t a hundred. Maybe a hundred wasn’t big enough. Maybe it’s $10 million I need, not a million. Maybe I went in the wrong direction. Maybe it was the wrong project. So then we find another project and then we start it over again. But there’s always this hope that at the end of our accomplishment will be a feeling of, “I’m good now. I’m okay now. I feel whole now. I finally accomplished something so therefore I can love myself.” Something like that. And it never happens. It never happens because the disconnect is turning —
[JOE]
Turning back to yourself and —
[UDO]
To reconnect and just to also be inside.
[JOE]
Yes, so easy to just say, it’s grandma’s death. It’s the falling apart of my marriage. It’s the business decision that went wrong and to blame the external event and then never do that internal work or that internal journey back to yourself. I love how you said that the journey out was quick but the journey back is slow. Like, that’s a summary of what you said.
[UDO]
It’s automatic out because that’s required for survival, but you don’t require the internal journey for survival. You just require it for contentment. And contentment is not required for survival.
[JOE]
So if we want to do that work, if we want to do that journey back to ourself, it’s not automatic. It’s difficult. Like what are —
[UDO]
No, it’s not difficult. No, no, it’s not difficult but it has to be deliberate.
[JOE]
Okay. Deliberate. That’s the word you use. So tell us about that deliberate nature, because I think therapists for themselves, but then also for their clients, or just even for ourselves, how do you take those deliberate actions to come back to yourself?
[UDO]
The biggest thing is always, you have to accept your starting point and most people don’t want to do that. So we want to skate into peace without realizing that we have to put our skates on first in a way. So we don’t want to do the work necessarily and we don’t really know how to do the work, but the biggest thing is if you’re going to do a journey, you have to know where you are and you have to know where you want to go then you got your direction for your journey. If you don’t sit with your ache and acknowledge your ache and literally just sit with it and feel it because you’re so close now, you’re so close to the core of your being. You’re just like a hair’s breadth behind. That ache is your wholeness. You’re almost there. You’re not in your head anymore. It’s just, that’s a long way. You’re already in your chest, you’re already just outside your center and you basically just have to sit with it and get comfortable with this uncomfortable feeling.
[JOE]
I want so fast to just want to move through the ache, fix it, solve it. Like, what’s the trigger —
[UDO]
Yes, you’re a guy. But the point, the point is the point is we’re trying to find the starting point. We’re not trying to, you want to have the journey done before you know where you are.
[JOE]
Yes.
[UDO]
And you know what that’s like, we’re all like that a little bit. So, but because you need to know, you know you can’t say, well, I’m going to run the 800 meter race, and I’m going to get the gold medal, but by God, I’m not going to put my seat in those starting blocks.”
[JOE]
Yes.
[UDO]
And so a lot of people like to pick nice words and sweet things and but they trying to find a way around having to accept the pain of disconnection or even acknowledge. You know what most people do, they either try to distract themselves from it, that’s what all our projects are, or they try to deny it or try to ignore it or try to blame it on somebody or on something. It’s like, “Well, what do you expect? I was born in a war.” That would be one of mine. For a while it was right. But you don’t get to run the race without getting into the starting blocks. The starting blocks is my heart aches. Something is disconnected. Something doesn’t feel right. And you may not know why, but if you don’t ever look at the nature of that feeling, then you’re never going to know why, except somebody tells you something with their own agenda.
[JOE]
Yes.
[UDO]
So first number one thing is, what I say is like, even like drug addicts are famous for having an aching heart and they tell them not to pay attention to it. And I tell them, “No, no, sit with it. Sit with it. Sit quietly, can be quite intense, you might cry, but just breathe into it, sit in it. And then sit as still as you can. See how deeply still you can become. See how long you can stay in that space. See how lightly you can breathe and see how slowly you can breathe. And what do you notice in that space inside of you when you do that?” That’s how you get to know it. And it’s like learning to walk. We’re really good at going out in our awareness because we do it all the time. We’re not very good at going in because we do it very rarely.

So the more you do it, the deeper you go, the deeper you go, the more you discover, the more you discover, the better you feel because something in you feels absolutely ecstatic and gorgeous and magnificent, built in. Most people live their entire life and die and will never have really experienced that, or maybe like a tiny snippet, but never said, “et me get one or this. This is cool. This is good. Let me have a little more of this.” And then when we do get to that point, something changes. Before I got to that point, I was always looking at everything, “What can I do to get myself taken care of?” Because I didn’t feel taken care of and then when I learned how to do that and started feeling it, I said, “Oh my God, it’s not about me anymore. It’s not about me anymore. I’m good.” If I don’t feel good, I know where to go to feel good, because it’s within me. It’s always there always waiting for me to tap it.

Because I feel taken care of, it’s not about me anymore. Now the question is, okay, what can I help? I’m taking care of, where can I help? What needs to be done? What’s the biggest splash for good that I can make in one body in one lifetime? And it completely changed my orientation. Then it was always, what can I do to get myself taken care of now? It’s like, okay, how can I help? And when I feel cared, have enough that I can actually help without needing something back, I will do bigger projects. I will be more effective at it because I bring all of what a human being is to the situation and so I can help on many different levels, but I got to be present to do that. And I got the present and that’s the goal. The goal is fully present in all of my being and my surroundings not lost in thoughts in my head.
[JOE]
And does that kind of sitting with the ache and allowing those, like you said, the wholeness is right behind it, which I love that, does doing that, would you say help with that internal dialogue and the internal chatter and what often has meditation is supposed to help with? Is that chatter part of something that when we are able to quell that, that it just becomes easier to have that brighter life?
[UDO]
Of course. Whenever somebody comes as a patient, as a client and they’ve got SOC problems or emotional problems, or something’s not right and they’re trying to figure something out, all of that figuring out, all of the cortex, all of the mental illness is mostly the thoughts are all in the cortex of the brain. There’s no thoughts in your kneecap. There’s no thoughts in your breasts. There’s no thoughts in your bums sitting on the chair. There’s no thoughts anywhere in your entire being, except on the surface and it’s mostly about interaction between you and the rest of the surfaces of the world. And when a person is mentally ill, they are also mentally well at the same time, but it’s a matter of where is their focus. While their focus is on their SOC issues?

What if their focus was on their breathing? What if their focus was on the piece at the core of their being, because that co-exists with, so it’s almost like if somebody comes to me and is going to be my counseling client, I want to see them as whole to begin with and bring attention to that and bring their attention to that because it’s already within them. The question is why do we focus on the problem and not on the wholeness? And that’s because we live in a world that is disconnected from self and always see needs to either imagine a problem into being, or having imagined a problem into being is then trying to fix it in a way that it doesn’t get fixed, because you actually have to unimagine a project problem by imagining something better in order to fix the problem. That makes sense?
[JOE]
Yes.
[UDO]
Okay. So we’re talking about how within a person, whatever their issue is and whatever their problem is within that person is something that is completely whole at the same time, but the focus is on what’s not working. And it would be helpful if we could bring that person back to that place in them that is working because fundamentally everything is working. Kidneys are still working, the liver is still working and the brain’s still working and there’s a few random thoughts that aren’t conducive to anything good, useful, but all that wholeness that we would all like to live in is in everybody already. And if the practitioner, if I, as the practitioner I’m present in my own space and fully present in it, then number one, I feel that, and I can then speak into that as a possibility, but number two, I can see it in the other person more easily.

And so that makes my interaction, my helping interaction with another person a whole lot easier. So we have homework to do as practitioners, just like everybody has homework to do in their life. And it’s the same homework. And to make time every day, just like you make for bathroom and just like you make for breakfast and just like you make for gassing up your car, or maybe that’s not every day, or for going to work or whatever it is you make time for during the day, my suggestion, and this is not, I’m not the first to suggest this is to take time every day, five minutes or 10 minutes, or as you get better at it, half an hour, an hour, and to be fully present doing nothing, except breathing, doing nothing and just feeling what it feels like to be alive.

And my view is that that’s job one, purpose one for every human being. Purpose two then is what you can do when you feel good and how you can help people make their life a little easier. That’s purpose two. But purpose one is because you were given this gift of being alive by a universe, much bigger and smarter than you are, you were given this gift only and you can enjoy the gift that you were given. If you don’t enjoy it, it’s a wasted gift because nobody else can enjoy it for you. And what a shame to not experience the incredible richness that it is to be alive in human form for the time that we have.
[JOE]
Such great words of wisdom. I feel like we could go on for so long. The last question I always ask is if every private practitioner in the world were listening right now, what would you want them to know?
[UDO]
I think I would want to know them exactly what I just told them. If you could live your life fully present in all of your being, there’s five pieces to it, awareness, life, energy, inspiration, body, and survival smarts. And your surroundings is three parts to that; social group, environment, and big picture. If you could be fully present to all of those and live your life that way, it would be mind blowing and be beautiful. And every one of us who was born deserves that because that’s what we were given as our gifts.
[JOE]
Wow. Such great thoughts and so helpful personally and professionally in so many different ways. Udo, if people want to follow you, learn more from you read your books, what’s the best place for them to go to learn more?
[UDO]
Yes. I work with some products, so oils, enzymes probiotics for the physical and the website for that is Udos [U D O S] choice.com (udoschoice.com). And then I have a website called theudo [T H E U D O], or theudoerasmus.com. And we have some courses and we have some other material and we’re just working on that one. I’m on Instagram and I’m on Facebook and I have a YouTube channel. I’ve been around for awhile.
[JOE]
Yes. Wonderful. Well, Udo, thank you so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast.
[UDO]
All right. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. It’s cool what you do, and I’m glad you get to enjoy the sunshine in San Diego. We got sunshine in Vancouver.
[JOE]
Awesome. Well, if what Udo says resonates with you right now I’m going to go follow him on Instagram to continue just learning from just everything he says, just that idea of us being whole, as we are and encouraging our clients in that direction. I hope there’s something from this interview that you just take with you. It’s such important work for us to do as professionals on ourselves, not just for our clients. So dive into that work, check out his website.

And don’t forget that we have Next Level Practice that’s opening up on the 14th of June. It’s right around the corner. If you want to read all about that membership community, we have over 200 clinicians that are giving help and supporting each and working together in so many different ways to be able to just get to that next level as a clinician. You can go over to practiceofthepractice.com/invite.

Thank you so much for letting us into your ears and into your brain. Have an amazing week.

Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy for your intro music. We really like it. And this podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, the publisher, or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you want a professional, you should find one.