Tom Jones is a former Marine, ex sparring partner of Chuck Norris, and someone who has overcome some serious disadvantages in his early life and a terrible drug addiction to get to where he is now. 
Tom created the ‘QUITPROOF’ program for physical, mental, and spiritual development for those in need of a better lifestyle.

In this episode we discuss:

Tom has quite the list of achievements.
Shout outs to Laird Hamilton and Chuck Norris.
Tom moved 35 times before he was 12 years old.
A childhood of abuse, neglect and many other challenges.
Experience of abuse and child molestation in care homes.
Tom ran away to join the Marines.
He studied martial arts from a young age.
Was he naturally talented? Or just started so young?
Fighting in bars in Okinawa.
How Tom became friends with Chuck Norris.
The importance of men having positive male role models.
Tom's experience with addiction to drugs and going into rehab.
Meeting another mentor Glenn McCusker, working as his bodyguard and trainer.
A return to fighting.
Seven major titles in Muay Thai kickboxing.
About marriage and divorce.
Muay Thai is brutal and demanding fight sport but Tom was prepared for it.
Mind-boggling achievements in running.
Tom was not an endurance runner before he started these challenges!
About the support team for the 121 marathons.
'It's over when you decide it's over'
Marathon vs Muay Thai:
Running a marathon and winning a Muay Thai fight in one day, done for a local children's foundation.
Shout out to Joe in Bali!
How did Tom get into his epic SUP trips?
Shout out to Charlie Moore who discovered the Northern Pacific Garbage Patch and leading expert in plastic pollution.
Shut out to Mickey Munoz and Joe Bark.
Meeting Laird Hamilton for the first time and Dave Kalama.
SUP-ping the length of the state of California.
Running into a 17 ft Great White.
Donny mentions a book about Great Whites called The Secret Life of Sharks by Peter A. Klimley.
'Your WHY has to be strong enough'
Tom was 58 years old at the time of recording.
How does Tom recover from all this?
The importance of great nutrition and supplementation.
What part does faith play in Tom's life?
What is a hydrofoil? And the hydrofoil distance record.
New challenges offer the chance to be humble.
What is the status of QUITPROOF?
Does Tom have any regrets? (Didn't go to officer's school)
Shout outs to the influential people, including also Jennifer, Tom's wife and God.
What is the most important advice to pass on to listeners?
DESERT ISLAND QUESTIONS – Patreon Exclusive Section

Stephen Snyder began practicing daily meditation in 1976. Since then, he has studied Buddhism extensively–investigating and engaging in Zen, Tibetan, and Western nondual traditions. Stephen was authorized to teach in 2007 by the Venerable Pa Auk Sayadaw, a Burmese meditation master and renowned scholar. In 2009, he coauthored Practicing the Jhānas, exploring concentration meditation as presented by Pa Auk Sayadaw. 

In this episode we discuss:

Stephen is in Michigan at the time of the interview.
We are focusing on the deeperr dimension of meditation.
Stephen was born in California but raised in Guam and Hawai'i among other places.
An early calling to spirituality with an encounter with a running monk.
How he came to study meditation in the Theravadan tradition.
How and where did Stephen practice Zen?
Stephen and Tina Rasmussen's book Practicing the Jhanas and it's demystification of the deeper levels of meditation.
Issues with the watering down of meditation and yoga.
People and their karmic affinities.
What is meditation actually?
How Stephen got started in meditation himself.
What is anapana meditation / vipassana meditation?
The initial stages of meditative development leading to jhana.
A detailed look at the jhanas and the jhana factors.
The importance of a teacher to guide one through these stages.
Comparisons with the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.
How can someone get started with mediation?
The importance of going on retreat and more intense periods of practice.
Discussing Stephen's new book Buddha's Heart.
DESERT ISLAND QUESTIONS

Mr Beau Miles is an award winning film maker, a poly-jobist, a speaker and a writer with a PHD in outdoor education based in Australia.

In this episode we discuss:

Beau is from Australia but has been travelling and wandering into adventures since he could.
About Melbourne and the surrounding area.
Australians, the dilemma of being of white, European descent and growing up there, and the question of belonging and one's true home.
How would Beau describe the films he makes?
Ideas of adventure and long-range travel.
Why did Beau choose film as his medium?
What is the premise of A Mile an Hour?
Beau's most challenging film? The Human Bean!
Where does he get his ideas?
Would he still do the things in the films, without the filming?
Which film gets most to the core of what he does?
Wood and trees play a big part in Beau's stories, why?
Is it too late to start working with wood?
To what extent is he motivated by health and physical potential?
How has becoming a father changed things for Beau?
What aspects of his personality does he need to work on?
Shout out to some important people in Beau's life.
Plans for the future and all about the book.
DESERT ISLAND QUESTIONS (Patrons Only)
How to find out more about Beau Miles and how to contact him.
What is Beau's personal philosophy of happiness?

Luke Richards is a recovered alcoholic, ultra-distance swimmer and loving husband and father.

In this episode we discuss:

Luke is from Melbourne, born and bred.

A little bit about his growing up there and going to an all boy's school, and how some of the seeds of problems in later life were sown.

The inceptions of substance addiction.

First attempted suicide in high school.

How alcohol came to reign supreme.

How bad did Luke's drinking actually get?

Luke had the onset of Korsakoff Syndrome.

He was very good at hiding his addiction.

What marked the rock bottom for Luke?

The first time he stopped, and the relapse.

When did Luke 'finally run out fo runway' and have his last drink, and how does swimming enter the picture?

Some of the best/worst and most challenging experience as a long distance swimmer.

Recovery and impacts on fitness and health.

Has he also recovered from being a pack a day smoker?

To what extent is anxiety and mental health in general a challenge even after the cessation of drinking?

The lasting consequences of alcohol addiction.

'Failure is an essential part of the process'

What is going on wth this global epidemic of mental health issues?

And specifcally men's mental health.

Channels to get help.

The importance of seeking help.

Would Luke ever write a book about his story?

DESERT ISLAND QUESTIONS

Luke's Links:

swim4recovery.com
IG: @swim4recovery

Gregor Maehle began his practice of Raja Yoga in 1978 and added Hatha Yoga a few years later. In the mid-1980s he commenced annual travels to India, where he studied with various yogic and tantric masters, traditional Indian sadhus and ascetics. He also studied Sanskrit under Professor Narayanachar and Dr Chandrasekhar. He lived for several years as a recluse, studying Sanskrit and yogic scripture and practising yogic techniques.

Since then he has branched out into researching the anatomical alignment of postures and the higher limbs of yoga. He gained his anatomical knowledge through a Health Practitioner degree and has also studied history, philosophy and comparative religion. Together with his wife, Monica, in 1996 they founded 8 Limbs in Perth, Australia, which they co-directed for 21 years.

Gregor’s internationally acclaimed textbook series consisting of Ashtanga Yoga: Practice and Philosophy, Ashtanga Yoga: The Intermediate Series, Pranayama: The Breath of Yoga, Yoga Meditation: Through Mantra, Chakras and Kundalini to Spiritual Freedom and Samadhi The Great Freedom – have sold more than 85,000 copies worldwide and have been translated into eight foreign languages. He has been invited to many countries to teach and has contributed to and been interviewed by numerous yoga magazines.

Today he teaches an anatomically sophisticated interpretation of traditional vinyasa yoga, integrated into the practice of the higher limbs in the spirit of Patanjali and T. Krishnamacharya. 

In this episode we discuss:

A little bit about Donny's own past history in yoga and how he came to be connected with Gregor.
Gregor reluctantly gives us a bit of insight into his own backstory.
Who are the people who influenced Gregor the most?
How did Gregor end up teaching yoga?
What is yoga? (The ancient Vedic discipline of psychology, the science of mind)
What are the biggest misunderstandings that Gregor personally resolved over time?
Gregor describes the content of his many books.
To what extent is he self-taught and to what extent does he follow the path of his teachers?
Is Shankaracharya responsible for a u-turn in Indian spiritual tradition towards.
Shout out to the works of Theos Bernard, must reads for aspiring yogis.
What is kriya? (here meaning a set of purification practices, nauli and kapalabhati)
How much nauli is too much?
Kapalabhati increases the pulse of your cerebrospinal fluid and increases the oscillation of your sacrum and cranial bones.
The purpose of asana is to achieve radiant health over a long period, remove traumatic conditioning from the body and mind and align the spine correctly to facilitate pranayama.
Hermetic texts and the origin of As Above, So Below.
The role of inversions in creating independence from sensory stimulus and the societal implications.
The purpose of pranayama is to remove conditioning from the respiratory strata/pranic sheath, to prevent projecting, concentrate the mind and achieve kumbhaka (breath retention) and induce a kundalini event.
What is yogic meditation specifically and the real nature of kundalini and it's rising?
What role does devotion play?
A question on how to best divide one's time between the various components of a daily yoga practice.
Is there a problem with modern yoga culture?
How does someone begin a sincere journey into yoga?
DESERT ISLAND QUESTIONS
Can we expect a new book from Gregor in the near future?

James Nestor is an author and journalist who has written for Scientific American, Outside Magazine, The New York Times, The Atlantic, National Public Radio, Surfer's Journal, The San Francisco Chronicle, and more. 

Today we will be discussing his latest best-selling book Breath, which explores the million-year-long history of how the human species has lost the ability to breathe properly and why we’re suffering from a laundry list of maladies—snoring, sleep apnea, asthma, autoimmune disease, allergies—because of it.

James has travelled the world in an attempt to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it. The answers, he discovered, weren’t found in pulmonology labs but in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites, secret Soviet facilities, New Jersey choir schools, and the smoggy streets of Sao Paulo.

Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head.