Eduardo :
It's the sweetest thing to recognize that something is challenging for you, or maybe you can't do, or you need help with, or you haven't figured out yet, but to allow, open that door, allow anyone around you the opportunity to help. It's a win-win.
Eduardo :
It's easy to talk about the successes, but what doesn't get talked about enough is the struggle. My name is Erik Weihenmayer. I've gotten the chance to ascend Mount Everest, to climb the tallest mountain in every continent, to kayak the Grand Canyon, and I happened to be blind. It's been a struggle to live, what I call, a No Barriers life, to define it, to push the parameters of what it means and part of the equation is diving into the learning process and trying to illuminate the universal elements that exist along the way. In that unexplored terrain between those dark places we find ourselves in and the summit, exists a map. That map, that way forward is what we call, No Barriers.
Jeff :
Eduardo Garcia is a professional chef who owns retail food brand, Montana Mex, a Mexican inspired line of organic non-GMO condiment sauces, seasonings and avocado oil. He's known as the bionic chef because he cooks with a prosthetic left arm, the result of an accident while hunting in 2011. His story is the subject of the feature length documentary, "Charged." Eduardo is an avid outdoors man, fishermen, hunter, triathlete and motivational speaker. Erik and I recorded this episode in front of a live audience at the 2019, No Barriers Summit in Lake Tahoe, California. Enjoy.
Jeff :
We saw from the film, you seemed really upbeat. We watched the chronology of your incident take place and over those 9 to 10 days, those first 9 to 10 days, you got a smile on your face throughout. Were you putting on a front or was that legit?
Eduardo :
Man, it's a documentary film. I was on a lot of drugs. I was on all of them. Yeah. [crosstalk 00:02:31]
Jeff :
... pharmacology.
Eduardo :
No, but ignorance. There's a certain amount of my situation that I had no idea that I would have 21 surgeries or that I would be in ICU for 50 days. I didn't know what I was heading in for. So the beauty of getting kicked down so hard is that at your core, I think we only know how to fight. I always use the example that when a baby's born, I've never had a kid, but this is I think my understanding, is that when a baby is born, they come out fighting and kicking and screaming and charging.
Jeff :
It's not peaceful. It's a violent- [crosstalk 00:03:05]
Eduardo :
Yeah. So I think at the baseline of alchemy is letting your core take over.
Jeff :
Awesome. E-Dub, what do you got to say on that? You're kind of the master at alchemy.
Erik :
I think it's maybe TV's fiction that when you're walking down the street and you smash your toe into the curb and blood is just gushing like a geyser everywhere, that you look down and you say, "What a great opportunity for growth." That's just not [crosstalk 00:03:35]. I don't think that's quite the way it really works. I think you have to lay on your belly and kick and scream and rail against how unfair life is, and then you pick yourself up.
Erik :
So you have to dwell in that pain for a while and then I think you got to get up. The quicker you can get up, the irony is that I think, for me, I've learned that you do have to go down deep. Once you've done it, you say, "Okay, I'm done with that," and you move forward. I think even science shows that the faster, the more effectively we do that, we take the bad things had happened to us, that we harness the energy and we use it as a catalyst to propel ourselves forward, the better places we go, the healthier we are, the longer we live. So I think it's a message born into science.
Jeff :
Awesome. I'm going to do one more, and then we're going to open it up because this one's one that Erik and I have talked about for decades now, and especially when we started to craft up, what would later be No Barriers Warriors, but Eduardo, you mentioned that the emotional healing that you went through was easily more challenging than the physical healing. There was a line in the film where your dad, he says that, "With happiness, you can't lose patience with yourself." So we heard that dialogue and we wonder, we saw you with a therapist and so forth trying to work through the emotional pain that went through that. I think a lot of people here can relate to that idea of we kind of focus on these physical injuries and these physical challenges, but what perhaps is more profound and harder to reach are the emotional ones. So you care to talk about that just a minute?
Eduardo :
Yeah. 100%, for me, the physical part was always the easiest and I felt like the physical part, you can more easily... You can see it, you can scratch it, you can sniff it. We can't all see it, but you know what I mean? It's just more accessible to us. [crosstalk 00:05:50] thank you.
Jeff :
That's what I was...
Eduardo :
And yet, I believe that we're all made different. Well, we're definitely all made very differently. For me, accessing my emotional side, I wear my heart on my sleeve and yet, I still don't believe that means all of your emotions are readily accessible. In ICU, one of my nurses, Jenny Moriarty, in just an easy conversation, she just said, "Hey, make sure that you give yourself time to grieve. Make sure you give yourself time to be sad about this whole thing. Make sure you give yourself time to process the emotional." And I was like, "Yeah, thanks. I got it. We're good."
Eduardo :
Yeah. I don't know if I did the hand, but I was typical. I was like, "We're good." Jenny Jane, my ex-girlfriend and caregiver, we were sitting next to each other watching. So Erik, she would have been on my left side and we were watching a laptop watching the film, watching a movie and I caught myself, I was hanging in my bed, and I caught myself putting my left hand on her right knee and watching a movie. Then at some point, it hit me that there's no way my left hand could be on her right knee because I didn't have a left hand anymore. My body was still in memory of this 30 year old attribute that I had.
Eduardo :
So I think I started to realize that the emotional part was this deep, layered bit that I had to get to. The way I accessed it was through community. I mentioned the Challenge Athletes Foundation last night in my talk and how integral they were into saying, "Hey, you're not..." Thomas Cain, 18 years old, Central Park. It was my first time going out on a run with Challenge Athletes Foundation and this 18 year old walked up, and I've seen this happen so far this weekend here at No Barriers and that, who was it? Gabriel mentioned to my nephew last night. He's like, "Is it kind of weird being the only one without a disability at this event?"
Eduardo :
So true to what my first CAF event was Thomas Cain at Central Park. He looked at me and I showed up in my running shorts. It was going to be a 5K. He saw my prosthetic and he said, "Are you going to run with that?" I'm like, "Well, yeah I do everything with this," and let it be, but he got a chink in my armor. Then he got me thinking like, "Well, why am I going to run with this clunky piece of metal dangling off my body," and he convinced me to take it off, and I did. It was the first time in three years that I had been in public with my exposed, or my forearm. Why is it my exposed forearm? It's just my forearm, but not with the hand attached.
Eduardo :
So it was new to me to see in public and running felt easier. So ever since that moment through CAF, and this is what I'm sure we all experienced with the group like No Barriers, is you almost get licensed to just feel and be as you are, and that was the beginning of my emotional journey. [crosstalk 00:08:57]. Repeat the question.
Jeff :
All right. Well, we talked about the emotional healing versus the physical healing. Your transition into blindness happened over a pretty lengthy period of time. For people who don't know, Erik was born legally blind, but it was over the course of his youth that he finally went completely blind. So do you feel like that that was a positive part of this experience is the fact that you got to transition into blindness, or if do you think maybe something like happened to our Eduardo, it was a sudden just clap of life, which would be harder to grasp?
Erik :
Well, Eduardo's is like a door slamming and mine's like a door squeaking close over years. So I don't know what's worse. None of it's great, but- [crosstalk 00:09:57].
Jeff :
There was a healing component to heal emotionally as well, right?
Erik :
Yeah.
Jeff :
As a kid, you probably didn't address this idea of healing emotionally when you were a kid.
Erik :
When I was in Connecticut, I grew up in Connecticut and we used to have raccoons that would break through our screen door and get into our garbage. One night, I came across this raccoon. He was cornered and I could still see a little bit and his shiny little eyes were in the corner. He was snarling at me. So that's all I was when I went blind. I was a little snarling raccoon in the corner just lashing out at the world. You go into this very primitive state. I did. So, yeah. To get out of that primitive state, that fight or flight is a really hard thing. Sometimes people never get out of it or they kind of linger back and forth in that.
Erik :
So yeah, it took a lot to get out of that to sort of realize, "Okay. One, I just have to sort of accept what's happened to me." It doesn't matter how much I deny that this has happened to me. It's happened. If I don't learn the tools and I don't develop the mindset to embrace this thing and figure out how to climb my way out, that's how I'm going to push the parameters. So I realized that I had to learn the tools of blindness. I had to learn to use a cane, had to learn to read braille. Those are the things that actually brought me back to the world, standing up in class and reading a poem. If I'm reading it with my fingers or being able to walk down the hallway with my friends tapping a cane instead or using my guide dog, those brought me back to the world.
Erik :
So yeah, I think the physical and the emotional kind of go together. In fact, those of you who are participated in No Barriers, experience is you know that, that there's a physical piece of the journey and there's this deeper emotional part of the journey where you're sort of turning into yourself and diving deep into your own psyche and saying, "What are the things that are killing me and sabotaging me? What are the things that are working for me?" So I think a part of this No Barriers experiences trying to tap into that light that we have inside of us.
Jeff :
There's a big innovation theme that happens. We also talk a lot about innovation, but we're going to come back to that. So I think it's time for you all to be able to ask something. So let's throw a hand up. If you've got a good question out there, anybody, and everybody raise your hand real high. [crosstalk 00:12:28].
Karen:
All right, we got one over here.
Jeff :
We'll run out a mic over to you. Fire away.
Speaker 5:
So both of you talk about in your documentaries, the importance of preparing for transformative experiences. Eduardo, you talked about hiking being therapeutic and getting out into the wilderness. Erik, you talked a lot about feeling the river and stuff like that. What are your, for people that are looking for healing through transformative experiences, what is your advice to help us prepare ourselves for those experiences?
Erik :
A shameless plug, join a No Barriers program. [crosstalk 00:13:03] There you go. You heard it. No, I really do think sometimes we're just hammering forward. We're firing forward in our lives. Sometimes it's a really important thing to step back and say, "You know what? I'm going to go through this program, some kind of program, some kind of experience where I'm rebooting, I'm taking some of the things that have sabotaged me and I'm going to rework them and I'm going to come together with a great team, and I'm going to learn how to trust that team and how to lift each other up in the right way and face some adversity together and have a cool summit, a celebration, and then figure out how to use that whole experience now to elevate ourselves and push forward a little bit more than we could have otherwise." So, yeah. That's why we created No Barriers, to create these experiences for people to reboot and to reclaim. I think it's a lot of it's working. [crosstalk 00:14:00] [inaudible 00:14:08].
Eduardo :
Yeah. I'll be short this time around. I would simply say that one of so many different tools that anyone could use prior to going into try and rebuild or reinvent or remodel or build from scratch if you're just starting from dust is to believe, you'll recognize it maybe after, but just have faith. Have faith and believe that some wild mojo of the world is present like wild yeast and sourdough. When you're rolling through the rapid sections and you can maybe hear 80% of what's coming through the, but there's a thousand percent of you that's riding that kayak and I've never been kayaking, but I saw it, and you have to own exactly where you are. You have to be present and you have to just get after it and with everything you have, no lukewarm, hot, cold decided.
Eduardo :
Then outside of all that, ask for help. Be humble, ask for help. It's the sweetest thing to recognize that something is challenging for you, or maybe you can't do, or you need help with, or you haven't figured out yet, but to allow, open that door, allow anyone around you, the opportunity to help. It's a win-win. So that'd be my- [inaudible 00:15:34].
Erik :
I think, Eduardo, I want to comment on that because I think that's really... I'm glad you tapped into that because it's a hard thing to talk about. Sometimes organizations and movements, you want to be so inclusive. So sometimes these things are hard to talk about, but I do think it is a decision that we make, that it's a good journey, that the river carries us forward in a great positive way. It's not this demon that's ready to crush us. It's not just this thing that destroys you. It's a good journey. There's going to be challenges along the way, but it is a fundamental decision that it is a good journey, and that is faith. That is belief. That is spirituality, whatever that is for you because it kind of defies reason that it sort of counterintuitive and it kind of goes beyond the evidence, the physical stuff in the world.
Jeff :
That was a really good question. So if anybody can come up with one that's just as good as that, you're on. Yeah, Ms. Karen care down there. Hand that lady a mic.
Speaker 6:
So I've never had a physical disability type of injury like that, but I think all of us have had these major changes in our lives that we think this is the worst thing that's ever happened. Now in my older age, I would say, I look at the things I really thought were the worst thing that could ever happen and I know they're the best thing that ever happened. So I try to use that as a, maybe is anything ever really bad because once we see it down the road, can we use it in the present to not look at things so negatively? Can you guys comment on that? Do you feel that way? That's a hard question. "Oh, I'm so glad I lost my arm and I'm so happy I lost my sight." How do you feel about that?
Jeff :
That's a good one. Yeah, take a stab at that one.
Erik :
I wouldn't say that I'm happy I went blind. I just think you have to take the things that happen to you and figure out the energy behind them and use them and roll with them, and use that energy to go to a place that honestly you may not have gone to in any other way. People say if you could have seen, would you be kayaking and climbing? Probably not because the only reason I started climbing was I couldn't play baseball anymore. So loss begins to transform into other things, creation, innovation, strong teams. So for me, one of the backwards gifts of blindness was that it's forced me, when I want to do big things, to trust people and to build these great teams around me.
Erik :
So, yeah, for sure. I think if I had seen, I might've missed some of these great lessons. I do have such a great team. I get way too much credit in this film because Harlan and Rob, these guys are, they're working this little remote control blind guy down the rapid and they're getting knocked over themselves, if you notice. That's incredible. Jeff, when he said on Everest, he was a star this film, did you guys notice that? Or were you in a hat? He was saying, "Stand up."
Jeff :
He was trying to crawl up Everest. It was like the first blind guy, first guy to crawl up Everest.
Erik :
So Jeff has been an incredible part of my rope team. Diedrich back there, you look at these folks from No Barriers running around making all this happen for us all, Kelly and Lisa, and all the folks just running around working so hard. I think everyone should turn to the rope team in their lives and say, "Thank you," because they're the ones that deserve that. They're the ones that lift us up. That's what I appreciate about going blind is the gifts that came out of it, and my family.
Eduardo :
Yeah, how to harness the negative. I'm not an electrician, but my experience with 2400 volts tells me that you feel 100% of 2400 volts. You don't just get to feel the positive. You don't just get KO'd by the negative. Sometimes the most sincere love hurts. So I think actually, we're born getting the positive and the negative. We allow ourselves over time, to just get used to or attracted to the sweet dollops of cream and the easier ways out, but rather a good sweat, a good suffer fest, a good hair raising expedition with your rope team, whether that's in business, whether that's in romance, whether that's in anything, putting yourself against the line is how we feel most alive. So if anything, my gratitude went 10X after my injury for everything, for every little thing, for the up the down the high, the low.
Jeff :
Let's do one more question down here real quick. Yes, sir?
Speaker 7:
Both of you share a lovely environment and living in the moment. One of the things I try to work with children or young people is distancing themselves from their technology. Would you like to discuss that, the lack of connectivity with the environment that you find so dear that have brought you so far?
Eduardo :
For me, I made a deal with my family after my injury that I would try to hike alone less and I would always do my best to remain in contact with them. So my relationship with technology, my digital devices, with my phone GPS, whatever it may be, I use them as a tool and I respect them for exactly how they serve my life, and I don't hold anything against them. It's my choice how I interact with it. That the tool should not be blamed for how I use it. That's kind of my approach to it. So with kids, it's the same. I would rather spend less time fighting a kid to put it down and rather get them to tip naturally through their own tipping point into being more in awe with what is around them.
Eduardo :
Then if they can take a photo and share it or do what they want with it, and it has them now sharing that love with someone else, I'm like, "Do it, go for it." That's my spin.
Erik :
Yeah. I think we struggle with that at No Barriers. A lot of our youth programs, I think they're still phone free. It's a part of our lives. Yeah, I think it's a double-edged sword because technology, you don't have to go to Cambodia anymore and see Angkor Wat. You can just check it out online from your couch. So it is a double edged sword. I think for me personally, it's been fun getting into rivers, bringing my family on these river adventures and all of us on the river together, maybe I'm in a kayak and my kids are in duckies, some in rafts, we're all challenging ourselves. We're learning how to interact in nature.
Erik :
One of the things I'm really proud of is when my kids and Ellie came at the end of that Grand Canyon trip, there was actually a giant rainstorm and there was a torrential river going across the road and it washed out the road and we were stuck there for more than 24 hours. Ellie said, "Well, the kids aren't unhappy. They're deep and mud puddles just sitting there playing in the mud," and I love that. To me, I'm very proud of that because my kids have learned how to create in nature, how to play, how to be little pigs in the mud and to build forts. Some kids, I think, get into nature and they're like, "What do I do? How do I interact with this environment?" It just takes practice. So I would say, as a family, get out there. As a parent, don't just sit there on a rock and tell your kids to play. Get out there and play and explore with them because your kids need to see you exploring and challenging yourself as well.
Jeff :
Well said. [crosstalk 00:24:27] All right. Let's do another audience question. Somebody raise your hand high. Yeah, I see two youngings over there. Give them a mic. That's a little [inaudible 00:24:36].
Speaker 8:
Okay. So Eduardo, I was wondering if you had a chance to go back to the moment when you got injured, would you change anything, do anything different?
Eduardo :
I always said that I'd pay a million bucks if I had a million bucks for a video of the whole thing and how it went down, so I could tick off some of the questions I've never been able to answer. But directly to your question, I wouldn't change a thing. I am at peace and I'm filled with love. I am a super happy, fortunate individual right here right now, and I wouldn't change that for anything. [crosstalk 00:25:18].
Jeff :
Great. Good question, young Sherna.
Karen:
Okay. I've got one over here. [crosstalk 00:25:26].
Speaker 9:
Erik, this is mostly for you. It seems like you obviously have to rely on your sense of hearing so much in all of your adventures. I was wondering if there's any particular sounds that strike an emotional chord with you, winds howling on top of the mountain, or a certain rapid that you remember, or even on the other end, like a happy sound that is always a relief for you every time you hear it?
Jeff :
Or maybe just my voice.
Erik :
Your sexy seventies voice. Yeah. As a blind person, you not only have to get information from your other senses, but you also have to receive beauty and feel beauty through your other senses because somebody can describe a beautiful sunset, but that's once removed. Really, the biggest, beautiful things are the things you can sense directly. Right now, I'm distracted because these kids are off here just squealing and having so much fun with this little game they're playing. That's totally joyful to me. Climbing a frozen waterfall and taking my glove off and touching the ice and feeling those trunks of ice just rolling down in an eternal way, it's beautiful. Feeling the rock under my hands, sensing the sounds of space, sound vibrations.
Erik :
When I was up on Everest, we were supposed to head up the Lhotse face, Jeff, you might remember this, and there was a big storm and we sat. I sat there in front of my tent at 22000 feet listening to the sky, and the lightning would strike and the thunder would boom. It would light up the sound. It would echo across the Cwm, the Western Cwm. I could hear the mountains. The mountains, they lit up and I could see them in my mind. So yeah, there's a lot of great stuff out there that you can experience without sight.
Jeff :
By the way, I spent that whole night scared we were going to get struck by lightning. He was like, "Oh, this is awesome." Eduardo, actually, let me just actually segue to you. Did your relationship with cooking change after your injury? In a tactile way because we're talking about sort of tactile input.
Eduardo :
Yeah, most profoundly because I kept dropping stuff. Everyone thinks it's cool because I don't cut off my fingers anymore on my left hand. I can grab hot bacon out of the skillet and check the pasta in the boiling water.
Jeff :
That's pretty tight.
Eduardo :
It's a nice super power. [crosstalk 00:28:00] Well, no, because it's this small industry, man. It's like, no, my trick. But gosh, more humility. I let myself go. I went to flipping burgers and throwing pizza at 15 for coin for work, and then I went to school right outside of high school and I remember being in cooking school and we were learning the fundamental building blocks of this trade of cooking. I remember having a ruler on my cutting board, so when I was learning how to do a [inaudible 00:28:33] cut 16th of an inch, you would be measuring a quarter inch and you get so precise. So as a young 20 year old going into private cheffing, I was just super... I didn't let a lot slide. I was just really hard-edged about it.
Eduardo :
So then after this happened, I was not as fast and I would not be as fast and that was not as fluid. So I had to find that dance, I had to find a new dance. I had to find a new way that felt like I found flow and it was letting like, "I'm sorry. If I make you chicken soup right now, your carrot will all be different sizes. That's just how it is," you know? So I focused on other things. I focus on my intentionality, my intentional relationship to food, why I'm making it, who I'm making it for and less on the perfection.
Jeff :
Hey, I think we've got one more question from the audience.
Speaker 10:
It's related back to the idea and the difference between the emotional and the physical trauma that you guys both have experienced, and just all these people in the audience have. How would you say you came to a place of acceptance? Because that's what I really struggled with personally. I feel like the transition from anger to acceptance is one of the most difficult things that I've dealt with personally. I would like to know how you guys overcame that.
Eduardo :
For me, you could say a lot on that. You could speak to that at length. So to summarize, I would say take acceptance and give it a facelift. I think acceptance is almost this third-party experience. So I would say step into the driver's seat. That's how I think it's worked best for me is take acceptance and turn it into ownership because then you realize no matter what you have left, if your heart's beating and you're in the driver's seat, you can do something, wiggle your toes, wiggle your eyebrows, get moving on it. Yeah, own it.
Jeff :
Awesome. E-Dub?
Erik :
I think we do tend to get stuck in a suspended animation where it's hard to go forward because of things like anger that become barriers in themselves, and change is obviously hard. I still find myself getting angry sometimes.
Jeff :
Really?
Erik :
Yeah. Frustrated.
Jeff :
Really?
Erik :
Yeah, at you sometimes, at getting older like, "Oh, my back hurts." That has nothing to do with blindness. So I think we hurt ourselves in a way by comparing ourselves to the person we used to be. I think Mandy actually told me an amazing story, Mandy Harvey, that when she went deaf, she lingered in that sadness for a long time stuck there and eventually, she had to get actually angry about who she wanted to be, angry about separating herself from that person she used to be and she kind of compared it to stabbing a steak in a vampire's heart. Just you stab that steak in that thing and you say, "Okay. You are dead. Goodbye," and that kind of liberates you. I think we're always kind of in a weird way, dying and being reborn. I think once you kill that thing of the past, it kind of enables you to be free and to be open to all the possibilities in front of us. You might have to do that every day until it becomes real.
Jeff :
I heard a quote from Confucius recently that said that, "We're all provided two lives, the second one begins as soon as we acknowledge that the first one ends." I feel like that sits there.
Erik :
That's good.
Jeff :
So every once in a while, bro. Every once in a while. So I'll finish with this. Obviously, Erik and I have done a lot of stuff together over the years. At the top of many mountains at the end of many races, matter of fact, around right here, we did a 10 day race one time, we have tried to high five each other a million times. You know how hard it is to hot five a blind dude?
Erik :
They saw.
Jeff :
So back to the movie, I'm just curious if you and Lonnie and the team ever perfected the high five, we call it the high paddle five.
Erik :
The blind five.
Jeff :
The blind five. Did you ever get it right?
Erik :
Not really. No. I've got lava, but I never got the blind five down.
Eduardo :
I tell you what, Erik. Let's push to the summit, we should perfect the high hook.
Erik :
Oh, I like it.
Eduardo :
Right?
Erik :
High hook.
Jeff :
Yeah, well done. [crosstalk 00:33:29] That was too easy. That was too easy.
Eduardo :
Nailed it. Nailed it.
Jeff :
Hey, Eduardo, Erik, thank you, man. [crosstalk 00:33:35] You guys are fantastic.
Eduardo :
Awesome. Yeah.
Jeff :
Really.
Eduardo :
Thank you.
Jeff :
You've inspired us all.
Eduardo :
Yeah.
Jeff :
Thank you, guys very much for being here. That was amazing.
Eduardo :
Hey, Erik, give me a hug.
Erik :
Thanks, buddy.
Eduardo :
Thank you. [crosstalk 00:33:45].
The production team behind this podcast includes senior producer, Pauline Schaffer; sound, design, editing, and mixing by Tyler Cottman; and marketing support by [inaudible 00:34:00] DeNardo and Erika Hoey. Special thanks to the Dan Ryan Band for our intro song, "Guidance." Thanks to all of you for listening. We know that you've got a lot of choices about how you can spend your time and we appreciate you spending it here with us. If you enjoy this podcast, we encourage you to subscribe to it, share it and give us a review. Show notes can be found at NoBarrierspodcast.com.
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