In this episode, I sit down with Sean Blackwell, author of Bipolar Awakenings: The Quest to Heal Bipolar Disorder, for a deep dive into the intersection of bipolar disorder, spiritual emergence, and nonordinary states of consciousness. We explore Sean’s personal awakening in the 1990s, his early encounters with “spiritual emergency,” and how that experience propelled him into decades of work using transpersonal psychology, holotropic-style breathwork, and what he calls surrogate breathwork to support healing. Sean shares striking stories—from supporting family members through medication-free psychotic breaks to facilitating powerful, somatic releases—while emphasizing safety, humility, and collaboration with psychiatry. We unpack the common “spiritual delusions” seen in acute psychosis, the role of Kundalini and the chakra framework, and why Sean views bipolar episodes as potentially meaningful reorganizations of the psyche rather than purely biological malfunction. He offers grounded guidance for those newly diagnosed (including staying on medications while exploring spiritual work safely), outlines his four-pillar approach (psychiatry, psychology, peer support, spirituality), and points listeners to his free books, training resources, and videos. If you’ve ever questioned the conventional narrative on mental illness—or you’re seeking new language and tools for profound inner transformation—this conversation will challenge and inspire. Resources mentioned: Sean’s website: bipolarawakenings.com (free PDF downloads of both books, training resources, and links to YouTube/Instagram). Key influences include Dr. Stanislav Grof (holotropic breathwork, spiritual emergency) and Ken Wilber (evolution of consciousness).
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(00:03:37) Opening from Asylum Studios and show setup
(00:05:26) Programming notes and Saturday special announcement
(00:05:58) Health update and housekeeping wrap
(00:10:52) Introducing guest Sean Blackwell and his work
(00:11:59) From Brazil: setting the stage and icebreakers
(00:15:42) Sean’s 1996 breakthrough and the ‘spiritual emergency’
(00:20:37) Discovering Stan Grof and redefining psychosis
(00:24:05) Family cases in Brazil and non‑medicated support
(00:27:38) A host’s personal story and spirituality in healing
(00:28:07) Why Sean sees bipolar as spiritual and archetypal
(00:31:10) Kundalini, chakras, and somatic energy
(00:33:58) Holotropic breathwork basics for bipolar clients
(00:35:41) Retreat design, limits, and the ‘inner healer’
(00:37:10) Surrogate breathwork and the healing field
(00:38:46) Culture clash with facilitators and humility in practice
(00:40:26) Building an unshutdownable private retreat model
(00:41:44) From living rooms to five‑star venues
(00:41:56) Advice for the newly diagnosed: stay grounded
(00:46:56) Balancing meds, psychology, peer support, and spirit
(00:49:04) A five‑year vision and institutional integration
(00:53:49) Wild field stories: closets, nuns, and regression
(00:57:06) From crisis to service: client becomes psychologist
(00:57:44) Mavericks who inspire: Grof and Wilber
(00:59:48) Where to find Sean: site, YouTube, and socials
(01:00:43) Closing thanks and takeaways
(01:01:56) Show wrap, community, and production credits
(01:05:37) Producer perks, recurring support, and segments
(01:07:02) Final sign‑off and calls to connect
- Wayne Rankin
- Rosanna Rankin
- Carolina Jimenez
[00:03:38]
Unknown:
Transmitting live from the asylum studios deep in the bowels of Southwest Texas, it's the Joe Rouge show. The show where we talk about anything and everything. Where nothing is sacred, sacred, nothing is watered down, and nothing is PC.
[00:03:57] Unknown:
Alrighty. Hey, folks. This is Joe Roos, and it is great to be with you once again transmitting live from the asylum studios, from the pimple on the backside of Texas, the beautiful city of Eagle Pass, and doing the very best we can to bring you the best quality talk radio we can muster without all the bluster. Welcome to the Joe Ryu Show. And folks, believe it or not, it's Wednesday. It's hump day. If you wanna call it hump day, it's hump day. I can't believe we made it to Wednesday. The kind of week that I've been having, oh, good night, man. Wow.
But we're here. It's Wednesday, and we have a great show lined up for you. Tonight, we have our guest is here waiting in the, in the wings, Sean Blackwell, and we're gonna have a great conversation with Sean here in just a little bit. We're gonna have to get through some of the usual housekeeping stuff that we normally do, and, once we get through all of that, we'll bring in Sean. But folks, I hope you guys have been having a good week so far. I hope you, share my enthusiasm that it's Wednesday, that the week is just about over. Still got a couple more days to go. Couple more days.
Now just, some programming notes just to remind you guys, this coming Friday, we are not having our regular Friday show. That is because we are doing a special Saturday show. We wanted to try to accommodate a guest that, we've been trying to get on the show for a little bit now, and we finally were able to work it out to get him on. So we're doing it on Saturday morning. So make sure you check us out at 11:00 Saturday morning central time, and, looking forward to that conversation. It's gonna be a lot of fun. And, so I hope it's not too much of an inconvenience for anybody, but, yeah, I think it's worth it. I think it's, I think it was worth the, the the schedule. So we'll, we'll get through that, somehow, someway. Right? We like doing Saturday shows though. Saturday shows are fun. We enjoy them. And I hope I sound better. You know, I still got the cough. I'm still dealing with that. You know, pneumonia is not the easiest thing to to deal with, you know, when you when you're still working.
A full time job and, and trying to get shows in and all that great stuff. And of course, you know, my stubborn Sicilian New York pig head, you know, waited until the very last moment to go to the doctor to find out just how sick I really was. But we're here. Right? Alright. Alright, folks. Just wanna tell you a little bit about some of our sponsors here before we get into the rest of the show. So podhome.fm. Pod home is our host platform. Now I I I gave you a whole big spiel on Pod home on on Monday night show, so I'm not gonna go into all of that again. But, I've been with Pod Home now for, oh, just about three years. And, Pod Home is a great platform to be a part of. It is the most modern and easy to use podcast hosting platform you're gonna find today. So if you are a podcaster and you're looking for a new home, check out Pod Home. If you are looking to start a podcast, don't go anywhere else. Go to Pod Home, podhome.fm.
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Alright. Alright. Now, folks, tonight's guest is somebody who is redefining how we understand mental health and spiritual transformation. Sean Blackwell is the author of Bipolar Awakenings, The Quest to Heal Bipolar Disorder, a groundbreaking exploration of the connection between bipolar disorder and spiritual emergence. For over a decade, Sean has been sharing his journey in helping others navigate the intersection of psychology and awakening through his YouTube channel and international retreats. Now if you've ever questioned, the conventional narrative around mental illness, this conversation is gonna challenge, inspire, and expand your perspective.
Sean, welcome to the show, man. Love love having you here. This is great. Oh, hi, Joe. Very very happy to be here. Thanks for your help. The echo. I know that's there. I forgot to do it. You see? Alright. There we go. Alright. So, Sean, you're in Brazil. Right?
[00:12:03] Unknown:
That's right. I'm in, just outside of Santos, Brazil, the home of Pele and Neymar, actually.
[00:12:09] Unknown:
Oh, nice. Nice. Guys. You see folks, we we we we track down guests from all over the world to to just spark your curiosities. Isn't that great? That's that's that's that's that's what that's what this show is all about. Trying to get the best quality guest we could possibly get, and here you are coming to us from Brazil. Now, I I do have some opening questions that I like to ask, and, we ask we ask questions like this of all of our guests when they first come on the show. And, we're we're we're rotating in some new questions, So if you listen to any of the other shows, you're not gonna get the same questions that you got on the other shows. Now Okay. Nice. Question number one is, sir, if you if your life had a soundtrack, what's one song that would definitely be on it?
[00:12:54] Unknown:
Oh, definitely Ain't No Joke by Eric Bienra Kim. Oh, okay. I know what that is actually. Be it.
[00:13:02] Unknown:
Alright. You're a New Yorker. Yes, sir. You know where that's coming from? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. That's awesome, man. I like that. I like that. I'm I'm I'm more of a jazz, like, the old standards kind of guy. I love that stuff. As a matter of fact, it's usually what I have playing the most in the house when I when I get home from work. I tell my I tell my little personal assistant here, Alexa, I say I tell you oh, she just activated. Let me not say it. She'll start playing music. I just tell I just tell her that I'm home, and she starts playing some really nice nice music. I love it. It's it's great.
[00:13:36] Unknown:
I've I've mellowed it out a lot too, but when I go to a conference, it's for Kim that's in the back of my mind. Nice.
[00:13:43] Unknown:
I'm actually gonna have to find a track for that, and and and just kinda refresh myself. It's been a while since I've heard, so. So what's one thing that still surprises you about the work you do today?
[00:13:58] Unknown:
Everything surprises me. It seems like every day I'm learning something new, and learning something new about myself. You know? You think I think my own healing is done? No. There's more to go. Yeah. You know? And and yeah. Just constant surprises.
[00:14:15] Unknown:
Now now you've spent years exploring what you call the spiritual dimension of bipolar disorder. What what first led you to question the mainstream psychiatric model?
[00:14:27] Unknown:
Okay. Well, at the time, I wasn't really questioning anything. Okay. By the way, I'm still getting the echo.
[00:14:34] Unknown:
You should that Let me see. Unmuted. Oh, everything's off on my end.
[00:14:40] Unknown:
Okay. The okay. Well, I guess that's the way it's gonna go. Let me check yours here. It's okay? How's that? Still this but we we can work.
[00:14:56] Unknown:
You're still getting echo?
[00:14:59] Unknown:
Yeah. But oh, that was a little better. Oh, I think I'm just oh, I know what I can do. Just write down, and that should
[00:15:12] Unknown:
See, folks, this this is this is this is a live show. This is what these are the things that you work out. You work out the technical difficulties during the course of the show. That's that's fine. That's what we do. Apologies. No. No. No. I'm yeah. I'm sure I'm gonna be able to get through, though. My my my audience knows this one thing about our show. There there is never a show that goes by where there's not some kind of a hiccup somewhere along the way. So Okay. Okay. Good to know. Good to know.
[00:15:36] Unknown:
So first, it's important to know that up until 1996, I never thought about psychiatry. Didn't cross my mind. You know? But I was in a, self help seminar and called the Landmark Forum. I don't know if you've heard of that. I did. It's kind of a very intensive weekend thing. Mhmm. Right. And they had us, repeat it's really loud. I'm I'm I'm just I'm sorry. I'm just hearing myself. And if I take them off, I can't hear you. Okay.
[00:16:11] Unknown:
I don't know what to do with that one, to be quite honest with you. Really? Because I have the echo cancellation off on everything. Okay. On, I mean, I should say.
[00:16:22] Unknown:
Okay. Then when I tell my tell my story, I'm gonna take my mics out. K. I can't hear you, but I'm gonna tell my story and then come back in. Okay. So this is what happened. I'm on this very intensive self help seminar. And, the second day of the seminar, they have us do a meditation on our our fear. And I didn't think I felt any fear. I thought I was a fairly, I don't know, courageous guy. I'm 30 years old. This is 1996 we're talking about. And then, during this meditation, which only lasted five minutes, I I see this this depth gauge in my, in my left hand, which was from a scuba diving accident that I had two months earlier. And then looking at that depth gauge, I I had lost my weight belt 30 feet, sorry, 30 meters below sea level. Okay? So 90 feet below sea level.
And what happened was I went shooting to the surface. And as I was shooting to the surface, I just looking at this depth gauge and everything just you know? I I made it to the surface and I was fine. But in the landmark forum, all the fear of that moment came up, and I started crying, and it was very, my whole body was shaking, and I felt fear like I'd never felt before. Okay? But then when it was all finished and I left the seminar that night, I could see all my senses sharpened. I could see detail and curtains that I couldn't see before. Sense of smell was sharper. I also had a sense of knowing things that I'd never known before where before, it was just like I was missing something. You know, something was always missing then. It was like I knew these things.
And when I went home, I was extremely emotional. I started to open up to my family about family issues and this kind of thing. And, it was just I was just really raw and vulnerable, and that continued for about five days. But the fifth day was the end of this seminar. And in the seminar, I started to think to myself, well, this is this is must must be how you feel when you're dead because I felt so good. I felt so at peace with everything. And then I thought to myself, that's what happened. I died during the scuba diving accident. That's what was going on.
And from that that point on, I really, started to act I just was convinced that I was sort of dreaming in a kind of a purgatory in a way. The the course was happening in a ballroom at a hotel, and I went to a corresponding room and went to meet god. Took all my clothes off, and and just started to try pushing against walls to see where I could go, you know, to see if I could get into heaven or nirvana or some other dimension. And, I was in there for a good half an hour, and then, eventually, the police showed up, arrested me, putting me in a stretcher, and then half of this chorus watched me leave the course in an ambulance. You know?
Great job. I got the break crew I was always looking for. You know? Yeah.
[00:19:35] Unknown:
That's wild. Then
[00:19:36] Unknown:
yeah. It's it's a trip. You know? But I I knew it was good for me from the beginning. And even at the hospital, I thought this was some part part of the journey, but then they gave me a forcible injection. I slept for about forty eight hours. And when I woke up, I was still in the hospital, and I thought, well, this isn't heaven, so I don't know where I'm supposed to be right now. I'm a little confused. Mhmm. And, I just told them what I thought they needed to hear, and and rationally, I thought maybe, well, I'd had some sort of PTSD reaction to my scuba diving accident, and can I please go home?
And they let me go home. When I got home, I still felt much better even though I was vulnerable. And, my you know, I just stayed quiet. But then after about five months, I went back to working in advertising, and my career got much better. My salary tripled over the next three years, and, you know, things really went in the right direction. Now a year after this hospitalization, I discovered the work of a guy named doctor Stanislav Groff. He's a Czech psychiatrist. And he had coined a term called spiritual emergency. In his book, The Stormy Search for the Self, he talked about how a spiritual emergency was, something that could look like an acute psychosis that would be associated with schizophrenia, but would actually be something very beneficial if the person could work through it. And I had all the criteria for spiritual emergency.
So there, I showed my parents the book. I was like, look. This is what happened to me. You know? And they would say, well, do you wanna see a psychiatrist or a psychologist? And I said, why would I go see somebody who didn't understand what I went through? You know? And so to get back to your original question, when did you start questioning psychiatry? I guess I started questioning them the second I got into the hospital psychiatric emergency. Okay.
[00:21:37] Unknown:
Well, that would make sense. Excuse me. How's the echo now? I I because I tweaked something else. You fixed it. Okay. Good job. Thank you, sir. Good job. See, I was listening to you, but I was also trying to do tech support.
[00:21:48] Unknown:
I bet. I bet.
[00:21:51] Unknown:
Alright. So, now now that that's a great and that's a great story too. I mean, and I can understand where you're coming from as far as questioning, you know, the, you know, the mainstream psychiatric models of things. Why why do you when it comes to bipolar disorder, why do you reject the idea that, bipolar disorder is incurable? It's a lifelong illness.
[00:22:15] Unknown:
Alright. Well, I was living my own life. You know? I I I went, I actually but I did leave advertising because it really didn't feel right for me, and I met a one woman from Brazil. We met in Peru. We had the same birthday. One thing leads to another. We get married, move to Brazil. And I was sort of in a happily ever after kind of situation. I was an English teacher down here, which I really enjoyed doing that. English is a second language for executives. Nice. It was a good job. But then her youngest niece had an experience. We got a phone call one night, and she had some sort of weird thing happening with her. When they told us the symptoms, I was like, well, that doesn't sound like a mental illness. That sounds like what happened to me. Because even at this point, now two thousand and seven, ten years after what happened to me, I thought what happened to me was completely different than a mental mental illness of any kind. Okay? Like, totally different. Night and day.
So we went up there to help, Anna. I call her my first book. My first book's Am I Bipolar or Waking Up? And I tell the story of my my own story and then us working with Anna. And, she recovered. Even though she was medicated, she bounced back quite quickly. Her psychiatrist and psychologist had said they'd never seen someone kinda recover so quickly. Mhmm. But, but they still medicated her for what looks like it was gonna be months. And so I was like, well, what's the difference between what happened to her and what happened to me? And I made some videos on YouTube by asking people the question, telling them my story, and then saying, if you've got bipolar disorder, what's the difference between what happened to you and happened to me? And then that was the first time I learned that it wasn't this one in twenty thousand situation like I thought. I thought mine was like a one in twenty thousand experience, but bipolar disorder hits about five percent of the population. So all of a sudden, one in twenty thousand went to one in twenty.
Right? Mhmm. And then I developed a sense of mission to really get to the bottom of this, and I discovered that there were some pioneering psychiatrists and psychologists in their early seventies who saw the acute psychosis associated with schizophrenia or bipolar one, basically the same thing, as an intended reorganization of the psyche. They saw it as a healing process that we were blocking. And there were clinics back then where if you were in your first break of psychosis, you could go there and they would support you in an empathetic way, but without medications. And they were reporting an eighty five percent recovery rate.
So once I read that, I I thought, well, let me go back to my, family and say, look. Let's take her off the meds and see if we can support her through this kind of thing. And just as I was ready to go back to the family, her sister who just came back from Europe, Eliana, she went into psychosis. So two sisters having their first episodes of acute psychosis four months apart. It was unbelievable. And knowing what happened to her younger sister, Eliana, came to us directly. We didn't tell her parents what had happened. We didn't tell her we had her, and we just supported her. And, we were able to support her first episode, get her back to her parents. She had a second episode, but then we agreed that for the third episode, as a family, we would support her, and we were able to get her through. Mhmm. And she went back to university medication free, finished with honors, went on to have a great job, went on to do her master's degree in Paris. You know? So and and was really seven years without incident and no medications.
Then things started to act up, but that was enough for us to know that we were on the right track. We had taken her right through psychosis without medication, and she was able to go and finish university and go on to quite a successful life.
[00:26:05] Unknown:
Wow. That's that's some that's amazing. The you know, one one of the things that that intrigues me about it is, you know, my my son was was diagnosed at a young age as, bipolar. And, but I'll be very I'll be very frank and honest about it. If if I if they didn't tell me that, I never would have suspected it in a million years. I don't think How old was he when they diagnosed him? He's 26 now, so it was he had to be I think he was 17.
[00:26:38] Unknown:
Okay. 17 or 18. Young, but young, but Anna was diagnosed around 17.
[00:26:43] Unknown:
Okay. Yeah. Alright. So but but, like, I never I never saw anything in him that would lead me to think that he he was he had a bipolar disorder. And, you know, and I think it ties into a lot of, spirituality things as well. And that's why I agree with you on on on your position on these because I I did notice that when he started he started coming to church more regularly, and I know, you know, coming to church is not exactly, you know, what everybody does in these things, but but he started going to church more regularly. And I noticed that that in in engaging the spiritual side of his life, he started to to to respond better, to, counseling, to treatments.
He's not even taking any medications anymore for the bipolar disorder. Oh, really? No meds at all? Nothing. Nothing at all. Oh, great. And and he's doing fantastic with that. And, and that's why, like, you've you've said that that that, instead of being biological, you've said that that, you know, the the cause of bipolar disorder rooted in in in this it could be rooted in the spiritual dimension, and I agree with you. And and and my and watching my son develop through that is is, to me, a a case in point of it. Now where why why do you say that though?
What was the experience that you had that that leads you to say that?
[00:28:08] Unknown:
Alright. Well, there's a few things. And the first is that my own experience, I had learned about Stan Groff, doctor Stan Groff, who coined this term spiritual emergency. You know, I thought, you know, I had this inherently spiritual experience. I thought I had died and I was going to make meet God, you know, or or some sort of spiritual dimension. You know? So that that was the beginning of it. But then into my studies, I learned that when people go into the so called acute psychosis that tends to get labeled as bipolar one these days, but used to be labeled as schizophrenia. Okay? That tends to come down to 13 basic delusions.
Okay. And so I have a form I ask people to fill out, but some of those I can't remember them all right now, but some of them are, you think you're Jesus or a messiah, and that you're either dead, dying, or being reborn. You're here to save the world. You're in a battle of good and evil. You could be encountering angels or devils. That's, you know, most people you meet who've been in acute psychosis are gonna identify with some of those. I would call those the top five or top six spiritual delusions, and there's a there's a few more. And I went on to YouTube, and I made videos, slideshow videos about that subject because I wanted to show people that I knew their experience in acute psychosis or their bipolar experience.
And if I could show them their experience, then they would know that they're not crazy because psychiatry treats you that your brain is broken. Right. But it's not taking us into mush. It's taking us into the same set of, archetypes, you might say, maybe Jungian archetypes or symbolic meaning, taking us into the same symbolic range. You know? And and then it can be, flipped as well. It can go paranoid, which really doesn't look like spirituality unless you think of devils or demons chasing you and that kind of thing. That then it's part of it. But that for me was inherently spiritual, and and Stan Groff's work was in transpersonal psychology, which acknowledges a soul in everybody.
Alright? And so from his perspective, he saw the basic roots of the disorder as being in trauma, but that trauma is lodged in our you could call it a soul system, bioenergetic system. Something is going on there, maybe similar to the to the Indian idea of the chakras. We don't have medical evidence for this. I mean, it can't be scientifically proven. But when you talk to enough people you know, for example, from my experience, when when I had my big experience in the in the forum landmark forum, I just felt this huge punch in my chest. You know? It's just huge. It's like an explosion. You know? So that would be the sort of energetic opening that could lead to healing, but that could also get you in the psychiatric hospital.
[00:31:04] Unknown:
And now now I'm glad you mentioned the chakra. I was act I have a question for you on that, actually.
[00:31:09] Unknown:
Mhmm.
[00:31:11] Unknown:
Can you can you tell us more about the about the chakra system, the Kundalini, because because you do mention that, because your work does really look at, the the somatic relationship between the extreme psychological states, that that most you know, they you normally would label psychosis or or mania. And the body's, what's the word? Bioener architecture. And then, you know, so and that ties into the Kundalini and and chakra system. So so can you explain what exactly that is?
[00:31:52] Unknown:
Okay. I'll try. Try. It's like well, and these words, they are rooted in Eastern spirituality. They come from India. And Kundalini has to do with really your life force, and they see it. And and this comes from the mystic yogis over there who would go into caves and meditate for, I don't know, twenty years or something. And they would report feeling energies moving through themselves. Okay? And often feeling like hot or cold energy. So the the Kundalini energies generally are thought to be, like, rooted in the spine, like the bottom of the spine going up the spine, but they really go out from there to animate our entire bodies, you might say. Okay? And then there what I see that the energy is doing is moving through the chakra system. So, like, in a lot of new age circles, you might have healers that would say things like, oh, your fifth chakra is blocked. Let me open that chakra for you or the fourth chakra is blocked. This kind of thing. From a like I said, from a scientific perspective, we really don't have any proof of what's going on there. But in working with clients, I've seen that most of the powerful energetic activity tends to be happening along the center of the body length, like along the spine.
[00:33:04] Unknown:
Okay. Now now you develop something called surrogate breath work. Can you, how does how does how does which basically you're taking on the client's trauma. How do you how does channeling someone else's pain help them heal?
[00:33:16] Unknown:
Alright. Well, I I better take a step back and explain holotropic breath work first. Okay. Because that's where I started with my clients. And after, a lot of struggle, between 2007 and 2013, I created a private healing retreat for people with bipolar disorder because I found that working with people, I was always getting people with a four year history, a five year history, and it wasn't so easy to support them through something just like my niece. Okay? Right. And so what holotropic breath work, it's a technique from Stan Groff, and it's just simply, very aggressive breathing, but in your own style, but it's done in a very safe setting with a trained facilitator.
Alright? And powerful music is playing while this is going on. Typically, when that's all set up, when the person starts to breathe aggressively like that, they're laying on a yoga mat, they're in sweatpants, and they start to, you know, they start to aggressively breathe. They will slip into a nonordinary state. Usually, when people have bipolar disorder, they're gone within about five minutes. For a normal person or a beginner, it could take about twenty minutes. And then what the breathing is doing is the breathing is a little bit like if you're a surfer and you're swimming out to meet the waves of the unconscious.
Once the waves start to surface from this overbreathing, then you don't need to worry about the breathing. You just express whatever's going on. Like, so this is the unconscious material of trauma being made conscious. Alright? And then once it's conscious, you physically move and vocalize and just get out whatever needs to be gotten out on this breath work mat. Alright? Okay. Yeah. The trick, though, is that the actual healing agent isn't the breath. Some people think it is. It's not. It's a divine intelligence. It could be aliens, but I'm pretty sure it's God in some capacity. Okay?
And, and you know that because if you breathe every day, after about ten days, the whole process will stop. You you won't continue anymore. The it's almost like you've had enough. You can't go any further if you breathe, like, one session a day for ten days. And that's what my retreats were doing. And I I kept the the retreats at ten days because people couldn't go any further. Nothing was happening, and so we reached the logical conclusion even if there's more healing to take place. Right? Okay. So on on retreats, I called it bipolar breath work because holotropic breath work is a standard three hour session in a group.
And I needed more flexibility, and it was a trademark thing, so I called what I do bipolar breath work. But I'm a certified holotropic breath work facilitator.
[00:36:01] Unknown:
Alright? Okay.
[00:36:02] Unknown:
Now should I just go into the surrogate thing? Yeah. Please go ahead. Alright. So I I started doing breath work with clients in 2013. I went out and did a bunch of clients in Europe in 2014, and that started a five year, trip. Every fall, I was going back to Europe to work with five or six clients. But one thing that was happening was I was getting just completely exhausted by, like, day four, day five, and I'd be having nightmares related to the client's material. So if they were full of fear, I'd have a dream, like, my wife and I are being chased by a lion who drags my wife down a hotel corridor, you know, like, terrifying terrifying stuff.
And, eventually, we we figured out that what was going on was this this inner healer that Stan Groff would call it, this inner healer, this intelligence that you're supposed to follow and and work out was actually a healing field. And the healing field was sending energy to me and other empathetic supporters that were in the room. Alright? And so we realized that, oh, we should be doing breath work too. So after six years of experimentation, how things eventually ended up was every morning, my client would do their bipolar breath work stuff and and do that for, say, between thirty minutes and an hour and a half. And then when they were done, we'd take a break, and then I would breathe on the client's behalf.
And we call that surrogate breathing. And it certainly looked like, especially if I had a trained facilitator to help me, that I was definitely going through material that was much more difficult than the client was prepared to face. You know? Really, really hard stuff. You know? And so that really made the work super woo woo too and and actually was something that my trainers didn't even wanna hear about. They didn't wanna hear about that at all. You know? But why wouldn't they? I mean, if it if it if it's working, why would they not wanna Because there was a very strong feeling that you had to focus a person's attention on healing themselves.
They needed to do the work themselves. And if someone came up and said, well, I'm gonna help you heal, that that would be you being the guru, you know, putting yourself sort of above everybody. Okay. That was the gruff culture. But from my perspective, it was more like, no. No. The healing field wants me to do this on behalf of the client, and I just work through the material like it's my own material, and there's no ego to it at all. Because if there is any sense of, like, I'm the guru kind of thing, it won't work. It won't work. If I get a big head about things, you know, you have to bring humility to the work.
[00:38:47] Unknown:
Now you mentioned that you mentioned that in 2013, you started you started the, the, the private retreat. And, which I think is I I you know, I've never been to a retreat. I've always been curious about, you know, checking these things out and and seeing what it's all about. I have a I have a coworker of mine who goes to a retreat on a regular basis. I think it's, like, twice a year or or something like that. And, just raves about it, the the experience and all that stuff, and I'm curious about these things. Now what what led you to actually decide to, well, you know, this is something that I need to do. I wanna start this retreat. So what what was the motivating factor for you doing it?
[00:39:27] Unknown:
Well, there was about five years where my wife and I tried to establish a relationship with a psychiatric hospital here in Brazil. We we we tried various ways, and we were but we always were trying to create some sort of registered clinic. And whenever we looked at that, it was like, well, we were gonna need a psychiatrist. We're gonna need a nurse. We're gonna need insurance. You know, all this top heavy kind of thing. And in terms of status, I was gonna be right at the bottom of the totem pole. You know? I my wife is a psychologist. I've got no degree in this territory other than being a certified breath work facilitator. But considering all of this was coming from me, I just it just didn't feel like a good fit for me to be answering to people who I would at at best need to be teaching about what what we were doing, like the whole mission of everything.
So that didn't make sense. I also knew that there was a threat of being shut down. If I had one mistake, something for example, if somebody goes to a psychiatrist and then later they kill themselves, but the psychiatrist has followed protocol, which means giving the medications, then you can't sue the psychiatrist because he's following the protocol. Okay? But me being an outsider, if I was doing something and somebody, killed themselves, then definitely I was gonna be liable. You know? So there's, like, a double standard when you're trying to do something new and and different. You know? And so I needed something that was unshutdownable, and I decided that really all I needed was my clients to provide me with a, very safe room where we could do the work where they're free of objects.
And they they could bring a voluntary supporter So they'd have someone from their friends or family who could see that their loved one is safe working with this crazy guy on the Internet. You know? I see. I gotcha. You know? So, that became the original formula. And then later, I do have some other Graf facilitators that I know here in Brazil. We have an amazing place just about three hours from where I live. And for clients that have the means, I can take people up there, and we could do a real five star experience for people. And we've done that as well. Outstanding. Now for people who are listening that that might be,
[00:41:50] Unknown:
you know, newly diagnosed, with bipolar disorder or maybe they have a loved one, who is who'd been diagnosed with that. What's one piece of advice or perspective that that that you'd want them to hear first?
[00:42:02] Unknown:
Stay on your medication.
[00:42:04] Unknown:
Okay.
[00:42:05] Unknown:
I'll be your first thing. When people call me, because there's the spiritual side, they can often think, well, if I'm if I'm having a spiritual experience, then I don't need medication. But if it's a mental illness, then I do need medication. So which is it? One or the other. And that's why, you know, I changed the name of my website some years ago to bipolar awakenings to embrace that paradox that you're having a spiritual experience that's very difficult to integrate. So stay on your meds, stay grounded, and then if we can work through it, you might be able to go off your meds in the future. There's my website there. Yeah. That's right. Those those are my two book covers that I put a little AI to. I thought it came out pretty well. Yeah. Actually, I I I didn't realize when I was when I pulled it up,
[00:42:51] Unknown:
I didn't realize they were actually moving. And out of the corner of my eye, I saw the eye moving. It kinda Right. Freaked me out for a second.
[00:43:00] Unknown:
Yeah. So, Am I Bipolar or Waking Up is my story. I wrote that in 2,011. And then bipolar awakenings, the quest to heal bipolar disorder, I wrote that last year.
[00:43:11] Unknown:
Okay. Yeah. So I was looking through your website. I did sign up for your newsletter, by the way. Okay. Great. And this is great. You got a lot of really good information up here. I went through the services, the training. I went through a lot of the stuff that you have up here. We're not gonna we're not gonna dissect your your website on the show. But, but but, folks, you need to go over and check this out. It's bipolarawakenings.com. A lot of really good information. And if I'm not if I'm not mistaken, it looks like you're giving away, a free copy of the, of the ebook version of your books.
[00:43:44] Unknown:
Yeah. I've decided to just give them away as free PDFs, and you know how it is when you're selling books, you don't really make much money anyway. So I I want the word to get out as much as possible. And so they're available as free PDFs or as on Amazon.
[00:43:59] Unknown:
And what what is the free training program?
[00:44:03] Unknown:
This is another step. And what I've like, my whole thing, since 2013 has been trying to make the work more efficient, cheaper, but also safe. You know? Really important that it's safe work. And so I've taken, some of the most essential YouTube videos I've made over the years, gave it given them a face lift, and then use those as the basis for a training program so that if somebody out there thinks that they have someone close to them first, if they if they identify with my work and they see that they've got, like, a spiritual orientation to their disorder, and they have someone who's empathetic, who they feel like would be a good supporter and would go on this journey with them. Mhmm. And I'm open to do basically, online coaching for someone who wants to create their own private retreat. So I could meet you and your your partner, your supporter every day online.
We could talk about what we're gonna do, and then I could set you up for taking I could set your supporter up for taking you into a nonordinary state experience with the bipolar breath work approach, and we can go from there. You know? Oh, that's outstanding. That's a that's a that's a lot. The next step for me.
[00:45:23] Unknown:
That's, I mean, that's, you know, it's this is not something that, is there a there's there's and there's this is totally free that you're you're you're doing this. I mean, I'm sure that people can go and find other things similar to this. They're gonna cost them a fortune. And, and and and the fact that Well, actually,
[00:45:42] Unknown:
you're not gonna find anything similar to my work out there. Alright. Well, look at that. Original.
[00:45:49] Unknown:
Alright. Sorry. Okay. Happening. I
[00:45:51] Unknown:
yeah. Alright. But it, the I did they of course, people will need to pay for my services in online coaching. Right. But that training program gives people really all they need to know to get down to work and to even put themselves in the position of maybe able being able to help others in the future as the being the facilitator themselves. I've had a few clients in Europe who are now working as therapists, and they're being recommended by the director of a psychiatric university in The Netherlands. You know? So this was like a dream come true for me to see my clients with bipolar disorder becoming therapists and being endorsed by psychiatry.
[00:46:33] Unknown:
This was, like, the big the big thing for me. Yeah. That's huge. That's great. Now now, of course, you said you know, the first thing you said when when I asked you about, you know, people being diagnosed, newly diagnosed, or loved ones, stay on the medication. Right? Stay on your medication. And a lot of people do rely on medication to manage their bipolar symptoms. Right. Now how do you balance your perspective with the need for medical safety and care?
[00:46:57] Unknown:
Well, I recognize there's basically four pillars to my work. Psychiatry keeps people grounded. And not that I'm a fan of psych meds, and they cause a lot of symptoms, and eighty percent of people try and go off of them once they've been given them by a doctor. So I'm not saying that these are, wonderful things to take. I mean, they're not. But they keep you out of the hospital. They keep you grounded. They keep you for showing up to my retreats as well. So that was one of the reasons I lost a few clients who went off their med that didn't make it to the retreats. Okay. So that was one thing. That's one so that's one fundamental thing. And it also helps, the family because the family of the person who wants to work with me doesn't feel as threatened. I'm not challenging the doctors. You know? There's no there's no challenge there. So that's recognized.
The importance of transpersonal psychology and the roots go right back to Sigmund Freud to create that intellectual framework, the theory, that's important. Peer support, There's a big peer support movement. I went to a peer support conference in Austin, Texas, in 2013. And what peer support is really about is recognizing that I'm not so different from the client I've got. I was in the psychiatric hospital too. So trying to think keep things as nonhierarchical as possible instead of being like, oh, I'm the perfect therapist, and you're the broken patient. It's like, no, man. We're all on our healing journey here together. I've just gone a little bit further than you. So there's that the peer support is very important.
And then finally, there's this spiritual dimension that's very important. Sometimes I call it the shamanic dimension, but I don't want people to conf get confused. We're not doing tribal shamanism or anything like that, but it's this direct connection with spirit that's coming through the person when they're in a safe setting. You know? So psychiatry, psychology, peer support, and spirituality are all fundamental parts of the work we do. Alright.
[00:49:01] Unknown:
Where where do you see your work five years from now?
[00:49:05] Unknown:
I'm really hoping to get something to an institutional level. That's where I really wanna see things go. The last chapter I'll just put it up again. You put it on the website. But the last chapter in my book here, bipolar awakenings, I call it what the, blueprint. I give the blueprint for how I saw my work being seamlessly integrated with standard psychiatric care that happens today. You know? I don't think there's any reason for fighting. I think that people should be able to appreciate the value of psychiatry, but also recognize that things are happening in a different dimension here, and we can get to that dimension now. We know how to do it, and there's a theory behind it that's consistent and works.
And and we know that because, particularly Stan Groff, you know, thousands tens of thousands of people have done hollow trumpet breath work, and they keep coming back with the same types of material. You know? They come back talking about trauma from their adult life, their childhood, and even their birth process. That's a part of trauma too. You know?
[00:50:11] Unknown:
I I And other would have crossed my mind. No. To be honest, I never that never would have crossed my mind.
[00:50:16] Unknown:
Birth trauma is something we all carry to some degree. It influences all our lives. And then you just have these really far out kind of experiences as well when you're in a non owner state, like being associated with animals. Like, in when I've been in holotropic breath work, I've had very strong experiences related to, for example, being a salamander on a beach in Indonesia. And, I I don't take it as a literal thing, but symbolically, it was just bringing out my own sense of humor that I had lost for a little while. It was a period of life where I was taking things too seriously. And then all of a sudden, I saw myself eating bugs on a beach in Indonesia, and it made me laugh my ass off. You know? I I would laugh too.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:51:00] Unknown:
So, so so just some final thoughts here. So what do you hope that the audience is gonna take away from the conversation tonight?
[00:51:09] Unknown:
A spark. I hope they get a spark because a lot of people who've had a debilitating disorder, they have this feeling like they've tried everything. They they've seen it all. They've seen it all. Maybe the big takeaway is if you're out there and you think you've seen it all, you haven't seen the half of it. You haven't seen one inch of what I do when I work with clients and the kind of processes that help heal people. It is the weirdest work I would have ever imagined myself doing. I would imagine it would be. It's just it's super duper weird. It makes no sense. And the the the once in one of my first retreats, the supporter had put all this together, like, the the the retreat and got her friend. Hey. You should read this guy's book and all this stuff. And then at the end of the retreat, we found two empty bottles of vodka under the kitchen sink, And she was just so freaked out by what she saw going on. You know? That's fucked. Yeah.
You had the vodka. For the yeah. For the if you if you don't and even with a group, holotropic breath work group with completely normal people. If you're untrained and you don't know what you're in for and you go in there, you look like you're in crazy town. It just because people are expressing really primal energies, screaming, moving, like a mass exorcism or something like that. You know? Yeah. But then you get to the end of it and people's you see that people are feeling lighter and more relaxed and at ease. Some people might be having some challenging difficulties that they need extra time with, but it all moves in the service of healing. You know? And that's what the bigger picture is all about.
[00:52:48] Unknown:
I would imagine that you you you you if you if you were able to do it, I know you can't because, you know, confidentiality and things and and of that nature, but I'm sure that you could write a book just about all the experiences and things that you've witnessed during the course of these these sessions. It would probably be the probably the trippiest book you'd ever ever read.
[00:53:09] Unknown:
I spoke to most of the clients. I have a lot of client stories in the book. I I talked to and most of the clients know that they're in there. Other ones, I well, I've changed the names for everybody. Oh, yeah. Of course. But, yeah, I've shared a a fair amount of client stories there from my own experience in that. And the vast majority of it, I let them know in advance, what do you think, and they were good for it. Because people know that it's about moving the work forward. You know? So but where I couldn't get access, I changed names and locations, but I did let people know certain stories because it was part of my learning and development too. You know? What what's what's one of the craziest
[00:53:46] Unknown:
experiences you've had that you could share with us?
[00:53:50] Unknown:
I'll tell the story about my wife. I think that would be maybe one of the first ones because we had this we were we were volunteering early on and, just we would go out to work with people who wanted to work with us. You know? And sometimes they were in psychosis, and sometimes they were almost there. So we go to work with this couple, and my wife was really feeling down about the work at this point. And the idea was that I was gonna go out and help this woman work on her depression. This was the idea. I'm running the show. We're gonna work on the woman. We knew her boyfriend had deeper issues, but we we felt we weren't ready yet. We want we just wanted to introduce him to our work. Okay?
So I start a simple meditation, five minute meditation. And within five minutes, he's up and running to the bathroom to throw up. He comes back and he sits down. Another five minutes of meditation. This time, he runs into a bedroom and he shuts the door. I go in after him, and I get down into a lotus position. And I said, Claude, come back. Come back. Come back. And he did. He he came out of a, like, a mini kind of psychosis until and then when we we sat down for dinner and he told me he thought I was Jesus in that moment, and I felt kinda good about that. You know? Like, oh, I'm in good company. Right? Yeah. Yeah. The next day, we're working with his wife, and he just slips into his girlfriend. He just slips into another state. Right?
This time he goes into one bedroom. I go to get him just like the last time. Then he goes into the other bedroom and he locks the door. My wife goes, I've got this. My my wife just she just says I've got this. She starts scratching at the door. Finally, he unlocks the door. She looks around. He she can't find him anywhere. She looks at the window. There's cat netting on the window. He couldn't have gotten out. Then she realizes he's in the closet. She opens the door and gets in the closet with him, and he says, who are you? And she says, I'm your angel.
And then he starts to explain that the nuns were punishing him, and it wasn't right. It wasn't him that did what the nun said. It was this other boy that did what the what the nun said they were gonna do. When he was a child, nuns used to punish him. He he was sent to an orphanage by his mother because she couldn't feed him. And the nuns would punish him by putting him in a closet and forcing him to stay there all day long. Oh my god. Yeah. And so he had gone into a spontaneous regression into, like, six years old in the closet. And there's my wife in the closet with him, and they were in there for about an hour, I think. And then they came out, and he laid down on the bed, and my wife hugged him. And I came in to check on him to see if everything's okay. And then he's just like, who's that man? Who's that man at the door? And he goes and he slams the door. And I was just the bad man. I don't know. I was I was just this bad guy. And then about an hour later, they came out, and he was good.
We went over dinner that night. Wow. The four of us.
[00:57:01] Unknown:
Well, that that that So that's about as wild as it gets. That that's that's an experience I don't think anybody would ever forget.
[00:57:06] Unknown:
And he is a psychologist now. He works in the slums of Brazil as a psychologist.
[00:57:12] Unknown:
Wow. That's amazing. That is absolutely amazing. Last questions. Who is somebody that you respect, and what are they doing that inspires you?
[00:57:26] Unknown:
Wow. Who do I respect, and who and what does it do about that inspires me? Well, I think the people that I respect the most are the people that I've built my work off of, doctor Stan Groff, Ken Wilbur as well. He's a a visionary on the evolution of consciousness. Okay. And what what's amazing about these guys is that if you know their life story, they were Mavericks, man. They went the wrong way. You know? Kent, just to give you a little background on Ken Wilbur, he's a guy who was in Duke Medical School and quit because it was boring.
Okay? Enrolled in biology at the University of Nebraska so he would not have to study and started washing dishes at a chicken restaurant to give himself time to study what he really wanted to study, which was, spiritual texts and psychology from all over the world. At the age of 23, he at the age of 23, this guy wrote a book on the evolution of consciousness, and it became a groundbreaking bestseller and changed the future of transpersonal psychology at 23 years old. Wow. He had read 4,000 books by that time. You know? 4,000 books. Going your yeah. So talk about going your own way. I mean, he was reading four books a day. He's a he's a genius. You know? That's amazing. But really going your own way. And Groff is a is a real maverick too. His his cartography of the psyche is something that mainstream psychologists
[00:58:58] Unknown:
haven't reached haven't touched on yet. I'm gonna have to look him up and and and and do a little character study on him. It's because Oh, he's fascinating. Because just just what you're telling me alone, I'm fascinated. I I would love to to know a little bit more about him and the things that he does and his work. That's that's great. He's a wild one. You see, that's why we ask that question. You know? Because I'm I'm always looking to learn something new. And, you know, and and the story like you just said, like you just mentioned, to me, that's fascinating, and I would love to learn more about it. So I'm I'm gonna check him out. Absolutely.
[00:59:27] Unknown:
Okay. Yeah. There's nobody like Stan Groff. You know? Ken and he's easy to read too. Ken Wilber can be a little bit difficult to read, but Groff, his work is, you know, it's one of a kind. There's never any been anyone like him. Outstanding.
[00:59:40] Unknown:
Alright. So, so, Sean, where can, where can the audience go to learn more about you and your work other than the website, which we're gonna put right back up here again?
[00:59:49] Unknown:
Oh, I think they could just stick with the website. I think that's a good place to stay. No socials I wanna go? You could go to you you could go to YouTube, Bipolar Awakenings on YouTube. There's a link on the website. That's that's another place that's pretty good. I've got a Facebook page, but I I guess I needed I don't really like social media. So Oh, join the club. Yeah. Join the club.
[01:00:11] Unknown:
I I I am so I am terrible with social media. I I I truly am. I plug it. I I
[01:00:17] Unknown:
yeah. I plug it, but I'm terrible with it. Okay. I I'm doing I'm trying to do a little more on Instagram, but I don't know. I feel like I'm dragging myself there to do it. But I I'm if anyone's on Instagram, you could probably follow me bipolar awakenings on Instagram as well. Alright. Outstanding. It's a work in progress. Alright.
[01:00:35] Unknown:
Sean Blackwell, thank you. Man, this was this was fantastic. I really do appreciate you taking the time, especially given the the late hour it is over there in Brazil for you. So thank you so much, man. I really do appreciate this. This was fantastic. You know, I've learned a few things tonight, and, I'm gonna be definitely doing my research on, doctor Groff. I'm fascinated by what you told me about him, so I'm gonna check him out a little bit more. Yeah. Thank you, Joe. I've really enjoyed it. Alright. Outstanding. Folks, Sean Blackwell, make sure you check out his website at, bipolarawakenings.com, bipolarawakenings.com.
Really good information on there. You can get the books for free, as a PDF, so check it out. Check it out. I've I've downloaded both of them already. I'm gonna be reading them within the next couple of days. Awesome. Terrific. Terrific. So make sure you check them out. These thing this is the reason why we bring guests like this on the show, folks, is that we wanna we wanna open up everybody's opportunity to learn something. So, so I hope you did tonight. Again, Sean, thank you so much. You have a great night, sir.
[01:01:31] Unknown:
Alright. Thank you very much. Alright.
[01:01:34] Unknown:
Alright, folks. Seriously, I I I mean I mean that, you know, in all sincerity. You know, we wanna bring the best quality guest we can to you, and Sean is an example of that. The work that he's doing, with, bipolar awakenings is amazing. When you actually take the time to look at the website and learn about the things he's doing and get the books, start reading them, great stuff. You need to check them out. Alright. Well, with all of that said, just wanna tell you about Pro HVAC r Solutions. Pro HVAC r Solutions leverages over thirty years of expertise to provide premier HVAC sales and repair services, specializing in both residential and commercial installations.
Pro HVAC's team of skilled technicians is dedicated to providing efficient heating, ventilation, and air conditioning solutions for your home or business with a focus on quality workmanship and customer satisfaction. We ensure your comfort all year round. Contact Pro HVAC r Solutions today for reliable HVAC service tailored to your needs. Just visit prohvacrsolutions.com. That's prohvacrsolutions.com. Alright. Well, folks, I hope you I hope you I'm real serious. I hope you enjoyed the show tonight. This was great. I I I I loved it. So don't forget to head over to the website, joeroos.com, and, sign up for our programming announcements email list. It's, it's just I'm not selling you anything on it. I'm just all it is, just information about upcoming shows and, and things that are going on with the show, whether it's an whether it's a guest or if it's a, a time change or a or a date change, whatever it might be, all goes out in those emails. And really, it's the best way for us to keep in touch with you because you heard me say before, I'm terrible with social media. So I'm, you know, the emails are the best way to go.
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Alright. I think that should just about, do it for us. I think we covered everything. So with that said, folks, I wanna say thank you so much for being with us tonight. Don't forget to head over to our website and, leave us a comment, leave us a question, whatever strikes your heart. Alright, folks? Listen, make Texas independent again. Go podcasting, keep a steady stride, keep talking, we'll see you
Transmitting live from the asylum studios deep in the bowels of Southwest Texas, it's the Joe Rouge show. The show where we talk about anything and everything. Where nothing is sacred, sacred, nothing is watered down, and nothing is PC.
[00:03:57] Unknown:
Alrighty. Hey, folks. This is Joe Roos, and it is great to be with you once again transmitting live from the asylum studios, from the pimple on the backside of Texas, the beautiful city of Eagle Pass, and doing the very best we can to bring you the best quality talk radio we can muster without all the bluster. Welcome to the Joe Ryu Show. And folks, believe it or not, it's Wednesday. It's hump day. If you wanna call it hump day, it's hump day. I can't believe we made it to Wednesday. The kind of week that I've been having, oh, good night, man. Wow.
But we're here. It's Wednesday, and we have a great show lined up for you. Tonight, we have our guest is here waiting in the, in the wings, Sean Blackwell, and we're gonna have a great conversation with Sean here in just a little bit. We're gonna have to get through some of the usual housekeeping stuff that we normally do, and, once we get through all of that, we'll bring in Sean. But folks, I hope you guys have been having a good week so far. I hope you, share my enthusiasm that it's Wednesday, that the week is just about over. Still got a couple more days to go. Couple more days.
Now just, some programming notes just to remind you guys, this coming Friday, we are not having our regular Friday show. That is because we are doing a special Saturday show. We wanted to try to accommodate a guest that, we've been trying to get on the show for a little bit now, and we finally were able to work it out to get him on. So we're doing it on Saturday morning. So make sure you check us out at 11:00 Saturday morning central time, and, looking forward to that conversation. It's gonna be a lot of fun. And, so I hope it's not too much of an inconvenience for anybody, but, yeah, I think it's worth it. I think it's, I think it was worth the, the the schedule. So we'll, we'll get through that, somehow, someway. Right? We like doing Saturday shows though. Saturday shows are fun. We enjoy them. And I hope I sound better. You know, I still got the cough. I'm still dealing with that. You know, pneumonia is not the easiest thing to to deal with, you know, when you when you're still working.
A full time job and, and trying to get shows in and all that great stuff. And of course, you know, my stubborn Sicilian New York pig head, you know, waited until the very last moment to go to the doctor to find out just how sick I really was. But we're here. Right? Alright. Alright, folks. Just wanna tell you a little bit about some of our sponsors here before we get into the rest of the show. So podhome.fm. Pod home is our host platform. Now I I I gave you a whole big spiel on Pod home on on Monday night show, so I'm not gonna go into all of that again. But, I've been with Pod Home now for, oh, just about three years. And, Pod Home is a great platform to be a part of. It is the most modern and easy to use podcast hosting platform you're gonna find today. So if you are a podcaster and you're looking for a new home, check out Pod Home. If you are looking to start a podcast, don't go anywhere else. Go to Pod Home, podhome.fm.
Pod Home, you can use Pod Home to publish your episodes. You can an an enhance your audio, automatically generate chapters, titles, transcripts, show notes, more than that every every every day, it seems like Pod Home is adding a new feature to it. And one of the great features that they have too is that, you can actually do chapter art. So if you are that type of a producer of a podcast and you really wanna be that detailed and that, you know, focus on the minutiae of that type of stuff, you could actually have scepter chapter graphics for each chapter of your podcast. That's a lot of work, but you could do it if you wanted to. That's in that Pod Home has that. Another great feature of Pod Home is that you can broadcast your podcast live across the modern podcast two point o app. So you need to check them out. That's fantastic.
And, and if you wanna have a web if you have your if you want to, you can get their HTML code, install it on your website, have a beautiful player on your website. I have it on mine. I use it all the time. It's fantastic. And if you don't have a website, Pod Home gives you one. You can set up a pod a website with Pod Home. You get everything that you need. Every single thing that you need to publish a podcast in one affordable script subscription of $15.99 a month. Just $15.99 a month. Folks, I've been on other platforms, I pay triple that for less, much much less. So try out Pod Home. Podhome.fm, $15.99 a month. And you know what? If you sign up today, you'll get thirty days free. So it's thirty days to play with it, and then $15.99 a month after that. I think you're gonna be extremely pleased with it. Head on over there and check them out, podhome.fm.
You know, folks, electricity is essential. I think we could all agree on that. Right? And TNE Energy makes it affordable and personal. More than 1,000,000 customers across The US trust TNE Energy to power their homes and earn free energy for referring their family and their friends and family also. So head over to tne.energy and explore all of the options that are available to you for your home today. That's t n e dot energy, t n e dot energy. Also, folks, please don't forget, head over to our website, joeroos.com. That's joeroos.com, and, head over to our contact section, Open up the web form. Send us over a message. Let us know whatever is on your heart, on your mind, any questions, comments, cares, or concerns that you have, any complaints. Although, we like to keep those to a minimum. So if you if you have one, just, you know, keep it short.
And, let us know if there's any particular show or a guest you'd like us to try to get so we could do that for you. Alright. So head over to the website, open up the contact form, send us over that message. If you don't wanna use the webs the web form, totally fine. You could always email me directly at info@joeroos.com. That's info@joeroos.com. Also, while you're on the website, if you don't mind, please look for the support button. Remember, this is a value for value show. And all that basically means is that if you are receiving value from any of the content that we're putting out, all we're asking is that you return that value to us in the form of a donation. And that donation could be your time, your talent, your treasure, and as always, we'll get into more of that stuff at the end of the show. This way we don't scare everybody away thinking we're always looking for money. But with that said, I have to ask you for money. So I have the, I have the the QR code up on the screen there. The show the link will be down in the show notes. This is for that, that little issue that we're dealing with with the, the escrow here at the asylum. So if, you can help us out, if you have the means to do it, if you wanna help us reduce that down a little bit, so we can make the payments here a little bit more affordable, I would really appreciate that. You can just scan the QR code or check the link in the show notes, after the show. Alright. I think, I think that's pretty much covers all of the, all of the housekeeping that we normally do. Cough.
Alright. Alright. Now, folks, tonight's guest is somebody who is redefining how we understand mental health and spiritual transformation. Sean Blackwell is the author of Bipolar Awakenings, The Quest to Heal Bipolar Disorder, a groundbreaking exploration of the connection between bipolar disorder and spiritual emergence. For over a decade, Sean has been sharing his journey in helping others navigate the intersection of psychology and awakening through his YouTube channel and international retreats. Now if you've ever questioned, the conventional narrative around mental illness, this conversation is gonna challenge, inspire, and expand your perspective.
Sean, welcome to the show, man. Love love having you here. This is great. Oh, hi, Joe. Very very happy to be here. Thanks for your help. The echo. I know that's there. I forgot to do it. You see? Alright. There we go. Alright. So, Sean, you're in Brazil. Right?
[00:12:03] Unknown:
That's right. I'm in, just outside of Santos, Brazil, the home of Pele and Neymar, actually.
[00:12:09] Unknown:
Oh, nice. Nice. Guys. You see folks, we we we we track down guests from all over the world to to just spark your curiosities. Isn't that great? That's that's that's that's that's what that's what this show is all about. Trying to get the best quality guest we could possibly get, and here you are coming to us from Brazil. Now, I I do have some opening questions that I like to ask, and, we ask we ask questions like this of all of our guests when they first come on the show. And, we're we're we're rotating in some new questions, So if you listen to any of the other shows, you're not gonna get the same questions that you got on the other shows. Now Okay. Nice. Question number one is, sir, if you if your life had a soundtrack, what's one song that would definitely be on it?
[00:12:54] Unknown:
Oh, definitely Ain't No Joke by Eric Bienra Kim. Oh, okay. I know what that is actually. Be it.
[00:13:02] Unknown:
Alright. You're a New Yorker. Yes, sir. You know where that's coming from? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. That's awesome, man. I like that. I like that. I'm I'm I'm more of a jazz, like, the old standards kind of guy. I love that stuff. As a matter of fact, it's usually what I have playing the most in the house when I when I get home from work. I tell my I tell my little personal assistant here, Alexa, I say I tell you oh, she just activated. Let me not say it. She'll start playing music. I just tell I just tell her that I'm home, and she starts playing some really nice nice music. I love it. It's it's great.
[00:13:36] Unknown:
I've I've mellowed it out a lot too, but when I go to a conference, it's for Kim that's in the back of my mind. Nice.
[00:13:43] Unknown:
I'm actually gonna have to find a track for that, and and and just kinda refresh myself. It's been a while since I've heard, so. So what's one thing that still surprises you about the work you do today?
[00:13:58] Unknown:
Everything surprises me. It seems like every day I'm learning something new, and learning something new about myself. You know? You think I think my own healing is done? No. There's more to go. Yeah. You know? And and yeah. Just constant surprises.
[00:14:15] Unknown:
Now now you've spent years exploring what you call the spiritual dimension of bipolar disorder. What what first led you to question the mainstream psychiatric model?
[00:14:27] Unknown:
Okay. Well, at the time, I wasn't really questioning anything. Okay. By the way, I'm still getting the echo.
[00:14:34] Unknown:
You should that Let me see. Unmuted. Oh, everything's off on my end.
[00:14:40] Unknown:
Okay. The okay. Well, I guess that's the way it's gonna go. Let me check yours here. It's okay? How's that? Still this but we we can work.
[00:14:56] Unknown:
You're still getting echo?
[00:14:59] Unknown:
Yeah. But oh, that was a little better. Oh, I think I'm just oh, I know what I can do. Just write down, and that should
[00:15:12] Unknown:
See, folks, this this is this is this is a live show. This is what these are the things that you work out. You work out the technical difficulties during the course of the show. That's that's fine. That's what we do. Apologies. No. No. No. I'm yeah. I'm sure I'm gonna be able to get through, though. My my my audience knows this one thing about our show. There there is never a show that goes by where there's not some kind of a hiccup somewhere along the way. So Okay. Okay. Good to know. Good to know.
[00:15:36] Unknown:
So first, it's important to know that up until 1996, I never thought about psychiatry. Didn't cross my mind. You know? But I was in a, self help seminar and called the Landmark Forum. I don't know if you've heard of that. I did. It's kind of a very intensive weekend thing. Mhmm. Right. And they had us, repeat it's really loud. I'm I'm I'm just I'm sorry. I'm just hearing myself. And if I take them off, I can't hear you. Okay.
[00:16:11] Unknown:
I don't know what to do with that one, to be quite honest with you. Really? Because I have the echo cancellation off on everything. Okay. On, I mean, I should say.
[00:16:22] Unknown:
Okay. Then when I tell my tell my story, I'm gonna take my mics out. K. I can't hear you, but I'm gonna tell my story and then come back in. Okay. So this is what happened. I'm on this very intensive self help seminar. And, the second day of the seminar, they have us do a meditation on our our fear. And I didn't think I felt any fear. I thought I was a fairly, I don't know, courageous guy. I'm 30 years old. This is 1996 we're talking about. And then, during this meditation, which only lasted five minutes, I I see this this depth gauge in my, in my left hand, which was from a scuba diving accident that I had two months earlier. And then looking at that depth gauge, I I had lost my weight belt 30 feet, sorry, 30 meters below sea level. Okay? So 90 feet below sea level.
And what happened was I went shooting to the surface. And as I was shooting to the surface, I just looking at this depth gauge and everything just you know? I I made it to the surface and I was fine. But in the landmark forum, all the fear of that moment came up, and I started crying, and it was very, my whole body was shaking, and I felt fear like I'd never felt before. Okay? But then when it was all finished and I left the seminar that night, I could see all my senses sharpened. I could see detail and curtains that I couldn't see before. Sense of smell was sharper. I also had a sense of knowing things that I'd never known before where before, it was just like I was missing something. You know, something was always missing then. It was like I knew these things.
And when I went home, I was extremely emotional. I started to open up to my family about family issues and this kind of thing. And, it was just I was just really raw and vulnerable, and that continued for about five days. But the fifth day was the end of this seminar. And in the seminar, I started to think to myself, well, this is this is must must be how you feel when you're dead because I felt so good. I felt so at peace with everything. And then I thought to myself, that's what happened. I died during the scuba diving accident. That's what was going on.
And from that that point on, I really, started to act I just was convinced that I was sort of dreaming in a kind of a purgatory in a way. The the course was happening in a ballroom at a hotel, and I went to a corresponding room and went to meet god. Took all my clothes off, and and just started to try pushing against walls to see where I could go, you know, to see if I could get into heaven or nirvana or some other dimension. And, I was in there for a good half an hour, and then, eventually, the police showed up, arrested me, putting me in a stretcher, and then half of this chorus watched me leave the course in an ambulance. You know?
Great job. I got the break crew I was always looking for. You know? Yeah.
[00:19:35] Unknown:
That's wild. Then
[00:19:36] Unknown:
yeah. It's it's a trip. You know? But I I knew it was good for me from the beginning. And even at the hospital, I thought this was some part part of the journey, but then they gave me a forcible injection. I slept for about forty eight hours. And when I woke up, I was still in the hospital, and I thought, well, this isn't heaven, so I don't know where I'm supposed to be right now. I'm a little confused. Mhmm. And, I just told them what I thought they needed to hear, and and rationally, I thought maybe, well, I'd had some sort of PTSD reaction to my scuba diving accident, and can I please go home?
And they let me go home. When I got home, I still felt much better even though I was vulnerable. And, my you know, I just stayed quiet. But then after about five months, I went back to working in advertising, and my career got much better. My salary tripled over the next three years, and, you know, things really went in the right direction. Now a year after this hospitalization, I discovered the work of a guy named doctor Stanislav Groff. He's a Czech psychiatrist. And he had coined a term called spiritual emergency. In his book, The Stormy Search for the Self, he talked about how a spiritual emergency was, something that could look like an acute psychosis that would be associated with schizophrenia, but would actually be something very beneficial if the person could work through it. And I had all the criteria for spiritual emergency.
So there, I showed my parents the book. I was like, look. This is what happened to me. You know? And they would say, well, do you wanna see a psychiatrist or a psychologist? And I said, why would I go see somebody who didn't understand what I went through? You know? And so to get back to your original question, when did you start questioning psychiatry? I guess I started questioning them the second I got into the hospital psychiatric emergency. Okay.
[00:21:37] Unknown:
Well, that would make sense. Excuse me. How's the echo now? I I because I tweaked something else. You fixed it. Okay. Good job. Thank you, sir. Good job. See, I was listening to you, but I was also trying to do tech support.
[00:21:48] Unknown:
I bet. I bet.
[00:21:51] Unknown:
Alright. So, now now that that's a great and that's a great story too. I mean, and I can understand where you're coming from as far as questioning, you know, the, you know, the mainstream psychiatric models of things. Why why do you when it comes to bipolar disorder, why do you reject the idea that, bipolar disorder is incurable? It's a lifelong illness.
[00:22:15] Unknown:
Alright. Well, I was living my own life. You know? I I I went, I actually but I did leave advertising because it really didn't feel right for me, and I met a one woman from Brazil. We met in Peru. We had the same birthday. One thing leads to another. We get married, move to Brazil. And I was sort of in a happily ever after kind of situation. I was an English teacher down here, which I really enjoyed doing that. English is a second language for executives. Nice. It was a good job. But then her youngest niece had an experience. We got a phone call one night, and she had some sort of weird thing happening with her. When they told us the symptoms, I was like, well, that doesn't sound like a mental illness. That sounds like what happened to me. Because even at this point, now two thousand and seven, ten years after what happened to me, I thought what happened to me was completely different than a mental mental illness of any kind. Okay? Like, totally different. Night and day.
So we went up there to help, Anna. I call her my first book. My first book's Am I Bipolar or Waking Up? And I tell the story of my my own story and then us working with Anna. And, she recovered. Even though she was medicated, she bounced back quite quickly. Her psychiatrist and psychologist had said they'd never seen someone kinda recover so quickly. Mhmm. But, but they still medicated her for what looks like it was gonna be months. And so I was like, well, what's the difference between what happened to her and what happened to me? And I made some videos on YouTube by asking people the question, telling them my story, and then saying, if you've got bipolar disorder, what's the difference between what happened to you and happened to me? And then that was the first time I learned that it wasn't this one in twenty thousand situation like I thought. I thought mine was like a one in twenty thousand experience, but bipolar disorder hits about five percent of the population. So all of a sudden, one in twenty thousand went to one in twenty.
Right? Mhmm. And then I developed a sense of mission to really get to the bottom of this, and I discovered that there were some pioneering psychiatrists and psychologists in their early seventies who saw the acute psychosis associated with schizophrenia or bipolar one, basically the same thing, as an intended reorganization of the psyche. They saw it as a healing process that we were blocking. And there were clinics back then where if you were in your first break of psychosis, you could go there and they would support you in an empathetic way, but without medications. And they were reporting an eighty five percent recovery rate.
So once I read that, I I thought, well, let me go back to my, family and say, look. Let's take her off the meds and see if we can support her through this kind of thing. And just as I was ready to go back to the family, her sister who just came back from Europe, Eliana, she went into psychosis. So two sisters having their first episodes of acute psychosis four months apart. It was unbelievable. And knowing what happened to her younger sister, Eliana, came to us directly. We didn't tell her parents what had happened. We didn't tell her we had her, and we just supported her. And, we were able to support her first episode, get her back to her parents. She had a second episode, but then we agreed that for the third episode, as a family, we would support her, and we were able to get her through. Mhmm. And she went back to university medication free, finished with honors, went on to have a great job, went on to do her master's degree in Paris. You know? So and and was really seven years without incident and no medications.
Then things started to act up, but that was enough for us to know that we were on the right track. We had taken her right through psychosis without medication, and she was able to go and finish university and go on to quite a successful life.
[00:26:05] Unknown:
Wow. That's that's some that's amazing. The you know, one one of the things that that intrigues me about it is, you know, my my son was was diagnosed at a young age as, bipolar. And, but I'll be very I'll be very frank and honest about it. If if I if they didn't tell me that, I never would have suspected it in a million years. I don't think How old was he when they diagnosed him? He's 26 now, so it was he had to be I think he was 17.
[00:26:38] Unknown:
Okay. 17 or 18. Young, but young, but Anna was diagnosed around 17.
[00:26:43] Unknown:
Okay. Yeah. Alright. So but but, like, I never I never saw anything in him that would lead me to think that he he was he had a bipolar disorder. And, you know, and I think it ties into a lot of, spirituality things as well. And that's why I agree with you on on on your position on these because I I did notice that when he started he started coming to church more regularly, and I know, you know, coming to church is not exactly, you know, what everybody does in these things, but but he started going to church more regularly. And I noticed that that in in engaging the spiritual side of his life, he started to to to respond better, to, counseling, to treatments.
He's not even taking any medications anymore for the bipolar disorder. Oh, really? No meds at all? Nothing. Nothing at all. Oh, great. And and he's doing fantastic with that. And, and that's why, like, you've you've said that that that, instead of being biological, you've said that that, you know, the the cause of bipolar disorder rooted in in in this it could be rooted in the spiritual dimension, and I agree with you. And and and my and watching my son develop through that is is, to me, a a case in point of it. Now where why why do you say that though?
What was the experience that you had that that leads you to say that?
[00:28:08] Unknown:
Alright. Well, there's a few things. And the first is that my own experience, I had learned about Stan Groff, doctor Stan Groff, who coined this term spiritual emergency. You know, I thought, you know, I had this inherently spiritual experience. I thought I had died and I was going to make meet God, you know, or or some sort of spiritual dimension. You know? So that that was the beginning of it. But then into my studies, I learned that when people go into the so called acute psychosis that tends to get labeled as bipolar one these days, but used to be labeled as schizophrenia. Okay? That tends to come down to 13 basic delusions.
Okay. And so I have a form I ask people to fill out, but some of those I can't remember them all right now, but some of them are, you think you're Jesus or a messiah, and that you're either dead, dying, or being reborn. You're here to save the world. You're in a battle of good and evil. You could be encountering angels or devils. That's, you know, most people you meet who've been in acute psychosis are gonna identify with some of those. I would call those the top five or top six spiritual delusions, and there's a there's a few more. And I went on to YouTube, and I made videos, slideshow videos about that subject because I wanted to show people that I knew their experience in acute psychosis or their bipolar experience.
And if I could show them their experience, then they would know that they're not crazy because psychiatry treats you that your brain is broken. Right. But it's not taking us into mush. It's taking us into the same set of, archetypes, you might say, maybe Jungian archetypes or symbolic meaning, taking us into the same symbolic range. You know? And and then it can be, flipped as well. It can go paranoid, which really doesn't look like spirituality unless you think of devils or demons chasing you and that kind of thing. That then it's part of it. But that for me was inherently spiritual, and and Stan Groff's work was in transpersonal psychology, which acknowledges a soul in everybody.
Alright? And so from his perspective, he saw the basic roots of the disorder as being in trauma, but that trauma is lodged in our you could call it a soul system, bioenergetic system. Something is going on there, maybe similar to the to the Indian idea of the chakras. We don't have medical evidence for this. I mean, it can't be scientifically proven. But when you talk to enough people you know, for example, from my experience, when when I had my big experience in the in the forum landmark forum, I just felt this huge punch in my chest. You know? It's just huge. It's like an explosion. You know? So that would be the sort of energetic opening that could lead to healing, but that could also get you in the psychiatric hospital.
[00:31:04] Unknown:
And now now I'm glad you mentioned the chakra. I was act I have a question for you on that, actually.
[00:31:09] Unknown:
Mhmm.
[00:31:11] Unknown:
Can you can you tell us more about the about the chakra system, the Kundalini, because because you do mention that, because your work does really look at, the the somatic relationship between the extreme psychological states, that that most you know, they you normally would label psychosis or or mania. And the body's, what's the word? Bioener architecture. And then, you know, so and that ties into the Kundalini and and chakra system. So so can you explain what exactly that is?
[00:31:52] Unknown:
Okay. I'll try. Try. It's like well, and these words, they are rooted in Eastern spirituality. They come from India. And Kundalini has to do with really your life force, and they see it. And and this comes from the mystic yogis over there who would go into caves and meditate for, I don't know, twenty years or something. And they would report feeling energies moving through themselves. Okay? And often feeling like hot or cold energy. So the the Kundalini energies generally are thought to be, like, rooted in the spine, like the bottom of the spine going up the spine, but they really go out from there to animate our entire bodies, you might say. Okay? And then there what I see that the energy is doing is moving through the chakra system. So, like, in a lot of new age circles, you might have healers that would say things like, oh, your fifth chakra is blocked. Let me open that chakra for you or the fourth chakra is blocked. This kind of thing. From a like I said, from a scientific perspective, we really don't have any proof of what's going on there. But in working with clients, I've seen that most of the powerful energetic activity tends to be happening along the center of the body length, like along the spine.
[00:33:04] Unknown:
Okay. Now now you develop something called surrogate breath work. Can you, how does how does how does which basically you're taking on the client's trauma. How do you how does channeling someone else's pain help them heal?
[00:33:16] Unknown:
Alright. Well, I I better take a step back and explain holotropic breath work first. Okay. Because that's where I started with my clients. And after, a lot of struggle, between 2007 and 2013, I created a private healing retreat for people with bipolar disorder because I found that working with people, I was always getting people with a four year history, a five year history, and it wasn't so easy to support them through something just like my niece. Okay? Right. And so what holotropic breath work, it's a technique from Stan Groff, and it's just simply, very aggressive breathing, but in your own style, but it's done in a very safe setting with a trained facilitator.
Alright? And powerful music is playing while this is going on. Typically, when that's all set up, when the person starts to breathe aggressively like that, they're laying on a yoga mat, they're in sweatpants, and they start to, you know, they start to aggressively breathe. They will slip into a nonordinary state. Usually, when people have bipolar disorder, they're gone within about five minutes. For a normal person or a beginner, it could take about twenty minutes. And then what the breathing is doing is the breathing is a little bit like if you're a surfer and you're swimming out to meet the waves of the unconscious.
Once the waves start to surface from this overbreathing, then you don't need to worry about the breathing. You just express whatever's going on. Like, so this is the unconscious material of trauma being made conscious. Alright? And then once it's conscious, you physically move and vocalize and just get out whatever needs to be gotten out on this breath work mat. Alright? Okay. Yeah. The trick, though, is that the actual healing agent isn't the breath. Some people think it is. It's not. It's a divine intelligence. It could be aliens, but I'm pretty sure it's God in some capacity. Okay?
And, and you know that because if you breathe every day, after about ten days, the whole process will stop. You you won't continue anymore. The it's almost like you've had enough. You can't go any further if you breathe, like, one session a day for ten days. And that's what my retreats were doing. And I I kept the the retreats at ten days because people couldn't go any further. Nothing was happening, and so we reached the logical conclusion even if there's more healing to take place. Right? Okay. So on on retreats, I called it bipolar breath work because holotropic breath work is a standard three hour session in a group.
And I needed more flexibility, and it was a trademark thing, so I called what I do bipolar breath work. But I'm a certified holotropic breath work facilitator.
[00:36:01] Unknown:
Alright? Okay.
[00:36:02] Unknown:
Now should I just go into the surrogate thing? Yeah. Please go ahead. Alright. So I I started doing breath work with clients in 2013. I went out and did a bunch of clients in Europe in 2014, and that started a five year, trip. Every fall, I was going back to Europe to work with five or six clients. But one thing that was happening was I was getting just completely exhausted by, like, day four, day five, and I'd be having nightmares related to the client's material. So if they were full of fear, I'd have a dream, like, my wife and I are being chased by a lion who drags my wife down a hotel corridor, you know, like, terrifying terrifying stuff.
And, eventually, we we figured out that what was going on was this this inner healer that Stan Groff would call it, this inner healer, this intelligence that you're supposed to follow and and work out was actually a healing field. And the healing field was sending energy to me and other empathetic supporters that were in the room. Alright? And so we realized that, oh, we should be doing breath work too. So after six years of experimentation, how things eventually ended up was every morning, my client would do their bipolar breath work stuff and and do that for, say, between thirty minutes and an hour and a half. And then when they were done, we'd take a break, and then I would breathe on the client's behalf.
And we call that surrogate breathing. And it certainly looked like, especially if I had a trained facilitator to help me, that I was definitely going through material that was much more difficult than the client was prepared to face. You know? Really, really hard stuff. You know? And so that really made the work super woo woo too and and actually was something that my trainers didn't even wanna hear about. They didn't wanna hear about that at all. You know? But why wouldn't they? I mean, if it if it if it's working, why would they not wanna Because there was a very strong feeling that you had to focus a person's attention on healing themselves.
They needed to do the work themselves. And if someone came up and said, well, I'm gonna help you heal, that that would be you being the guru, you know, putting yourself sort of above everybody. Okay. That was the gruff culture. But from my perspective, it was more like, no. No. The healing field wants me to do this on behalf of the client, and I just work through the material like it's my own material, and there's no ego to it at all. Because if there is any sense of, like, I'm the guru kind of thing, it won't work. It won't work. If I get a big head about things, you know, you have to bring humility to the work.
[00:38:47] Unknown:
Now you mentioned that you mentioned that in 2013, you started you started the, the, the private retreat. And, which I think is I I you know, I've never been to a retreat. I've always been curious about, you know, checking these things out and and seeing what it's all about. I have a I have a coworker of mine who goes to a retreat on a regular basis. I think it's, like, twice a year or or something like that. And, just raves about it, the the experience and all that stuff, and I'm curious about these things. Now what what led you to actually decide to, well, you know, this is something that I need to do. I wanna start this retreat. So what what was the motivating factor for you doing it?
[00:39:27] Unknown:
Well, there was about five years where my wife and I tried to establish a relationship with a psychiatric hospital here in Brazil. We we we tried various ways, and we were but we always were trying to create some sort of registered clinic. And whenever we looked at that, it was like, well, we were gonna need a psychiatrist. We're gonna need a nurse. We're gonna need insurance. You know, all this top heavy kind of thing. And in terms of status, I was gonna be right at the bottom of the totem pole. You know? I my wife is a psychologist. I've got no degree in this territory other than being a certified breath work facilitator. But considering all of this was coming from me, I just it just didn't feel like a good fit for me to be answering to people who I would at at best need to be teaching about what what we were doing, like the whole mission of everything.
So that didn't make sense. I also knew that there was a threat of being shut down. If I had one mistake, something for example, if somebody goes to a psychiatrist and then later they kill themselves, but the psychiatrist has followed protocol, which means giving the medications, then you can't sue the psychiatrist because he's following the protocol. Okay? But me being an outsider, if I was doing something and somebody, killed themselves, then definitely I was gonna be liable. You know? So there's, like, a double standard when you're trying to do something new and and different. You know? And so I needed something that was unshutdownable, and I decided that really all I needed was my clients to provide me with a, very safe room where we could do the work where they're free of objects.
And they they could bring a voluntary supporter So they'd have someone from their friends or family who could see that their loved one is safe working with this crazy guy on the Internet. You know? I see. I gotcha. You know? So, that became the original formula. And then later, I do have some other Graf facilitators that I know here in Brazil. We have an amazing place just about three hours from where I live. And for clients that have the means, I can take people up there, and we could do a real five star experience for people. And we've done that as well. Outstanding. Now for people who are listening that that might be,
[00:41:50] Unknown:
you know, newly diagnosed, with bipolar disorder or maybe they have a loved one, who is who'd been diagnosed with that. What's one piece of advice or perspective that that that you'd want them to hear first?
[00:42:02] Unknown:
Stay on your medication.
[00:42:04] Unknown:
Okay.
[00:42:05] Unknown:
I'll be your first thing. When people call me, because there's the spiritual side, they can often think, well, if I'm if I'm having a spiritual experience, then I don't need medication. But if it's a mental illness, then I do need medication. So which is it? One or the other. And that's why, you know, I changed the name of my website some years ago to bipolar awakenings to embrace that paradox that you're having a spiritual experience that's very difficult to integrate. So stay on your meds, stay grounded, and then if we can work through it, you might be able to go off your meds in the future. There's my website there. Yeah. That's right. Those those are my two book covers that I put a little AI to. I thought it came out pretty well. Yeah. Actually, I I I didn't realize when I was when I pulled it up,
[00:42:51] Unknown:
I didn't realize they were actually moving. And out of the corner of my eye, I saw the eye moving. It kinda Right. Freaked me out for a second.
[00:43:00] Unknown:
Yeah. So, Am I Bipolar or Waking Up is my story. I wrote that in 2,011. And then bipolar awakenings, the quest to heal bipolar disorder, I wrote that last year.
[00:43:11] Unknown:
Okay. Yeah. So I was looking through your website. I did sign up for your newsletter, by the way. Okay. Great. And this is great. You got a lot of really good information up here. I went through the services, the training. I went through a lot of the stuff that you have up here. We're not gonna we're not gonna dissect your your website on the show. But, but but, folks, you need to go over and check this out. It's bipolarawakenings.com. A lot of really good information. And if I'm not if I'm not mistaken, it looks like you're giving away, a free copy of the, of the ebook version of your books.
[00:43:44] Unknown:
Yeah. I've decided to just give them away as free PDFs, and you know how it is when you're selling books, you don't really make much money anyway. So I I want the word to get out as much as possible. And so they're available as free PDFs or as on Amazon.
[00:43:59] Unknown:
And what what is the free training program?
[00:44:03] Unknown:
This is another step. And what I've like, my whole thing, since 2013 has been trying to make the work more efficient, cheaper, but also safe. You know? Really important that it's safe work. And so I've taken, some of the most essential YouTube videos I've made over the years, gave it given them a face lift, and then use those as the basis for a training program so that if somebody out there thinks that they have someone close to them first, if they if they identify with my work and they see that they've got, like, a spiritual orientation to their disorder, and they have someone who's empathetic, who they feel like would be a good supporter and would go on this journey with them. Mhmm. And I'm open to do basically, online coaching for someone who wants to create their own private retreat. So I could meet you and your your partner, your supporter every day online.
We could talk about what we're gonna do, and then I could set you up for taking I could set your supporter up for taking you into a nonordinary state experience with the bipolar breath work approach, and we can go from there. You know? Oh, that's outstanding. That's a that's a that's a lot. The next step for me.
[00:45:23] Unknown:
That's, I mean, that's, you know, it's this is not something that, is there a there's there's and there's this is totally free that you're you're you're doing this. I mean, I'm sure that people can go and find other things similar to this. They're gonna cost them a fortune. And, and and and the fact that Well, actually,
[00:45:42] Unknown:
you're not gonna find anything similar to my work out there. Alright. Well, look at that. Original.
[00:45:49] Unknown:
Alright. Sorry. Okay. Happening. I
[00:45:51] Unknown:
yeah. Alright. But it, the I did they of course, people will need to pay for my services in online coaching. Right. But that training program gives people really all they need to know to get down to work and to even put themselves in the position of maybe able being able to help others in the future as the being the facilitator themselves. I've had a few clients in Europe who are now working as therapists, and they're being recommended by the director of a psychiatric university in The Netherlands. You know? So this was like a dream come true for me to see my clients with bipolar disorder becoming therapists and being endorsed by psychiatry.
[00:46:33] Unknown:
This was, like, the big the big thing for me. Yeah. That's huge. That's great. Now now, of course, you said you know, the first thing you said when when I asked you about, you know, people being diagnosed, newly diagnosed, or loved ones, stay on the medication. Right? Stay on your medication. And a lot of people do rely on medication to manage their bipolar symptoms. Right. Now how do you balance your perspective with the need for medical safety and care?
[00:46:57] Unknown:
Well, I recognize there's basically four pillars to my work. Psychiatry keeps people grounded. And not that I'm a fan of psych meds, and they cause a lot of symptoms, and eighty percent of people try and go off of them once they've been given them by a doctor. So I'm not saying that these are, wonderful things to take. I mean, they're not. But they keep you out of the hospital. They keep you grounded. They keep you for showing up to my retreats as well. So that was one of the reasons I lost a few clients who went off their med that didn't make it to the retreats. Okay. So that was one thing. That's one so that's one fundamental thing. And it also helps, the family because the family of the person who wants to work with me doesn't feel as threatened. I'm not challenging the doctors. You know? There's no there's no challenge there. So that's recognized.
The importance of transpersonal psychology and the roots go right back to Sigmund Freud to create that intellectual framework, the theory, that's important. Peer support, There's a big peer support movement. I went to a peer support conference in Austin, Texas, in 2013. And what peer support is really about is recognizing that I'm not so different from the client I've got. I was in the psychiatric hospital too. So trying to think keep things as nonhierarchical as possible instead of being like, oh, I'm the perfect therapist, and you're the broken patient. It's like, no, man. We're all on our healing journey here together. I've just gone a little bit further than you. So there's that the peer support is very important.
And then finally, there's this spiritual dimension that's very important. Sometimes I call it the shamanic dimension, but I don't want people to conf get confused. We're not doing tribal shamanism or anything like that, but it's this direct connection with spirit that's coming through the person when they're in a safe setting. You know? So psychiatry, psychology, peer support, and spirituality are all fundamental parts of the work we do. Alright.
[00:49:01] Unknown:
Where where do you see your work five years from now?
[00:49:05] Unknown:
I'm really hoping to get something to an institutional level. That's where I really wanna see things go. The last chapter I'll just put it up again. You put it on the website. But the last chapter in my book here, bipolar awakenings, I call it what the, blueprint. I give the blueprint for how I saw my work being seamlessly integrated with standard psychiatric care that happens today. You know? I don't think there's any reason for fighting. I think that people should be able to appreciate the value of psychiatry, but also recognize that things are happening in a different dimension here, and we can get to that dimension now. We know how to do it, and there's a theory behind it that's consistent and works.
And and we know that because, particularly Stan Groff, you know, thousands tens of thousands of people have done hollow trumpet breath work, and they keep coming back with the same types of material. You know? They come back talking about trauma from their adult life, their childhood, and even their birth process. That's a part of trauma too. You know?
[00:50:11] Unknown:
I I And other would have crossed my mind. No. To be honest, I never that never would have crossed my mind.
[00:50:16] Unknown:
Birth trauma is something we all carry to some degree. It influences all our lives. And then you just have these really far out kind of experiences as well when you're in a non owner state, like being associated with animals. Like, in when I've been in holotropic breath work, I've had very strong experiences related to, for example, being a salamander on a beach in Indonesia. And, I I don't take it as a literal thing, but symbolically, it was just bringing out my own sense of humor that I had lost for a little while. It was a period of life where I was taking things too seriously. And then all of a sudden, I saw myself eating bugs on a beach in Indonesia, and it made me laugh my ass off. You know? I I would laugh too.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:51:00] Unknown:
So, so so just some final thoughts here. So what do you hope that the audience is gonna take away from the conversation tonight?
[00:51:09] Unknown:
A spark. I hope they get a spark because a lot of people who've had a debilitating disorder, they have this feeling like they've tried everything. They they've seen it all. They've seen it all. Maybe the big takeaway is if you're out there and you think you've seen it all, you haven't seen the half of it. You haven't seen one inch of what I do when I work with clients and the kind of processes that help heal people. It is the weirdest work I would have ever imagined myself doing. I would imagine it would be. It's just it's super duper weird. It makes no sense. And the the the once in one of my first retreats, the supporter had put all this together, like, the the the retreat and got her friend. Hey. You should read this guy's book and all this stuff. And then at the end of the retreat, we found two empty bottles of vodka under the kitchen sink, And she was just so freaked out by what she saw going on. You know? That's fucked. Yeah.
You had the vodka. For the yeah. For the if you if you don't and even with a group, holotropic breath work group with completely normal people. If you're untrained and you don't know what you're in for and you go in there, you look like you're in crazy town. It just because people are expressing really primal energies, screaming, moving, like a mass exorcism or something like that. You know? Yeah. But then you get to the end of it and people's you see that people are feeling lighter and more relaxed and at ease. Some people might be having some challenging difficulties that they need extra time with, but it all moves in the service of healing. You know? And that's what the bigger picture is all about.
[00:52:48] Unknown:
I would imagine that you you you you if you if you were able to do it, I know you can't because, you know, confidentiality and things and and of that nature, but I'm sure that you could write a book just about all the experiences and things that you've witnessed during the course of these these sessions. It would probably be the probably the trippiest book you'd ever ever read.
[00:53:09] Unknown:
I spoke to most of the clients. I have a lot of client stories in the book. I I talked to and most of the clients know that they're in there. Other ones, I well, I've changed the names for everybody. Oh, yeah. Of course. But, yeah, I've shared a a fair amount of client stories there from my own experience in that. And the vast majority of it, I let them know in advance, what do you think, and they were good for it. Because people know that it's about moving the work forward. You know? So but where I couldn't get access, I changed names and locations, but I did let people know certain stories because it was part of my learning and development too. You know? What what's what's one of the craziest
[00:53:46] Unknown:
experiences you've had that you could share with us?
[00:53:50] Unknown:
I'll tell the story about my wife. I think that would be maybe one of the first ones because we had this we were we were volunteering early on and, just we would go out to work with people who wanted to work with us. You know? And sometimes they were in psychosis, and sometimes they were almost there. So we go to work with this couple, and my wife was really feeling down about the work at this point. And the idea was that I was gonna go out and help this woman work on her depression. This was the idea. I'm running the show. We're gonna work on the woman. We knew her boyfriend had deeper issues, but we we felt we weren't ready yet. We want we just wanted to introduce him to our work. Okay?
So I start a simple meditation, five minute meditation. And within five minutes, he's up and running to the bathroom to throw up. He comes back and he sits down. Another five minutes of meditation. This time, he runs into a bedroom and he shuts the door. I go in after him, and I get down into a lotus position. And I said, Claude, come back. Come back. Come back. And he did. He he came out of a, like, a mini kind of psychosis until and then when we we sat down for dinner and he told me he thought I was Jesus in that moment, and I felt kinda good about that. You know? Like, oh, I'm in good company. Right? Yeah. Yeah. The next day, we're working with his wife, and he just slips into his girlfriend. He just slips into another state. Right?
This time he goes into one bedroom. I go to get him just like the last time. Then he goes into the other bedroom and he locks the door. My wife goes, I've got this. My my wife just she just says I've got this. She starts scratching at the door. Finally, he unlocks the door. She looks around. He she can't find him anywhere. She looks at the window. There's cat netting on the window. He couldn't have gotten out. Then she realizes he's in the closet. She opens the door and gets in the closet with him, and he says, who are you? And she says, I'm your angel.
And then he starts to explain that the nuns were punishing him, and it wasn't right. It wasn't him that did what the nun said. It was this other boy that did what the what the nun said they were gonna do. When he was a child, nuns used to punish him. He he was sent to an orphanage by his mother because she couldn't feed him. And the nuns would punish him by putting him in a closet and forcing him to stay there all day long. Oh my god. Yeah. And so he had gone into a spontaneous regression into, like, six years old in the closet. And there's my wife in the closet with him, and they were in there for about an hour, I think. And then they came out, and he laid down on the bed, and my wife hugged him. And I came in to check on him to see if everything's okay. And then he's just like, who's that man? Who's that man at the door? And he goes and he slams the door. And I was just the bad man. I don't know. I was I was just this bad guy. And then about an hour later, they came out, and he was good.
We went over dinner that night. Wow. The four of us.
[00:57:01] Unknown:
Well, that that that So that's about as wild as it gets. That that's that's an experience I don't think anybody would ever forget.
[00:57:06] Unknown:
And he is a psychologist now. He works in the slums of Brazil as a psychologist.
[00:57:12] Unknown:
Wow. That's amazing. That is absolutely amazing. Last questions. Who is somebody that you respect, and what are they doing that inspires you?
[00:57:26] Unknown:
Wow. Who do I respect, and who and what does it do about that inspires me? Well, I think the people that I respect the most are the people that I've built my work off of, doctor Stan Groff, Ken Wilbur as well. He's a a visionary on the evolution of consciousness. Okay. And what what's amazing about these guys is that if you know their life story, they were Mavericks, man. They went the wrong way. You know? Kent, just to give you a little background on Ken Wilbur, he's a guy who was in Duke Medical School and quit because it was boring.
Okay? Enrolled in biology at the University of Nebraska so he would not have to study and started washing dishes at a chicken restaurant to give himself time to study what he really wanted to study, which was, spiritual texts and psychology from all over the world. At the age of 23, he at the age of 23, this guy wrote a book on the evolution of consciousness, and it became a groundbreaking bestseller and changed the future of transpersonal psychology at 23 years old. Wow. He had read 4,000 books by that time. You know? 4,000 books. Going your yeah. So talk about going your own way. I mean, he was reading four books a day. He's a he's a genius. You know? That's amazing. But really going your own way. And Groff is a is a real maverick too. His his cartography of the psyche is something that mainstream psychologists
[00:58:58] Unknown:
haven't reached haven't touched on yet. I'm gonna have to look him up and and and and do a little character study on him. It's because Oh, he's fascinating. Because just just what you're telling me alone, I'm fascinated. I I would love to to know a little bit more about him and the things that he does and his work. That's that's great. He's a wild one. You see, that's why we ask that question. You know? Because I'm I'm always looking to learn something new. And, you know, and and the story like you just said, like you just mentioned, to me, that's fascinating, and I would love to learn more about it. So I'm I'm gonna check him out. Absolutely.
[00:59:27] Unknown:
Okay. Yeah. There's nobody like Stan Groff. You know? Ken and he's easy to read too. Ken Wilber can be a little bit difficult to read, but Groff, his work is, you know, it's one of a kind. There's never any been anyone like him. Outstanding.
[00:59:40] Unknown:
Alright. So, so, Sean, where can, where can the audience go to learn more about you and your work other than the website, which we're gonna put right back up here again?
[00:59:49] Unknown:
Oh, I think they could just stick with the website. I think that's a good place to stay. No socials I wanna go? You could go to you you could go to YouTube, Bipolar Awakenings on YouTube. There's a link on the website. That's that's another place that's pretty good. I've got a Facebook page, but I I guess I needed I don't really like social media. So Oh, join the club. Yeah. Join the club.
[01:00:11] Unknown:
I I I am so I am terrible with social media. I I I truly am. I plug it. I I
[01:00:17] Unknown:
yeah. I plug it, but I'm terrible with it. Okay. I I'm doing I'm trying to do a little more on Instagram, but I don't know. I feel like I'm dragging myself there to do it. But I I'm if anyone's on Instagram, you could probably follow me bipolar awakenings on Instagram as well. Alright. Outstanding. It's a work in progress. Alright.
[01:00:35] Unknown:
Sean Blackwell, thank you. Man, this was this was fantastic. I really do appreciate you taking the time, especially given the the late hour it is over there in Brazil for you. So thank you so much, man. I really do appreciate this. This was fantastic. You know, I've learned a few things tonight, and, I'm gonna be definitely doing my research on, doctor Groff. I'm fascinated by what you told me about him, so I'm gonna check him out a little bit more. Yeah. Thank you, Joe. I've really enjoyed it. Alright. Outstanding. Folks, Sean Blackwell, make sure you check out his website at, bipolarawakenings.com, bipolarawakenings.com.
Really good information on there. You can get the books for free, as a PDF, so check it out. Check it out. I've I've downloaded both of them already. I'm gonna be reading them within the next couple of days. Awesome. Terrific. Terrific. So make sure you check them out. These thing this is the reason why we bring guests like this on the show, folks, is that we wanna we wanna open up everybody's opportunity to learn something. So, so I hope you did tonight. Again, Sean, thank you so much. You have a great night, sir.
[01:01:31] Unknown:
Alright. Thank you very much. Alright.
[01:01:34] Unknown:
Alright, folks. Seriously, I I I mean I mean that, you know, in all sincerity. You know, we wanna bring the best quality guest we can to you, and Sean is an example of that. The work that he's doing, with, bipolar awakenings is amazing. When you actually take the time to look at the website and learn about the things he's doing and get the books, start reading them, great stuff. You need to check them out. Alright. Well, with all of that said, just wanna tell you about Pro HVAC r Solutions. Pro HVAC r Solutions leverages over thirty years of expertise to provide premier HVAC sales and repair services, specializing in both residential and commercial installations.
Pro HVAC's team of skilled technicians is dedicated to providing efficient heating, ventilation, and air conditioning solutions for your home or business with a focus on quality workmanship and customer satisfaction. We ensure your comfort all year round. Contact Pro HVAC r Solutions today for reliable HVAC service tailored to your needs. Just visit prohvacrsolutions.com. That's prohvacrsolutions.com. Alright. Well, folks, I hope you I hope you I'm real serious. I hope you enjoyed the show tonight. This was great. I I I I loved it. So don't forget to head over to the website, joeroos.com, and, sign up for our programming announcements email list. It's, it's just I'm not selling you anything on it. I'm just all it is, just information about upcoming shows and, and things that are going on with the show, whether it's an whether it's a guest or if it's a, a time change or a or a date change, whatever it might be, all goes out in those emails. And really, it's the best way for us to keep in touch with you because you heard me say before, I'm terrible with social media. So I'm, you know, the emails are the best way to go.
But if you do wanna check us out on the socials, you could find us on Twix at, Joe Roos, truth social at Joe Roos, mines, mines dot com. Check them out, at Joe Roos there. And don't forget, on, November 21, we have Bill Ottman, the CEO and cofounder of Mines, will be on the show as our guest. So make sure you check out that show. If you wanna find us on Instagram, you could find us at, not Joe Roos on Instagram, TikTok. And, again, I'm gonna I'm gonna keep on saying it until a message gets out. I don't know why any man is on TikTok.
I I really don't. But if you're on TikTok, joe dot roos. Alright? Get her, and and it's not me. It's my show. Alright? So just keep that in mind. Alright? Getter is at joe ruse as well. Alright. Now thank yous to our, executive producers, Wayne Rankin, Rosanna Rankin, Carolina Jimenez, Marissa Lee, and the inestimable anonymous Angela. Thank you guys so much for all the stuff that you do. You guys are fantastic. We couldn't do the show without you guys. Each and every one of you donating your time, your talent, your treasure has contributed to making the show, what it is today. So thank you so much. And we have a lot of work ahead of us. We got a lot of things to do and work on and improve, but we're doing it together as a team, and I appreciate each and every one of you guys. So thank you very, very much for all that you guys do. Also, if you do wanna help us out, you could do that with a one time donation in any amount, recurring donation in any amount. Now we do we do really depend on the recurring donations because it gives us an idea of what we're working with for the month. So, so if you could set up a recurring donation, we would appreciate that. If you wanna be a producer of the show, you could become an associate producer of the show for a monthly recurring donation of $17.76.
If you like to become a producer of the show, little upgrade there in your title, it's $18.36 a month. And if you like to become an executive producer of the show, it's $25 a month or more. And listen, all of the producers get the shout out like you just heard. You also get included in all of our show notes. You get included in all the emails that go out because we're you're producing these things. Your your time, your talent, your treasure is helping us to do all of this stuff. So sign up as an associate producer and executive producer or producer of the show. Join the team. We could always use more input, and it's a lot of fun. Okay?
Executive producers, by the way, get, I've I didn't mention already. Executive producers get to, come on the show with us. That's why we usually have our Wednesdays with Wayne segment. Wayne is still recovering from the surgery, so, he he was not able to join us tonight. But, hopefully, he'll be back next week. We'll see. But you you get to book the hour on the show with us, and we look forward to that. It's a lot of fun to, interact with everybody. You get to meet everybody, all the, all the all the, producers of the show. So, it's a lot of fun, so check it out. Alright. If you wanna help us out with donations of cryptos, you could do that also on the support page. All of our wallet information are up there. And, thank you to the folks that are listening on the modern podcast apps, the, the the audio side of it.
And those modern podcast apps like Podcast Guru, fountain.fm, Podverse, PocketCast, like, Pod Homes website, media player. I mean, you guys, I can I can list them all to you, but the best thing to do, go to modernpodcastapps.com or podcastindex.org and download some of those apps? They are fantastic. The user interface is so beautiful. I personally have been using Pod Home, because it is my host platform, and it's beautiful. It's a beautiful app, that they put out, and, it's really easy to use. It's so simple, and and it's streamlined. It is perfect. It's a great app. So try it out. Alright? You can download that also from modernpodcastapp.com, podcastindex.org, or you can actually get it in your app store.
Alright. I think that should just about, do it for us. I think we covered everything. So with that said, folks, I wanna say thank you so much for being with us tonight. Don't forget to head over to our website and, leave us a comment, leave us a question, whatever strikes your heart. Alright, folks? Listen, make Texas independent again. Go podcasting, keep a steady stride, keep talking, we'll see you
Opening from Asylum Studios and show setup
Programming notes and Saturday special announcement
Health update and housekeeping wrap
Introducing guest Sean Blackwell and his work
From Brazil: setting the stage and icebreakers
Sean’s 1996 breakthrough and the ‘spiritual emergency’
Discovering Stan Grof and redefining psychosis
Family cases in Brazil and non‑medicated support
A host’s personal story and spirituality in healing
Why Sean sees bipolar as spiritual and archetypal
Kundalini, chakras, and somatic energy
Holotropic breathwork basics for bipolar clients
Retreat design, limits, and the ‘inner healer’
Surrogate breathwork and the healing field
Culture clash with facilitators and humility in practice
Building an unshutdownable private retreat model
From living rooms to five‑star venues
Advice for the newly diagnosed: stay grounded
Balancing meds, psychology, peer support, and spirit
A five‑year vision and institutional integration
Wild field stories: closets, nuns, and regression
From crisis to service: client becomes psychologist
Mavericks who inspire: Grof and Wilber
Where to find Sean: site, YouTube, and socials
Closing thanks and takeaways
Show wrap, community, and production credits
Producer perks, recurring support, and segments
Final sign‑off and calls to connect
