Podcast Ep202 Traver Boehm
Didrik Johnck: Welcome, welcome to The No Barriers Podcast, hosted by the one and only Erik Weihenmayer. You'll hear from him in just a moment. This episode dives into the raw, messy, and ultimately transformative terrain between suffering and awakening. A journey that's anything but straightforward. Our super compelling guest today, Traver Boehm.
His story is wild. Think MMA fighter by day, acupuncturist by night, years later, a man who spent a month alone in complete darkness to confront the deepest parts of himself. In between, he navigated professional heartbreak, devastating personal loss, and a year devoted to living as if it were his last. If you're ready to challenge your own assumptions about pain, healing, and the human spirit, or searching for a map to navigate your own tough terrain, this episode promises insight, inspiration, and true no barriers wisdom. There's so much more packed into this conversation, so let's do it. Sending you over to Erik and Traver. I'm Producer Didrik Johnck, and this is The No Barriers podcast.
Erik Weihenmayer: 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 happen 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. And 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.
Hey everyone, this is Erik Weihenmayer. Welcome to the No Barriers Podcast. We have great guest on this morning. I'm psyched to get to know him. you know what? No barriers. We talk about this map that we're all trying to build to navigate our lives forward. And No Barriers we work with veterans, we work with folks with disabilities, families, caregivers, and it's all about how to build that map.
I guess if I use climbing vernacular between base camp and the summit, what does that terrain look like? What does that terrain look like between the difficult places we find ourselves in and the joy that we want to discover on the other side? And our guest has a lot of great insights about that terrain.
Traver, as you say, between suffering and pain and joy or between, suffering and awakening, you know? So I think this is gonna be a fantastic conversation. before we dive deep, I went to Boston College. You're a Boston College grad too. That's cool. you were connection. I bet I'm way older than you. I graduated in 91.
Traver Boehm: Oh, okay, okay. I graduated in 98.
Erik Weihenmayer: Okay, so not too far off. That
Traver Boehm: far off. Yeah. Not too far off.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, I loved bc. It was fun. Right on. Yeah. And I didn't even know there's an Asian studies program at Boston College.
Traver Boehm: It was an independent major man. I had to make it up. it was the one that would let me do as many of the weird cl, just like, Hey, I want to do a smattering of philosophy, a little bit of theology, a little bit of sociology. So I had to actually do it as an independent study.
Erik Weihenmayer: Cool. Yeah. And then you went on to get, like a Chinese medicine degree Master's program. That's wild too. So. Uh, and then you, and then, had a career in mixed martial arts, right?
Traver Boehm: I did. So I actually grew up, a good portion of my childhood was spent living in Japan.
Wow. So I think the seed of Asia was planted in me then, and to be perfectly honest, like I was a Bruce Lee dork as a kid. That was my jam. Who was it? Yeah. And then growing up in the eighties, like when the Ninja movies came out, it was like, all right, I think I found my calling, as a 9-year-old was to be a Japanese assassin.
Cool. I don't know how that works out as an adult. So instead I just studied the philosophy and loved it. And then coming out of, or coming out of, undergrad, didn't really know what I wanted to do. And it wasn't until years later that I actually went to an acupuncturist and I had a ton of allergies and she helped me immensely.
And I remember thinking, I really want to affect people. And in my mid twenties I didn't really know how and someone said go to med school. and I remember thinking at the time, I don't quite trust Western medicine. I get it. If there's something major that happens, beautiful. But it seemed more pharmacologically based and drug oriented as opposed to health oriented.
And so Chinese medicine grabbed me as well, and how it treated the whole person and looked at people's entire lives. Right? I think I remember my first appointment with that acupuncturist. She spent an hour and a half with me. And I had been to Western doctors prior and they'd spend six minutes with me.
And I'm not shitting on the Western medical system. But there, there was a difference and the question she asked seemed a little bit more pertinent. So yeah. I love it.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, it's, that's a great precursor to all the work that you've devoted your life to since then. So
Traver Boehm: yeah,
Erik Weihenmayer: it's cool. And we'll roll into that. I thought, like listening to your TED Talk and reading a bunch of articles and things like that. One of the things I thought was just a cool part of your beginning story was the idea that you were MMA fighter in the day and you were doing acupuncture at nighttime, and as you described it, you were like giving pain and receiving pain in the day and then trying to help people at nighttime.
So you've always had this interesting relationship with pain, haven't you?
Traver Boehm: Yeah, man, I, and I didn't understand duality at the time. But I understood that there was a feeling or an entity, we can even call it an energy of pain that was very persuasive. Again, like at the time I didn't know any of this. I just wanted to, I wanted to fight.
I wanted the intensity. I loved the chess game of MMA. I loved the adrenaline of it. I loved how you had to know 50 things to be able to do one thing and then the same, when it came to Chinese medicine, I work specifically with pain management patients. Getting to see one, the weight of pain.
Like I, that was a real lesson to me of how it felt like so many of my patients had a lead blanket on their life. And if I could just make that lead blanket, weigh a pound less, even for an hour that would radically shift the possibilities in that patient's life. But it really wasn't until my own life fell apart and I started working with a Youngian therapist and really, creating a different, more conscious relationship with pain that the understanding and value of it deepened for me. And I'll say I'm very fortunate that I don't have chronic pain, knock on wood, right? Yeah. I have friends who do, and I have, I've, had patients for years who do, and the way it changes their lives seems to go in one of two directions.
It will either slowly wear them down and crush them, or they create a relationship with it that allows for an opening into something that they never thought was possible. And that, seeing that and experiencing that and witnessing that was very eye-opening for me. And it wasn't how, it wasn't the direction I was gonna go fully in, but man, is it a key ingredient in the work that I do working with men or working with people who are navigating challenges.
Erik Weihenmayer: So cool that early, those early days, you look back on 'em and they seem like they're by design, but in some ways they're by happenstance. But it's cool, You have to have this hope or faith in the awakening. But I guess when you look at like people that are depressed, right? Like I know, I mean, it seems like young people these days.
It's like an epidemic of depression. Yeah. And loneliness and disconnection. They don't see the light at the end of the tunnel, right? They're just mired in darkness. And if you don't see the, if you don't see the other side, you don't see that connection between pain and joy, man, you are stuck, right?
Traver Boehm: Yeah, it, you're stuck. And I wanna say to people, it often is a really long journey, and it's long. It's, I think, honestly, Erik, I think by design. It almost has to be longer than we could stand with our will. We're we can talk about my month in the dark. And one of the reasons I picked a month for that experience was that it was longer than I could white knuckle.
Yeah, and if we think about, my, my first initiation into this idea was divorce, which was a heartbreak. And most people were like, okay, cool, there's a month, you need a month for every year that you were in love with the person. So if you were married, and in love for five, five years, heartbreaks only gonna last five months.
And I was like, cool, I can do that. That's no problem at all. It's January, I just need to get to June or whatever the fifth month of it is, and no. And by the way,
Erik Weihenmayer: I was, I also got divorced and most painful thing I've more painful than going blind.
Traver Boehm: Brutal. Really?
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, for sure.
Traver Boehm: It's brutal, right?
It's brutal. It's brutal. Yeah. and it lasts forever. It seems like it'll last forever. So here I am gearing up for this five month thing that I just have to get through. And you know, a year in, I'm still crying on my bathroom floor and trying to figure out what to do with myself and how could this happen?
And two years later it's still affecting me, and three years later it's still affecting me. And looking back on it on, in hindsight, I think by nature it needs to get you to a point of surrender. In order for you to get like the deepest, most impactful gems of lessons that are down there in the muck of that heartbreak and pain and turmoil.
Otherwise, we just go like, yeah, cool. I'll get them, you know, I'll pick them up. There'll be, I know there'll be lessons, but I just gotta get through this week and I'm just gonna bypass it or distract from it. Yeah. and it doesn't work that way. And so I get, I don't want to. I don't wanna speak poorly. I get people are in real challenging situations with their depression and their mental health. Right.
And there are lessons in it and there are also actions that we can take on our own behalf. Yeah. And for our own behalf that actually do help and do make the process better. Like a simple, remember when I was getting divorced, I dunno if you got this advice, I. A friend was like, take as much melatonin as you can possibly stand so that you sleep at night.
Yeah. And I was like, I don't wanna get addicted to melatonin.
And they're like, trust me, your life's gonna suck for a while. You might as well be sleeping. Like, you know, sleeping at night and I was like, that's a really good point. I don't need the added challenge of insomnia,and sleeplessness to this.
Yeah. To add to this problem. Yeah, man. I'd love to, do you have, would you mind sharing a, I know you're interviewing me, but just for a second of why it was harder than going blind?
Erik Weihenmayer: Just because going blind, you just, you say this happened, eventually you reach a. A point where you accept it and then you find as you've talked about a lot, the gifts and so forth.
But yeah, when you get a divorce, it's all about what you have done that you could have done better. All that rumination of like regret of what could I have done better? Like how did I let this person down? How did we go from being absolutely in love to that love dying or being killed in some way?
You know what I mean? Yeah. So it's not about just me, it's about. What I could have done for someone else. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. So that makes it more difficult, I think. Yeah. In a way, the other thing I was thinking, with people that are experiencing depression or pain, is that part of the, maybe the nature of that depression is that they put up all these barriers, right?
In terms of oh, I can't do this, or I can't do that. And you're like, but those are the things that might help you, right? Yeah. keeping an open mind, but. They put up all these barriers and therefore they're even doubly stuck. How? How do you get people like past all the barriers of, I can't try that because of X, Y, and Z.
You know what I mean?
Traver Boehm: Yeah. And I know specific scenarios, just of that, of having people in my life who were depressed for years, if not decades, and saying, Hey, do you know what I think you need? And I'm not a doctor, but I've worked with a lot of people in your situation, and I did study this in grad school.
Take a year off. Quit the job that you say you hate move outta the city that you say you hate. You know, you want to be a photographer, go take six months, travel the world and take photos. And at the end of those six months, if you're still equally as depressed, come back to the job that you hate. Come back to the city that you hate, but at least try taking a risk of: would new input, create new feelings?
And again, we're, this is a very minimized view of depression. So we're, let's talk about people who perhaps it's more situational and relational. That I know it's going to feel like hell. And I'll say this too, since we've both been divorced, like there were times in my divorce where someone would say, I remember a guy invited me out to see, a motivational speaker. I can't remember his full name. It's Nick something. He's, I don't think he has arms and legs. Do you know the guy I'm talking about?
Erik Weihenmayer: Oh yeah, yeah. He's Australian guy.
Traver Boehm: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He came to our town and my buddy was like, you should come see this with me. And I was like, bro, and blah, blah. My wife and he is like, get up, put your clothes on.
Come see this event. I know you're gonna, even if you have to drag yourself to it. And I was like, rah. You know, it was like curmudgeony the entire Yep. Drive there and then got there and was like, okay. this is inspirational. This makes me feel good. It feels good to be around people. People are crying.
This guy's message is super inspirational. You know what, I'm gonna let this affect me. And for two hours felt joy, felt happiness, felt connection, laughed. It didn't make my sit. I wasn't suddenly not getting divorced anymore, but at least for those two hours, I also realized that there's a different way of looking at life that I can say this thing is happening to me and I'm gonna get crushed by it. It's gonna kill me. And woe is me.
Or say, this thing is happening in my life. It's just one of the many chapters, and maybe I can do something with it. Here's a man on stage in front of thousands of people who has far more challenges than I do. And it's, it's not a just, I don't want to just use comparison of his situation's worse than mine, but I can say, here's someone who's making a shit ton of lemon meringue pie outta lemons.
I, I, too possibly can see this from a different angle.
Erik Weihenmayer: Hey everybody, this is Erik and I want to take a little break from our interview to tell you about No Barriers. Obviously, we're interviewing these amazing No Barriers pioneers, but behind this podcast is an organization called No Barriers, predicated on the idea that what's within us is stronger than what's in our way.
Our mission at No Barriers is to help people disabilities to break through barriers to tap into the light of the human spirit and to reclaim their lives, sometimes to reclaim their potential. In the business of shifting mindsets. And it's proud work. And I hope you'll get involved. Learn more about us. Check out our newsletter. No Barriers usa.org. No barriers podcast.com.
And also it's connection, you know, with the idea that we are all going through this journey together. You know what I mean? We're not alone, truly, we've all been experiencing, suffering and challenge since the beginning of human history.
And so we don't have to feel as alone as we do. I love that. And that's a great segue to this project that you went on after you got a divorce, after you reached this low point of your life. Sorry to bring this up, but you've written about it, it's all good. you lost a child.
Traver Boehm: Yeah.
Erik Weihenmayer: And so lots of suffering that you went through and then you did this project, like what would you do if you only had one year to live?
Traver Boehm: Yeah.
Erik Weihenmayer: Your year to live project. Yeah. And very cool project.
Traver Boehm: Thank you.
Erik Weihenmayer: First of all though, like if you ask people to do that, what would they even figure out for the last year of their life? You know what I mean? that would be intimidating and overwhelming for a lot of people. oh my God, a year. What? You know what I mean? Yeah. They might be stuck just in the decision of that,
Traver Boehm: You know, Erik, I asked so many people during that year and to frame it for your audience. I had just gotten divorced. My ex had a miscarriage. my business partner and I had gone our separate ways. I had sold the business to him.
Yeah. So I did have some level of income. And so I'm single, no kids with a passive income. So people are always like, you're so lucky. He is okay, I know, but I did it anyway. Yeah. And what I did. All along the journey of an entire year, living as it, living it, as if it were my last was ask people that question and the immediate response is often a bypass to the question. it's, guys would be like, oh, I'd have threesomes, and you like, jump outta airplanes and tr okay, cool. 355.
Erik Weihenmayer: I love it when people always like, I'd run with the bulls and I know what I mean. You're like, okay, let's start
Traver Boehm: Every day? yeah, you're still gonna have some time, man. and then what would happen is they'd actually drop into the question. Yeah, and that's when I would get the most interesting answers. And it would literally, people would break down and cry and they'd say I'd go back to school. I'd spend the entire year with my kids. I'd leave my marriage. I would travel like, I have the money, but I'm afraid if you know I'm gonna lose my career.
They would actually, I think, tap into what their soul actually wanted, or their heart actually wanted, as opposed to whatever the default programming that they were stuck in. From society, from their family, from their neighborhood, from the city, from the yada yada. They would actually tap into something deeper and start connecting with the word longing.
Like, what do you long for? Is really what I'm asking them. I. Because what I would say is this isn't a bucket list. Like I didn't do it as a bucket list of I want to go see the Eiffel Tower, I wanna surf big waves. It was the answer to the question was, what would you want to do and need to do so that when you took your final breath, you took it full and you took it without regret?
And I guarantee you, after the running of the bulls and the threesome, you would find some other more important shit to do with yourself.
Erik Weihenmayer: Well, is that how you came to your decision of you? there are three things that I read about. Really Cool. You worked with people in hospice care. You, did like a survival experience with just a, pocket knife and a poncho and a water bottle.
Pretty cool. And then, obviously this crazy culmination of spending a month in pitch darkness, in a soundproof room, like in Guatemala or something. Yeah. but don't jump to the month long. Okay. meditation yet because Okay. The first two, focus on the first two for a moment. Sure, yeah. How'd you, you know, get to those decisions and then tell us about those?
Traver Boehm: Definitely.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah.
Traver Boehm: I was, I'll frame it. I was a CrossFit coach at the time and I'd owned a gym for about six years, so I couldn't live... I couldn't make a decision if it wasn't put on a whiteboard, so I literally went and bought like whiteboard material and I nailed it into the wall of my new little studio, and I just meditated in front of it and I told myself the information that I'm looking for isn't gonna be cerebral. I'm not gonna think, what would I do that's too limiting, limited of a tool. I need to drop into my heart and drop down deeper into my soul. So I just meditated and meditated and meditated and was asking the question what would I actually do?
And the very first thing that came through Erik was hot. Are you gonna volunteer in hospice? And I was like, what? The actual f like what are you talking about? I have no training in this. I don't like what is this? But I just, I got up and I wrote it down and then it was, okay, where am I gonna do this?
I lived in Colorado, in Santa Barbara, California at the time, and I hear New Mexico. I was like, why New Mexico? There's no surf in New Mexico. What are we talking about? Wrote it down, right? And boulder Outdoor Survival School was actually something that was more cerebral. That was something as a kid I'd always wanted to do Outward Bound and was excited by like Hawk Finn.
Like I read those books as a kid. I'd read Tom Brown Jr. Books in college and it really was like. I didn't know this at the time, but I can say it to you here, archetypally I was trying to figure out how to survive the divorce still, and so it was okay if I can go into a month long wilderness survival course and live through that, I'm gonna tap into something that's deeper that I can then use to get through the situation that I'm in.
But hospice, I think that was just heaven sent man, and I'm not a religious person. It was one of it, one of, if not the most impactful things I've ever done with my life is to be with people in their final moments and to create relationships with people in the last chapter of their lives. And to be witness to them and share time with them and share energy with them and share laughter with them.
And like I still have those people in my heart because for ano, a couple of them, I spent a good amount of time with them. And it's sad to say, but I was one of the few people other than nursing staff, that actually would engage with these folks and they were so open and so fun and so lovely and just so wonderful.
Yeah. And it was such an honor, like truly an honor to be with someone in such a vulnerable state and, and hear their stories and hear what they're going through and be there on the good days when we were just laughing and telling jokes and be there on the bad days when they were crying and perhaps wishing that death would come sooner or why isn't there family visiting or you know, and dealing with stuff that I had no formal training in.
Like hospice training is a day and it's essentially like how do you fill out a form if something, if something happens? That's really what they're training you for. But to learn to sit with someone and be so present for them and with them, because I know that the hour and a half that I'm with them is sacred time was just phenomenal training for the rest of my life.
Erik Weihenmayer: I love the fact that, that was one of the things you chose. so my background, of course I've climbed tall mountains and kayak big scary rivers and done all kinds of physical adventures. you do all that stuff, external stuff, and you can still be lost.
You, you know, it, it's not like by doing these big things, you're like solving anything, So there's this internal piece. That you're hoping for, right? trying to become a better human being, more connected, have more peace, more joy, more insight. You know what I mean? So the internal piece, I'm so glad you're talking about, obviously hospice being external, but you know what you gained from that experience.
It's not just like a bucket list, as you said. Yeah. So that's super cool.
Traver Boehm: It was also safe for people because it's, it wasn't a bucket list, it was brutally hard. Like I would leave so many times and go get in my truck in the parking lot and just sob. And yeah, I was in the midst of grief. But to be, I would sob because of the opportunity that I was given to be with someone in such a sacred moment.
I had so much reverence for their life and so much reverence for what they were allowing me, a random stranger to be a part of with them. That part was. I truly hope everybody does this. I hope people volunteer in, in, in hospice and just learn that one, learn how valuable your presence is when that is what you have to offer.
Like you said, I've done extreme stuff. I've fought professionally, I've run marathons, I've surfed massive waves and sitting in front of someone, they do not care. They don't care. Care what my resume is, don't give a shit. Dude, didn't, no one asked where I went to college, what my graduate degree was, what I could deadlift, what belt I was in, juujitsu.
It was literally like, will you be here when you're here or will you be elsewhere when you're here? And is that not a, an epidemic that we're dealing with right now in society and in relationship of people not being present in their own lives?
Erik Weihenmayer: Good. Just fundamental basic message for anyone struggling.
One, just go figure out some way to serve other people. A hundred percent each part of your connection and healing. Now let's jump to the craziest thing that everyone focuses on, this month long journey that you took in the dark. By the way you spent a month in the dark where you couldn't see your own hand.
There's a ton of blind jokes I could make here. like I've been experiencing this dark room for 30 years now, but I'm not gonna make any of those jokes are too obvious.
Traver Boehm: Yeah. I paid to do it. You didn't, you know?
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
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Erik Weihenmayer: so I have this friend he took, he did a, the vipassana. Yeah, I know you've studied all this. So he did a silent meditation, which I know is different than what you did.
But, but he even said, like he said, you just fought, struggled, and Hated it. And. Then he said something kind of, I'm, I'm so paraphrasing, something washed over him. He had been an alcoholic. He'd told me, and this sounds like almost crazy, he said, he's never had a desire to drink.
It's not like he fights it. He's never had another desire to drink alcohol again after he went through that experience. So some crazy shit happens in this month long thing. First of all, just tell me about all the crazy barricades, your mind put in front of you like you were seeing people.
like in the dark, you were, there were what, like insects on the toilet, like, all right, isn't that right?
Like your brain, that was my fear. Your brain is fighting this experience. Right? Yeah. And by the way, more insight about me. I try to be an evolved human and I've been working on my transition of transformation of being a better human being. But I am a person who constantly has to be surrounded by noise, by movement.
okay. like I am, I never have a second free in my life. Like really, I'm always climbing and blah, blah, blah. And or listening to a book, Just being by myself. I think my, and by the way, I've been in tens, in storms for five or six or seven, eight days. Yeah. And it's one of the most torturous things I've ever been through.
Traver Boehm: Yeah,
Erik Weihenmayer: right. And so I've been thinking a lot about this anyway, so yeah, tell me about that.
Traver Boehm: It is wild to watch the television of your own mind. Yeah, and like you said, the protective measure, measures the distraction, measures, the insanity of a mind that is just left to its own devices and has nothing to put itself upon.
So for people listening, this is a month. I did a month, I'm about to do seven weeks in, three weeks from today, I go back in. Wow. And it's no light. 24, 7, 7 days a week. Know your eyes don't adjust. I could not see my hand in front of my face the entire time. There are no other people. There is nothing to do.
And that is the experience. And what it does is you will literally work through all of the layers of barriers. Of everything that I just listed until you get past your mind, at least that was my experience. Some people I know who I've talked to have done this on like day two. They're hallucinating angels and they're talking to God and hanging out with Jesus.
That wasn't my experience. Mine was like a slow breakdown of my brain and my intellect and my ego, until I was literally broken and sobbing on the floor and dealing with, just like you said, people who came in the room metaphysically or not physically, and I would have conversations with them. I would have arguments with them.
I would have fights with them. I would have terrible dreams. I would hallucinate animals in the room. One day the room turned into a fish tank. That was cool. Wow. I thought I died for 24 so hours. I literally couldn't figure out if I was alive or dead. it's a mind fuck, Erik. It's, yeah, it's a real, it's a challenge.
It's a really unique experience.
Erik Weihenmayer: I really liked what you said, people try to outrun their pain.
Traver Boehm: Yeah.
Erik Weihenmayer: and in some ways I feel like we're all doing that. For sure. we distract ourselves with so many things just so we don't have to face ourselves, right?
Traver Boehm: Yeah.
Think of, And this is an a, a different direction to take the example, but I'll use this example 'cause it was, it's pertinent and your male listeners would get it. I work with a lot of guys who have issues around porn and I'll say to them like, what was happening right before you decided to look at porn?
Was it that you were aroused or was it that, that you just got your credit card bill and you're 20 grand in debt and that's what made you turn towards pornography and it's is, and a lot of guys are like, yeah, it's that. It's like I'm thinking about the office, I'm, it's pressure with the kids.
And I'm like, is that a turn on for you or is that just the anxiety producer that you then go, cool, I'll go look at porn and we could swap.
Erik Weihenmayer: It's the button you push when you are- a hundred percent -of feeling something too intense.
Traver Boehm: And now let's use something that's more innocuous. How many times a day do people flip open to Instagram? Or at a TikTok or their email or the television or texting because whatever they're sitting with in that moment, the anxiety level, depression level, uncertainty level, fear level has gone from a 2.5, which they can deal with to a 2.7, that suddenly it's like, what Gotta distract? And then they take their consciousness and their brain and they shoot sideways and they go find something else to think about till they feel better.
Or until they forget and then they come back to center. But the thing about a dark room retreat is there's literally nothing to do, but sit with and be with all the things that are coming up, right? There's a shower in the room, there's a sink in the room, and you get fed three times a day. Other than that, there's not much else to do, right? You can't see your body. even, and perhaps you can speak to this even more, so, if I'm bored in a room, I can still look around. I can still, like, I've gone in dentist's office, oh, I'll just read the posters on the wall for 15 minutes until my dentist shows up.
Erik Weihenmayer: Getting anxiety, even just listening to the story, 'cause I'm thinking, you fall asleep, you wake up, you don't have a watch, right?
Traver Boehm: No watch.
Erik Weihenmayer: Like, you don't, you don't even know what time it is. You don't lose track of it's day or night. Yeah. Did you just like ever find yourself? Of course you did. Wanting to just like pound the door and be like, let me outta here.
Traver Boehm: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And then this is something to tell people, I'm not locked in there.
So there's a key on my side of the door that at any point I could be like, all right, tapping out. I
Erik Weihenmayer: challenged by choice
Traver Boehm: A hundred percent. And I remember even hearing a story of a guy who would let himself out at night to go see the night sky.
And I was like, oh, well that's, that's kind of cheating, but there were plenty of times that I wanted to, but at no point would I have. 'cause I had some innate feeling that the length of time was actually marinating the experience and I wanted to stay in to the very end in case there were things on day 26, day 27, or even day 28 that I would miss otherwise.
That's the one of the main reasons I'm going back in for longer. Is to see what is there available that you can only get to on day 30 or day 35 or day 42. so yeah. it's crazy making, man, it's, I don't wanna sugarcoat this, it's truly crazy making. And I did know the time by the meals, so Oh,
Erik Weihenmayer: right, right.
Yeah, yeah.
Traver Boehm: Right. There's, I just, I'm, this is a study going around or a article going around of this guy, I think in the forties, who locked himself in a pitch black cave for two months, but was being recorded, I think it's the forties whenever it was being recorded by people upstairs and his sleep turned into like 10 hours on, 30 hours off or something.
Wow. That was the cycle. So he thought he was only in for a month, but he'd been in for much longer. But he was feeding himself.
Erik Weihenmayer: Ah,
Traver Boehm: So where I would have food delivered, right through a double door system every five hours up until five o'clock or something. So I did have an idea of when, of what time it was... to a certain extent.
Erik Weihenmayer: So Traver describe like, you know, after you got through all the layers of yourself and you, I guess the word is like surrender to it. Yeah. Tell me what that was like.
Traver Boehm: It was hard, man. It was really, really hard because what I had to surrender to were a lot of uncomfortable or really challenging memories.
So I hadn't really looked at my childhood. I hadn't really looked at how hard my teenage years were. I hadn't really dealt with the divorce or the miscarriage. I had, but I had intellectualized a lot of it, or what I'd done has been like, okay, cool, this is gonna be the hardest thing I've ever lived through, but I'm gonna get through it.
And at the other side, there's gonna be this great benefit. And so I'd kind of skipped the juice of it, or I hadn't gone through the depth of the suffering. And so that was what was waiting there for me. The surrender to like, oh my God, this is so much bigger than me and I don't know what to do.
I've never dealt with this level of grief before. So unfortunately, under surrender for me was grief. Tons... and I cried and cried and cried, and cried and cried and just had these like visual.. The movie clips come into my mind and I'd be like, no, no, no. I don't wanna think about that today. I don't wanna think about that.
And it would come back and come back and come back and come back. And it would be on this endless loop, Erik, where I may have the same 15 second video clip for eight or 10 hours. Because there's no Facebook to look at. There's no Instagram to look at. There's no, let's just go outside and smell the fresh air and go for a walk.
Break the cycle. Yeah, there's nothing to break the cycle. And that actually made, I didn't sleep much past the eighth day. I would lay in bed at night doing the same thing and just be like, God dammit, let me sleep. let me sleep. And it wouldn't, or there was a period where I had, at some visual phenomenon. I don't know. Do you get this where you feel like there's a bright light shining in your eye?
Erik Weihenmayer: Of course. Yeah. yeah.
Traver Boehm: Where I would touch my eyeball and be like, wait, is my eyelid closed? And I'd close my eyelid and the light would still be there, and then I'd open it and the light would still be there.
And there was no light, but it was blinding and it would just drive me crazy. But then there were these periods too, of immense peace. Underneath that, like I'd have these moments where I'm like, oh, everything is gonna be okay. I am gonna be okay. I will leave this room at some point. There were times when I thought I'd never leave, or I said like a time I thought I had died.
She was like, this is forever. Or what if they forgotten me? You know? And your mind plays tricks on you. At least mine did. So there was also just desperation and devastation. And then these periods of like, well wait a minute. What do I wanna do when I get outta here? What's gonna be different? How do I use this?
What is this thing shaping me or marinating me into? So it was a lot, it was a lot to, to take in.
Yeah. And I've heard you talk about this idea that we avoid parts of ourselves. Mm-hmm. That feel tainted or unworthy. Yeah. And so what was that for you or for maybe the people you work with, I had read this great book. What are those things?
Erik Weihenmayer: yeah. 'cause I'm thinking like we all pro, I know we all do it, but Yeah. how do you articulate that?
Traver Boehm: I read the book, Dark Side of the Light Chasers. You ever read that? Debbie Ford? No.
Erik Weihenmayer: No.
Traver Boehm: and she says that we'll have these archetypes with us that I. We always like, oh, I have the warrior and the father and the king and the such and such, right? And she's like, well, you also have the addict and the liar and the conniver and the manipulator. Yeah. And I was like, oh shit. Okay.
Erik Weihenmayer: Exactly. Whoop. Yeah. Uhhuh.
Traver Boehm: So what I would do is I picked, I think 12 of them and named them.
And would sit with each one per day and say you know what, okay, I have this part of me. It's not all of me. I don't walk around, per perpetually lying to everybody that I'm not a con man, but yeah, I've lied in my life. I've lied to people. I've lied to people I care about. I have a part of me that protects me by lying.
I had an addictive part of me. There's a part of me that doesn't want me to feel the pain and will consistently give me something else that numbs me. And so I would have a dialogue with that archetype. I talked to them like, Hey man, what are you doing in my life, Larry, the liar. What are you trying to protect me from?
And since I didn't have much to do and had a lot of free time, Larry and I would chat and what I would do is actually say, oh, I see what you're trying to do here. Thank you. Yeah. That would be the end point of like, okay, cool. Now I know you exist. Now I'm in relationship with you. Now you're not something or an, or a part of me that I'm hiding or shaming or shunning.
I, I'm not making you head of the table, but you're also just a part of my being. let's be with that part, right? We can talk about the Jungian shadow. We can just talk about parts of ourselves we're not proud of, but there's still parts of us. We still have these attributes or these characteristics, and so what part of the dark was for me was really creating a depth of relationship with the parts of myself that I wasn't proud of, as opposed to prior to going in the room, I had built this beautifully safe social media, you know, coaching, CrossFit, always healthy, married to the model, living the dream life guy that wasn't real. And I had this terrible fear, Erik, this like perpetual terror that someday I was gonna get found out that people would realize I was a fraud or I was smoking pot, or I'd, you know, drink wine on the Thursday nights and then get up and talk about like living a healthy life on Friday morning.
And so really leaving the room with full acceptance of all the parts of myself was an extraordinary experience.
Erik Weihenmayer: So is that just the point, is accepting those parts or it's not like, okay, now I have a relationship with those parts, I can improve them. It's not really about that, right? It's more just like saying, Hey, this is, I. You know that this is the makeup of a human being.
Traver Boehm: Yeah. I would say I lent more, leaned more, and I hope people listening to this do into relationship with, Yeah, rather than just acceptance of, okay. Because acceptance can be like, oh, you're on the back burner. Like, yeah, I got a part of myself that lies relationship is Larry, why are you here?
Why did you just say that? What are you protecting me from? That's a biggie. what are you protecting me from? And then I get to look at oh, I'm, you're protecting me from ostracization, from being ostracized. Shit. Okay. How do I build a more robust community based on authenticity so that when people meet me and they go, oh, that's exactly who he is.
Like one of my biggest compliments is when people meet me in person and go, yep. You're just like, you sound on the podcast. You're not trying to put on a different air. Like you're just who you are. And I go, oh, thank you. That's, this is how I wanna live my life now. A dozen years ago, that wasn't the case.
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Erik Weihenmayer: And you talk a also a lot about like enduring pain and interpreting pain rather than escaping. Of course, we've already touched on this a bit, like a lot of us are trying to escape pain. If you could take a pill and never experience pain and be immortal to death,
yeah. A lot of people would take it are you actually saying it's like necessary or it's a necessary evil or like what?
Traver Boehm: That's a great question. I would say both that it's necessary and it's a necessary evil, right? You get to choose whether you want to learn from it. I think that's the big point, right?
I'm not a masochist. I'm not advocating. People go hurt themselves. Go flog yourself. Yeah. Don't flog yourself and if you're in pain, I think having a dialogue and a relationship with it, again, it comes down to relationship. One of the, my favorite questions to ask people is, if my pain could speak to me today, it would say like, finish that sentence, what would it say?
And it may say like, this isn't the life I wanna be living. This isn't the relationship I want to be in. I need to start taking better care of my health. This is a real challenge. I don't want to keep being put on the back burner till I get bigger and bigger. And you actually finally take notice of me.
I remember meeting a guy, do you know Kelly Stare? You know that name?
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah, I think
Traver Boehm: He, he wrote like how to be a supple leopard.
Erik Weihenmayer: Yeah.
Traver Boehm: he was in the CrossFit community when I was, and I met him 15 years ago at a workshop and he said, pain is nature's way of something to this effect, I'm paraphrasing like that.
We've gone against nature. if my elbow goes past the point that it's supposed to, it hurts, right? If my life is going away from my own nature, it often hurts. Again, I don't wanna minimize if people are dealing with real mental health issues here, or physical, you know, fibromyalgia or physical pain here.
But for a lot of folks, pain is simply the canary in the coal mine saying, Hey man, this isn't the direction you want to be going. This isn't the thing that you want to be doing. Or there's something underneath all of this that actually needs addressing. Right. I work with a lot of men, and my favorite sentence is when a guy says, I've never said this out loud before.
When he says that, Erik, I know his life is about to change radically because he's got some secret Yeah. Or some shame or some part of himself that he doesn't want anybody to know. And then he shares it and suddenly now he's allowed to be in relationship with it as opposed to shunning it and hiding it.
And we're allowed to be in relationship with him after he's authentically admitted something. And what do you know? Boom. You see the guy the next day and he looks radically different. It looks like the weight of the world has been lifted from his shoulders. And maybe that's not the case for everybody who's dealing with pain, but I've just talked to too many people who say, if it wasn't for that injury, if it wasn't for that accident, if it wasn't for this thing, I wouldn't be doing this thing that brings me so much joy or has brought me feeling like I'm far more in alignment to the life that I want to be living.
And that was my case fully. The two or three years of this absolutely crushing misery from my divorce, and the fallout of that situation has now led me to do something that I can't imagine my life without, right? I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a speaker. I wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to have a deep affect on people.
And it took hitting rock bottom for a couple years in order for me to come out of it and land in a position to do what I'm doing now. Now I don't want to go through it again. Yeah, right. Lesson learned. Everything's great. Like, please don't make me do that again. But I'm also super grateful for it.
Erik Weihenmayer: And the subtitle to your book is The Depths of Despair To The Joy of Awakening.
I mean, that's, that's the universe between those two things For sure. Is there like, you know, no barriers. We talk about a map between those two things. And it's a very messy map. I would not call it equation because I think that cheapens it, but, For sure. Is there something you would say, for maybe people just to get started?
Traver Boehm: Yeah.
Erik Weihenmayer: Between those two or some kind of insights in the middle of that?
Traver Boehm: Yeah, I think there's some ingredients, some key ingredients we can call them, right? Of acceptance, of surrender, of forgiveness, of healing, of relationship, of community, right? You take just those five or six things that I just said, and you've got yourself a potent potion and a path that you're gonna walk.
It doesn't mean that there won't be difficulty. It doesn't mean that there won't be setbacks. It doesn't mean that there won't be giant leaps forward either or giant leaps forward that then come with a setback. And you may have to return to these principles, like the words that I just said, I believe are at the root of the vast majority of spiritual teachings and the vast majority of healing modalities other than taking a pill.
It is okay, this is my situation. I can stop fighting it and start saying, okay, this is it. This is just a snapshot of my reality. Now, is there something I can do today to make my life a little bit easier, a little bit better with this, can I do it communally? Can I have people in my life? We're meant to be in relationship with each other.
Am I furious and angry at the situation? I remember this. Here's a good little side story on this. I worked with a guy named Steve James, if you know him, he's Michaela Bo's teaching assistant. Okay. And it was a men's workshop. And what he had us do, Eric, he had us hold like a 90 degree squat, like an air squat, go down to pretend like you're sitting in a chair.
Yeah. And we're holding this position for minutes. And he's cool. Now put your arms out to the side. So we're adding one layer of discomfort. And now we're holding this and holding this and guy's, legs are shaking and people are like, Ugh, and freaking out. And he goes, now, he goes, this is what most of you are doing.
You're fantasizing about the moment I tell you that you can stand up and put your arms down. Or you're fantasizing about the moment, right before I had you squat and put your arms out. But what if I was to tell you, how would your immediate situation change or your relationship to it if you actually knew that you'd always been in this squat and you'll never come out of it?
And for a moment I was like, oh my God, he is right. I would stop fighting this. I would just accept that this is my reality. Now what do I wanna do about it? And that, I think that's a key component in it. Is how much time, energy, energetic capital do we expend wishing things were different? I'm sure you went through it.
Yeah. God, if I fantasizing about I wish things were different, I wish things were different, as opposed to, okay, this is my lot for the moment. And then hopefully recognizing too that this may not be forever. Some situations are forever, but your feeling and relationship to it will change over time.
Erik Weihenmayer: Beautiful. And you talked about this spirituality piece of it, which is at the end, at the culmination, kind of unavoidable, right? Like I've had those moments kayaking a river, just feeling connected to the water, feeling connected to the river, to the waves, to the sky. And finishing that day, just sitting on the beach with my feet in the water and feeling the echo of the canyons and the just everything, and feeling connected to it and going, you know what? This is spiritual. I can't, I, it almost sounds cheesy to say it, but it's, there's no way to avoid it. Right. And you had this really cool line. You surrendered to whoever was listening.
Traver Boehm: I
Erik Weihenmayer: just love that. I love that. Right. So, so the spiritual piece, whether you name it or not,it's there. It's there.
Traver Boehm: It truly is there. and I had an opportunity to interview Francis Weller. Have you ever heard of him? A great spiritual teacher. Yeah. Who said one of the challenges in the pain points in the West is that we've personalized everything. I say, I'm the only one getting divorced. I'm the only one going blind, and I'm the only one who's experiencing pain right now.
And I remember when my own therapist said, do you realize that 800,000 people a year get divorced? And it didn't make my situation suddenly disappear, but I went, oh, this is kind of a universal thing. This is kind of a human thing. This is kind of part of being human. And so maybe it, I can stop the woe is me and say, oh, I'm part of something that's uncomfortable, but I'm part of something that's bigger than I am.
Then maybe there's a lesson that's bigger than I am that I get to experience and also glean from this situation once I accept that it's bigger than I am. And I found that to be super helpful. It's the reason we do support groups. It's the reason we get around other people who are going through what we're going through so that we can feel seen, we can feel met.
We don't feel as alone in the struggle that we're having. I think that's also very important. But I agree with you, man, it, at the end of the day, it does come back to, okay. This is so much bigger than me. It has to be God and however you define that word, whether that's nature or, you know, uh, a deity.
Erik Weihenmayer: Wow. Traver. I could talk to you for hours, man. I know we just scratched the surface, but thank you so much for joining me on this podcast. My pleasure. It's gonna, it's just so tremendous. What a beautiful message. It's gonna help lots and lots of people within our community who are listening, so thank you, sir.
Maybe we'll have a part two, huh?
Traver Boehm: I'm down. Anytime. Go Eagles. Cool.
Erik Weihenmayer: Thank you. Thank you Traver. And thank you to everyone. No barriers to you all.
Didrik Johnck: The production team behind this podcast includes producer, Didrik Johnck. That's me. An audio engineer, Tyler Kottman. Special thanks to the Dan Ryan Band for our intro song guidance. And thanks to all of you for listening. If you enjoyed this show, please subscribe, share it, and hey, we'd be thrilled for a review.
Show notes can be found at nobarrierspodcast.com. There's also a link there to shoot me an email with any suggestions or guest ideas for the show. Thanks so much and have a great day.
