Chris Marhefka - Training Camp For The Soul - a podcast by Anthony Trucks

 

In this episode, our guest is Chris Marhefka. He’s got this thing called training camp for the soul. He learned how to go into so many different spiritual aspects of his breathing, called breathwork and somatics work. 

 

[5:27] Why should we listen to you? 

I speak authentically. I’ve been through the wringer myself. I’ve been through breaking everything from my physical, mental, emotional, spiritual body and everything in between. I’ve pushed myself to the edges and honestly found myself at 30 years old checking every box of what I said I would do in my life.

 

[7:16] There’s more than what this person is doing

Every time I would have a goal, I would just put my head down, and it was all about suffering and hard work. And it taught me the gift of discipline. But that man that was putting his head down towards that goal wasn’t seeing anything outside of it. The downside to it was that every goal would just be followed by another one—bigger or more. 

 

[8:29] I’m grateful for that time of fitness. I was a competitive athlete, but I pushed the limits, and it really taught me about commitment to practice and commitment to a daily routine.

 

[10:06] What was the catalyst moment?

It was a moment that lasted about six months. The moment was I was competing at a high level in CrossFit, and I had a traumatic brain injury where the capillaries in my brain literally exploded. I felt like a grenade went off in my head, it was painful, and it stopped me in my tracks. There were many signs that my body was giving me up until that point to slow down and pay attention. I put on somewhere around 40 pounds during that time of just being really depressed. I couldn’t work in my business anymore. I just wasn’t the same person.

[11:28] I was driving home from a trip with my then I had this moment where I was just I don’t want to actually go home. I was resenting everything that I had built there.

And it was this one, whereas like, what is wrong with me? And then that for me is what I call my emotional rock bottom. I pulled off on the side of the road, and it was just crying and bawling my eyes out.

[12:45] Why won’t men let themselves feel

I think it’s that we don’t have a model for it. I talk to and work with many men who don’t have a model of those things that I shared of opening up, being vulnerable, expressing what’s really there. Most men have a model of putting up walls, putting up defenses to look a certain way, act a certain way, and clueless in asking for support.

 

[14:29] What guided you through that really funky place to get you here

During that time, I started diving into meditation and breathwork, and it was fundamental at the time, but it was the first time that I was allowing myself to get out of my mind and into my body. That was my introduction from there. I came across the program which I run now called training camp for the soul. And that was my rocket ship catalyst for growth because it took my entire lifetime of learning of thinking that everything was directed from the mind, and it flipped it on its head.

 

[16:33] The realm of what you do now

Most people that find their way to our program are in some form of a similar state that I was of. They’ve tried a lot of things in their mind. Like they’ve done personal development.

 

[18:23] We’re teaching people how to identify the things they don’t want in their life and then let them melt away. When you learn how to create space in that space, the right things come through for you. It’s like this opportunity shows up, and it was probably there the whole time, but you couldn’t see it because there wasn’t space. And so we teach people how to shed those layers.

 

Key Quotes

[19:09-19:16] “I find that there’s a correlation between how much pain someone is currently in and their level of resistance.”

[20:15-20:19] “We ended up finding ways to protect our egos and standing spots. And so we endure pain.”

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