Valerie: Rise. Renew. Reconnect.
Welcome to from the Ashes, a podcast where every episode ignites hope and healing.
I'm your host, Valerie Huang Beck, and I'm on a mission to help you embrace your unique potential and become the vibrant visionary you knew you were meant to be.
Mark Richard: Shimmer fire in the darkest night of Phoenix burst It's ready for flight Shadows may come try to tear you apart but you're the flame that ignites.
Valerie: All right, everyone, welcome back to from the Ashes. I am your host, Valerie Beck, and today I have a very special guest,
my friend Mark Richard, who also comes from California.
And I actually met Mark in Japan on the Nomad Escape Retreat, and he has a remarkable healing journey to share with us. And I'm really excited because Mark got cancer, stage four cancer, if I'm not mistaken,
and he was able to beat it naturally by himself in 2018.
So, first of all, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being here.
Mark Richard: Thank you. Yeah, it's a pleasure.
Valerie: Awesome. So I know that you're a hard worker.
I've heard your backstory too, of how you grew up in la, and it hasn't been an easy journey. And so you're a real survivor in many respects.
But also you've learned how being a really hard worker can kind of backlash. So let's start from when you found out that you were sick and what was the journey that led you up to that point?
Mark Richard: Yeah, well, I got. I noticed that I was getting sick in 2016.
I've had found a lump on the. Below my. On my neck, behind my left ear.
But at that time I was a top producing real estate agent, super driven.
And, you know, I think my childhood led me to that, you know, the super,
you know, super driven because I came from such a rough childhood. I mean, I was poor in the slums in Los Angeles and,
and it was really, really hard. It was a very, very rough childhood and I never wanted to raise my children like that. So as I grew up and got older,
I did the things that I needed to do to make sure I wasn't in that environment,
you know, and also, I mean, there's, you know, the, the parents dynamics too, about, okay, you get,
you know, commendations and told you're a good kid when you do stuff and you get good grades and you do all that kind of stuff. And my parents weren't real.
My dad was very loving, but my mom wasn't. And I noticed that when I got good grades and did things well,
it was like, you got, that's where it Showed up, you started saying, hey, good job,
you know, and if you didn't get good grades, it was like you didn't get that. So I think that's where it came from, you know, plus just being super poor.
I mean, there was no food in the house,
you know, so bad. I was eating dried cat food, Friskies. That kind of poor. I mean, it was super poverty, you know, a lot of crime out there. And I just didn't.
I. It was a. My childhood was one of survival.
It made me tough.
Also, a lot of bullying made me compassionate for people that are in those kinds of circumstances. So as I got older, I didn't want to raise my children in that.
And I was a pretty smart kid. I was a very sensitive kid too.
You know, I was that little skinny kid that was like, just loved everybody and I didn't know why people would bully me or push me around.
I was robbed at knife point when I was 10 years old inside the bathroom at my elementary school. I mean, that's how bad it was,
you know, But I definitely didn't want to raise my children in that environment. And as I got older,
I did the things that I needed to do to. I always took the hard classes I did, you know, I think that's why I went and studied physics and mathematics.
Because you tell people you're studying physics and they're like, whoa, physics, really? You know, mathematics, why would you do that? But also, I had a natural love for learning. I was super curious as a kid, so.
And I. I really did love physics and mathematics. I remember buying a algebra book. I used algebra book at the thrift store when I was about 12 years old, 10, 11 years old maybe, when I was skipping home, literally giddy with this huge algebra book.
Skipping home because I just had a natural curiosity for learning and I loved mathematics, loved physics. I love to know how things worked.
And started trading stocks when I was 12 years old. Built my first radio when I was 8. So I was a pretty smart kid.
My father died when I was 14 years old and my mom started dating other men and I just moved out of the house. I couldn't deal with my mom dating other men, so I moved out and moved into a friend's house at 15 or 16 years old.
I managed to finish high school. My siblings didn't,
but then started studying physics and mathematics. My grades were horrible because I had such a dysfunctional, messed up childhood.
But, you know, I got it together. I started getting really good grades in junior college and then started studying physics and Mathematics. Ended up at Berkeley,
met my wife.
I was studying elementary particle physics, quantum mechanics, nuclear physics.
So, and I, I loved it. That was just, that was my thing. I wanted to teach university physics. You know, I just loved to know how things worked.
And the reason I'm saying this is because I think it really plays into like when I got sick,
I took all of that curiosity and energy and I got, okay, I need to figure out how to survive, you know, how are people surviving naturally?
Anyway, yeah, so I went to Berkeley and met my wife before I could finish my degree and had to get out. And because I was a double major in physics, I couldn't do it.
Three hours of sleep a night.
And Berkeley's super competitive. It's one of, it's just a phenomenal university for. I had two Nobel prize winners as my teachers in physics.
I jumped into real estate, did really well in that, became a top producing real estate agent in San Francisco. But I still had that super drive of drive, drive, drive, drive.
And my mind was much hard, much more tough than my body.
You know, it was just like, you know, don't be weak, you hurt, you're tired, you got headaches, you've got indigestion,
you know, you're exhausted, just keep going. My mind was like way stronger than my body was.
And in 2016,
I. Well, 2015, really towards the end of 2015, I started noticing a lump behind my, my left ear.
And I didn't pay any attention to it because I wasn't listening to my body anyway,
which is super important now. I mean, I, I realize that and it was so many, so many things. I was tired,
which I thought was just because I was working so hard. 12 hour days, you know, seven days a week.
Making a lot of money. I mean, you know, top three out of 6,000 agents. I was way up there, but I had no life.
You know, I was eating all the wrong foods. I was eating fast food. McDonald's and Burger King were the norm. Burrito trucks,
you know, coffee, Coca Cola,
you know,
everything was wrong. I had really bad heartburn. I was living on Rolaids and sleeping badly.
My relationships with my wife and my kids wasn't good and other people too. I just didn't have time for life, you know. But then I got this lump behind my left ear.
I went to the doctor and I said, I didn't go right away. Three months, four months into it,
you know, that's, I mean, that's how bad I was. I had to go away. But it didn't so then I went into the doctor and I said, hey, what is this?
And they go, ah, it's probably nothing. Maybe an allergic reaction to something. It'll go away, don't worry about it. That's all I needed was a doctor to say, yeah, you're good.
And I went back, got back on that, that bullet train of working so hard and you know, six months later started getting lumps on my neck and across my chest.
Started developing severe, severe night sweats. Like twice a night I'd change the sheets. It was so much water coming off of my body,
it was really bad. I mean, I would change the sheets twice, pull them off. I had sheets right next to my bed. I'd pull em off, throw em on the corner in the hamper and get back in, change it again two or three hours later.
Lust I lost. I went from 210 pounds all the way down to 166 pounds. So I lost 45 pounds or something in three or four months.
So I was in trouble.
And you know, I was going to the doctors and they were trying to figure it out. They did all these kind of tests on AIDS and Lyme's disease and a bunch of other things that had similar symptoms like that.
But my doctor pretty much knew what was going on and I pretty much knew what was going on. I asked him, I said, okay, so what are the next steps?
And I said,
and I said, what do you think I have? And he said, you have non Hodgkin's lymphoma,
advanced stages of non Hodgkin's lymphoma.
And I said, well, what's the next steps? If because I refused the biopsy, he wanted to go in and get a biopsy. And I knew that if I did the biopsy there was a risk of spreading it.
And at least that's what I had read at the time. And, and I told him, if I do that and you confirm it, And I said, what are the odds that I have that?
And he said, very high probability,
90% probability, 85% probability. There's almost nothing else with those symptoms that you have.
You're, you're there, the lumps. I had a tumor in this, in my armpit that caused neuropathy down my arm here. It was pretty bad.
And then the doctor said, you will go into chemo, radiation, probably surgery, remove lymph nodes and do all that. And I said, well, I know I'm not going to do that.
I don't want to do that. I don't Want to go down that path?
And I had been reading books at that point, getting online, starting to do deep dive medical research articles, PubMed research articles.
I read a lot of books. In six months, I probably read 40 books.
You read the first 15 or 20 and then you start seeing the same information over and over again. You skim through it to find the gold, something new.
And I noticed a pattern that people were doing that were surviving naturally. I read books on natural cures for cancer, natural modalities for healing,
and it was changing your diet, it was lowering your stress levels.
And I noticed a pattern. And the supplements that they were taking,
I kept seeing the same supplements come up. So I built a spreadsheet on paper and on the left side was all the different kinds of cancers. And on the top was, across the top was the modalities.
What were they doing? They were juicing vegetables. What kind of vegetables? They were taking supplements. Which ones?
They were doing red light therapies, vitamin C injections, hyperbaric chambers, and all kinds of different things. But I noticed the people that were surviving cancer with natural means were doing it was groupings of what they were doing.
They were juicing vegetables, not so much fruits, mostly vegetables. They were reducing stress, which was gigantic. Stress was a big one. They were changing their lifestyles and taking supplements. There was 21 supplements that I kept seeing come up.
So I did that,
wrote down all of this stuff and told my doctor, I'm closing my office in the San Francisco Bay area and I'm making over a million dollars a year, million two a year in personal closed commissions.
I mean, it was a lot. And I just, I literally turned the lights out and just said, hey guys, I'm leaving. I'm going to go move up to the mountains.
So I moved from there up to the Northern California mountains. I live in the redwoods and overlooking a river. Peace and quiet. I had never meditated before in my life.
My diet was horrible. So I had radical changes. I was making huge changes.
And I moved into a little two bedroom house with a deck that overlooks a river and the redwood trees, started meditating.
I told my doctor, I said, hey, I'm moving to the mountains and I'm going to meditate and juice vegetables. And he actually got angry at me and said, you're wasting time, you're going to come back sicker.
And he actually said, or dead.
And we need to get on this right now. You're wasting valuable time. I said, give me four months.
That's not gonna kill me in four months.
And I was pretty confident that I had found a path. You know, it was very hard to choose the path because people that I loved were like, hey,
you're crazy. Going down, juicing vegetables and meditating. And other ones were like, hey, trust your instinct, trust your heart. I mean, people that I loved and loved me were telling me that.
So I finally decided to just go ahead and do it and make my own decision, which was very, very hard.
And, and four months later,
my type 2 diabetes had gone away and my cholesterol levels were better.
And I noticed that the lumps were getting smaller.
The first thing I noticed after about two or three months is they weren't, I wasn't getting more because I was getting lumps more and more and more and bigger and more painful all over my chest and upper neck area.
And I noticed that they weren't getting bigger and the numbers of them were, weren't increasing. That's the first thing I noticed. And then they started shrinking and getting smaller. And I thought, wow, I'm onto something.
This is, this is working.
So when I went into my doctor, he goes,
he said, and got scanned at four months. He said, your, your lumps are so small now that we can't even biopsy him. Keep doing what you're doing. And I said, I'm juicing vegetables.
And he said, lettuce doesn't kill cancer.
I was like, dude,
you know,
something's working for me and I'm going down this path.
And for me it was like revolutionary. I mean, because that was always physics and mathematics. Everything's got to be real. Bring out the big guns. Let's do the chemo and radiation surgery.
Let's really get together, you know, bring in the Marines on this thing.
But, you know, juicing vegetables doesn't seem, that's not, that's not the Marines. It's more of a natural,
kind of holistic way to do it. And I was really impressed with how remarkably well it worked.
That wasn't cured in four months. It took longer. It took, you know, 12 months, 18 months before I was 100% good. But then I went into my doctor, another doctor, nine months into this, and she said, you have the blood of a 25 year old man.
And I was like, wow, my mustache actually got, it's gray now, but my mustache actually got darker,
you know, and then now it's, it's going back to gray again. But I was like, wow, you know, nutrition is super powerful.
And it was just really a phenomenal,
a phenomenal change for me. You Know, and a revelation that, hey, this is. This is what I want to do. This is where I want to help people heal.
Because it was when I got sick, I was terrified.
You know,
I thought my whole existence was going to be erased. And I thought, wow, I just. I blew it. I worked for 35 years nonstop just blowing doors out.
And I'll travel later. I'll spend time with people. I spend, you know, birthdays later, all of it, anniversaries later.
And I passed all of that stuff. I just went straight by it like I was on a bullet train.
And,
you know, I was 56 when I got sick.
And I thought, wow, where's the rewind button? How do I go back and fix what I just did? And there is no rewind button. You know,
that's why it's really rewarding to talk to people that are younger now and tell them because they say, oh, I want to make a hundred million dollars. I go, really?
At what cost?
Valerie: Ah, I love that. Yes.
Mark Richard: Yeah. So, I mean, that's kind of like the quick rundown.
Valerie: I love it. Okay. There's so much that I do want to say to really enhance just what you said and to bring it to a light where a lot we can understand, like, what was going on.
Because,
as you know, I study Ayurvedic medicine,
and Ayurvedic medicine has a strong philosophical background, actually, so it's not so much about.
There is logic, Very, very strong logic to it. But all of this logic has a foundation philosophy.
And when you told your story about how you got sick,
right, you were saying how you were all. You were doing all the wrong things, like taking all of the wrong foods, and you were just going a hundred million miles an hour, and you weren't really.
You were not paying attention to what your body, what was happening to your body.
And in Ayurveda, we have actually what we call, like, the three main causes of disease.
The first one is failure of the intellect or your inner knowing, which is basically your. Your ability to connect with your innate intelligence, like your bodily intelligence that tells you what's good for your body.
The second is the misuse of the senses.
So using our senses to feed us junk food or to feed us whatever it is that we are using to cope or just get by,
right? So, like the Coca Cola and the McDonald's and all that is coping food, it's not thriving food.
And it's like misusing our senses to be like, okay, we just gotta keep going. We're on this,
you know, we're on this train. And then the, the third one is what we call the, the effects of time and motion. But I think a better way to, to translate that is the,
the motions of the mind and how that induces stress.
So all of those things you, you kind of recounted in your story. And, and the thing is like, we can't, we can't blame ourselves for doing this because like, look at where we come from, right?
We were just trying to survive.
And so it's a matter not of being like, oh, I had, you know, a terrible childhood and so I had to do these things. But then just acknowledging like, that's what allowed me to get to this point, but it allowed me to get to this point with a cost.
Which is what you just alluded to is like, how much? If you want to make 100 something million dollars at what cost?
Mark Richard: Yeah, yeah, no, it's so true. You know,
I mean, everything I learned in the first couple years of studying it was focused mostly on nutrition. But really it's a lot more than that. Like you said,
it's paying attention to your body, listening to your body and the mindset and the lifestyle and the other things that go on with it. I was talking to a young guy in mind valley,
and he's 26 and he said he wanted to make a hundred million to $200 million.
I said, hey, I'm going to be honest with you. There's three things that came to my mind.
And first off, why do you need that much money? Because you don't need that much money to be happy,
you know, and actually that much money might make you unhappy and it might kill you.
So I just said, you know, like,
you know, why do you need that much money? Is it your ego that's talking? And he smiled and he said, because I, I said, I know young men, 26 years old, they want to go, you know, they want to buy Ferraris and do all that kind of stuff and they want that ego.
And I said, nah,
you don't need that. You know, you don't need all of that stuff. There's lots of people that don't have that much money and are very happy and have a much more rounded life, you know, and at what cost?
What are you willing to pay for that? So I mean,
you know, it's, and it is at what cost?
You know,
and now I live in the mountains, I'm way happier.
I have a lot more friends that I love and that love me. It's like way better,
a lot better. You Know the money, you know, people focus on the wrong thing. So.
Valerie: Yeah. Oh well, okay.
I guess I have a follow up question to that because you still surround yourself with a lot of young people that are entrepreneurs. What do you see? Because I honestly do see, see there are a lot of these patterns in my peers.
They're still going for the lots of money and the lots of fame. And it actually I realized like I really can't follow that life. It's not, it's not one that's sustainable and I already know that having studied Ayurveda, but I can't, you know, it's like I can't tell people what to do,
but I do see this pattern. So what kind of patterns do you see because you're surrounded.
Mark Richard: Yep. A lot of people focused on the wrong thing, on money, success,
ego,
when they should be focusing on a more balanced lifestyle.
You know,
for me, you know, all of the there's I came up with really, it's, I looked at it and over the years it's seven modalities to healing, you know, and it's more balanced life.
It's one's nutrition, but then the other one's also a mindset,
lifestyle. Connection with people is huge connection to community.
You know those.
There's the science behind it too. Everything that I studied is evidence based because I have that kind of nerdy physics, mathematics, stillness, knock on wood, reality.
And somebody would say, you know, why eat broccoli?
And I'd say, well why? And you know, just because it's got sulforaphane and it causes apoptosis which kills the cancer cells. All of it's this, this. There's science behind it.
Ecgc, you know, why is it good? Because it's got in green teas. Matcha is phenomenal. ECGC by the way, is absolutely remarkable on so many levels. It takes away, dissolves the fibroids,
anti cancer, anti tumor, effects all kinds of st.
But there's a reason why the balance in life is so important. You know, a balance in nutrition, but also a balance in life and money, isn't it? If you're driving, driving, driving.
I think the end result is people want this money because if you keep asking them and you go down that rabbit hole, why do you want to make $100 million?
Because people are going to respect me, they're going to look at me. Why is it important that people respect you? Why? I'm going to feel good. It makes me happy.
The end result is feeling good and be happy and you can do that. Without making $100 million, $200 million, you don't need to focus on that.
With a lot less money than good people,
you know, good friends, people experiences in life and slowing down.
And whenever I talk to people that are on that, that bullet train, I always tell them,
so let's have a conversation. Because I was on that bullet train and the bridge is out ahead,
all right? And we could slow down and correct before you get there. And I know how to talk to those people because I was that guy.
You know, number three out of 6,000 real estate agents, you don't get there. And San Francisco's real estate's super competitive, and San Francisco Bay area is a super competitive market.
So I know those guys. I know C level guys. I know top performers. I know how their brains work. And if somebody had come up to me back then and said, yeah, you need to start eating right and you need to meditate, I'd have gone, dude, you have no idea.
I'm not going to do that.
Valerie: Yeah.
Mark Richard: But now I know what happens. And I hit that wall at a million miles an hour. And I had to pick up the pieces in my life. It was terrifying.
And I can talk to them, you know, I know how to talk to them. And younger, younger people too. They're not on that bullet train yet, but they want to get on that bullet train.
And I go, well, be careful getting a ticket on that bullet train, because I know where, I know where a lot of times it ends up.
You know, burnout's huge in our society right now because people are focusing on the wrong things.
And to me, if I can reach them in their 20s and 30s,
you know, before they turn 56 and get, you know, advanced stages of,
of cancer, and you gotta pick it up because it's terrifying. You don't know if you're gonna make it when you get to that point.
And yeah, it's really rewarding talking to the younger people. I, I like it. I like it because I can't. There is no rewind button. That's my rewind button for me.
Valerie: Yeah.
Mark Richard: And that's what it, that's what, that's what it was. Like a little child. I literally thought there was a rewind. How do I go back.
How do I go back to being 30s and do it different?
You can't. But my rewind button, or form of it, is talking to my children who are all in their 30s,
and other people that are in their 20s and 30s, like that young man that sat down with me at lunch up There and said he wants to make 100 to 200 million.
I went, okay, let's have a conversation,
you know.
Valerie: Yeah,
well, okay. I know that so many people listening to this are going to know.
Want to know what exactly you did, but I actually want to rewind a little bit more before we go into that conversation, because, honestly, the method is very simple. I know that already.
And once you implement it, it's there, but it's. That's not why it's hard.
So.
But let's get more present to the cost, right? Because it wasn't just your health. You were 56 when you got sick, right?
Mark Richard: Yeah.
Valerie: So that means that you were living an entire adult life, essentially with driving yourself to the ground. Like, what did you. I want to know, like, in your perspective, what did you miss out on?
Mark Richard: You know, I mean, I.
You can pretty much say everything I missed out on life. So I missed out on.
Yeah, that's a hard one, because you do. You miss out on everything. You know, when you look at it, you miss out on all the important things. You miss out on being there with your children.
I had four little kids,
you know, I had four little kids.
You know, I'd wake up and get up early in the morning, go to work before they got up,
so I wouldn't see them that whole day. And I come back and they'd already be asleep again.
Yeah, all the signs were there. I mean, you know, you just got to listen to your life, listen to your body,
you know,
because I miss my kids.
I didn't get to experience that. You don't get to go back.
You got to get it right the first time.
You know,
I told myself I wasn't going to get emotional, but, you know, when you go back to it, you miss a lot. I mean, you know,
everything sounds like, well, everything. Everything What? Yeah, everything. I mean,
time with my wife,
experiences with my wife, good experience with my wife, because I wasn't pleasant to be around. You know,
my nature is to be a nice guy. I'm a sensitive guy. I'm a loving guy. I'm caring, I'm compassionate. But when you get on that bullet train, you're so stressed, you don't have time.
You don't feel like you have time for just a normal conversation with your kids. You don't go fishing with your children.
Somebody else taught my. Another man taught my daughter to ride a bicycle. And I remember sitting there and my wife said, hey, so and so taught Emily had to ride a bicycle today.
I went, wow, I missed that. You know,
and there's so many of those things you look back and you'll regret later, you know, so it's. It's the. It's just your life. I didn't get to go traveling, do all the things I kept saying, well, I'll go traveling later.
I had the money.
I had lots of money back then.
You know, I could have stopped. I could have slowed down,
but I didn't. And you miss.
You miss all the experiences, birthdays, I just blew right through them. I blew through mine. I blew through my kids. I blew through my wife's anniversaries.
You know, my poor wife put up with me. She was like, you know,
it was like I was on that bullet train. I just went completely through it all.
Life. You miss life. Really. You think about all of this stuff because all you're doing is working in super stressful environments.
You're not feeling good. I had migraine headaches that were unreal. I mean, I'd get a migraine headache that would last two or three days, and then I'd go away for two or three days and then back again.
5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Migraine headaches. Super severe migraine headaches. I lived on Motrin, Tylenol, Aspirin, whatever I can do to take to kill those migraine headaches. Acid reflux.
I mean,
everything was there, and my mind was just like, go, go, go, go, go, go. Take some. Whatever you need to. To keep going.
It was really bad. I mean, it was really, really, really, really bad.
And I know, you know, people that are listening to this, they know what I'm talking about. Because if you are listening to this, pay attention to it right now.
You know, don't wait, because you're already probably passing up those times in your life that you could be experiencing really beautiful moments with people,
you know? And that's what you miss, you know?
Valerie: Yeah,
it's like one of those things that it's. It's really sobering. And I'm. I have to constantly remind myself, too, like, don't get lost in the sauce,
because I'm trying to be or trying to make it in a certain way. And it's like I am in the prime of my life,
Right? But that's the thing is.
So I want to ask a piece of advice as someone who's a millennial.
And a lot of my generation are really struggling,
and we're afraid of being broken poor for the rest of our lives.
And,
you know,
my question to you is, like, what would you tell Tell us. And then also like,
if you were to go back in time,
do you think you could have done it differently?
Mark Richard: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. My generation, I think it's easier. I think millennials have it harder now because of the way the economy is and everything else. I mean, I wish I had good,
a good suggestion of what to do about how to have enough money to do what you need to do. But one thing is, is you don't need as much money probably as you think you do to live a good life, you know, because the most important thing I got into traveling to other countries that are super poor and these,
these kids are running around and they're happy and they're smiling and even the adults are, you know, they don't have a lot of money. I think figure out what, how much money you need to, to get the basics.
You know, you need to have food, you need to have housing, you need to be able to travel, you need to be able to go do some things, but you don't need oceans of money.
That time spent with people is much, much more important,
you know,
but in my generation, you know, it was easier. I mean, I look at the numbers of what I was making. Even at 19 years old, I was making $7.25 an hour working at thrifties.
You know, it's like longs drugs back then. But I had two weeks paid vacation. I had,
you know, sick leave.
It was like,
and you know, a house back then cost maybe $70,000.
So if you think $7 an hour, $70,000 house, people that are making $20 should be making, buy, be able to buy a house for 200,000. You can't buy a house for 200,000.
It's 4, 500, 600,000. So inflation's moved farther away from it. To answer that question about how to do it, I'm not sure, but I know that generally thinking about being happy at a lower amount of money, trying to put, trying to spend more time connecting with people and definitely eating healthy.
There's so many reasons. I mean, I know, you know,
because of what your studies and I know plants, plants. And I'll just say this real quick, but our bodies know how to heal.
They know how to heal.
Hundreds of thousands of years, our bodies know how to heal. The problem is right now we're under unbelievable amounts of stress.
Bad food, bad air, bad water, toxins everywhere. And our bodies are, they don't know how to deal with it.
But when you're eating plant based foods and healthy foods and you're meditating and you're, you know, meditation lowers your cortisol levels, lowers your adrenaline levels and it's a really super powerful technique.
Breath work, visioning, all that stuff lowers those levels and brings your immune system back into alignment. More plant foods. Plants have natural plant compounds in them. Polyphenols, biofavonoids, all of the other stuff, all the goodies that are in there that our bodies have grown up with for hundreds of thousands of years in need.
If you give the body that they will heal, it knows how to heal. And it also changes the way your genes express themselves even in the plant foods,
you know, so that you've got these anti tumor genes that are, there's anti tumor compounds, proteins that come out there and actually fight the tumors. If you've squashed all that stuff with stress and bad food,
your body doesn't know how to react to it, you know, and then the epigenetics part of it too. With, with environments,
if you're in a stressful job, bad relationships and just, you know, depressed anxiety, stress, your epigenic switches are telling your genes. It's like a recipe book. It's telling it to express itself in a bad way, you know, so you want to do the good stuff.
Think, meditate, think gratitude. What are you grateful for in your life? Envisioning where you want to be and happiness and just peace and calm. You know,
I think I told you once that 10 day,
the 10 day Joe Dispenza event, I did meditated for 50 hours. I've never meditated for 50 hours.
That was a real cool experience. I mean your central nervous system completely resets at the end of that. You just feel calm,
like super calm,
you know.
But I would change a lot of things. I would focus less on money. If I could go back, focus less on money. I would definitely spend more time with my children.
That's, they grow up so fast,
you know, my son just turned 35 years old two days ago.
I'm like, wow, I got a 35 year old son.
And it really does, don't blink because it goes fast. You know,
really for me, connection with human beings, connection with my family, people I love,
that would be the most important thing. You could go traveling around the world, but really it's, it's who are you traveling with? Who are you spending time with? That's what I would do.
Slow down and really be present right now in every moment with the people that you're, that you're with.
Valerie: Yeah,
it is so important and you touched on so many different aspects of healing. And this is why I think doctors can't pinpoint it,
because it's not just one thing.
And Ayurvedic medicine knows this.
And they know that changing diet and lifestyle is hard,
right? They know that taking herbal medicine is hard. None of that stuff is easy. It's medicines are bitter and all this stuff. And then, like, you have your routine that you don't want to give up and all of that.
Which is why in Ayurvedic medicine, they have people stay over at the hospital to do the diet, lifestyle, meditation, all of it together for a long period of time under watch.
It's like you're not going to stray, right?
Because most people won't think to, or it will be very hard for somebody to discipline themselves enough to do it. But what you did was essentially the same thing. You're like, I'm just gonna stop everything else, move to the mountains, do the meditation, the food, the diet, the everything.
Cause it's not just one thing. It's everything. And being able to hold a container for yourself to heal. And once your body realigns itself and finds its own peace, then the homeostasis will do its work.
Mark Richard: Yeah, exactly. And it all works together, too. I mean,
the meditation is a good one to jump out. I use the meditation because I could jump out of that. Depress, depression, like, oh, poor me, I'm dying, I'm sick. Because that's really hard.
You wake up and the first thing when you're sick, when you got something like that. For me, anyway,
first the waking thought even before you're even awake, is, oh, yeah, I'm dying.
I mean, and your body just. It's just like a giant sucking sound just goes.
Everything comes out of you. Sadness, you just overwhelming.
And then you're talking with somebody at breakfast or something,
and then, oh, yeah, I'm dying.
That thought kept coming back over and over and over again. So if I could go meditate and think about the things I'm grateful for, that my wife was helping me, or she was taking care of me, or that somebody smiled at me, or my kids were there, I mean,
there's a lot of things you could do. You could think about grateful. And when I would be in that meditative state,
I jumped out of that depression, I jumped out of that anxiety, and I was in a place of gratitude.
And that's super powerful for the epigenetic side of it. I mean, you talk about the environment and the feelings affecting the epigenetics, the switches, the DNAs are like a recipe book.
And the epigenetics are the ones that says, okay, activate this recipe and create these proteins that fight cancer.
There's a science to it. You ever check it out? It's absolutely remarkable. And you make all of this stuff happen. It is the whole picture. It's the, the, it's the lifestyle change,
decreasing the cortisol levels, the adrenaline levels by doing breath work and meditation and then the nutrition, getting rid of the bad food sugar, by the way, I mean everybody's heard this sugar is super, super, super bad on so many levels.
It's jet fuel for cancer.
Literally. Jet fuel for cancer. I'm, I'm in the process of making that seven modalities of healing course that I'm hoping to get done here in the next 90 days.
And in that course I'm going to actually have a little jet fighter, not a jet fighter, where it's breaking the air barrier and all that vapors coming off of it.
This is your cancer on sugar. And I want people to remember that image. This is your cancer on sugar as a jet fighter. And then I'm going to have this little biplane flying.
It's like this is cancer with no sugar,
you know, Because I want people to know sugar is super bad on so many levels. Bad for immune system, jet fuel for cancer. It's like a double whammy,
you know, but knowing all that stuff and just getting in balance and it's all of it, like you said, movement, dance and walking.
I know you're a dancer, which is amazing.
Yeah. You know, it's so good because dance is good, it's movement, but also the environment that you're in mentally, that positive, that super positive state is fantastic for the epigenetics, which is, and you put it all together, you know, it's like you've got a really good chance of making it.
You know,
I'm not a doctor, but all the, for me, my story remarkably well.
You know, I used to do these visioning exercises when I was meditating and all of this stuff was new. I'd never meditated before in my life before 56. Never, not once.
Meditation was like something weird, something like I didn't know what it was. It was like I couldn't quiet my mind anyway.
But I realized you don't have to quiet your mind. You can actually focus your meditation, focus it on gratitude.
And I would be visioning myself running down the beach in a healthy 25 year old body. And I was in pretty good shape in college. I was six pack, good Strong arms, I was athletic,
looked pretty good, felt good strong.
And I remember thinking, 25 year old body, I'm running down the beach, I could smell the ocean in my mind, I'm feeling the wet sand between my toes and the wind's blowing on me.
And then, you know, I'd be sitting there meditating, tears are just streaming down my eyes and my skin was tingling all over my whole body, I mean my goosebumps everywhere, all over my neck and back and legs.
And I remember thinking, 25 year old body, 25 year old body, healthy, no cancer, super good.
At nine months later, after I started all this,
I was in a different doctor's office to a GP doing a blood test and she said, wow, everything looks really good. Your cholesterol levels are good, you're not even, you're not diabetic, you're not pre diabetic, you're not even close.
And if I didn't know better, I'd say this is the blood of a 25 year old man.
And she actually used those words, 25 year old man. And during my visioning I always thought 25, I didn't think 20s, younger man, it was 25 year old man, 25 year old man.
I can't have the body of a 25, I mean I can't be 25, but I can have the blood of a 25 year old man.
And I did. And I thought this is actually pretty amazing, you know, to be able to move the dial that much.
Just nutrition and visioning and meditation and lifestyle change. So it's remarkably well for me.
Valerie: Yeah. And it, it does take the will,
you know, and also the acknowledgement of, I think part of healing is actually acknowledging where you start.
I have a sadder story because I used to run an ayurvedic clinic and at the time I was a beginner practitioner and I was starting to attract people that they would use Ayurveda, they would come to me as a last ditch effort.
And there was one lady, I think that had cancer and she came to me but she didn't want to admit to herself.
So she had a tumor and she was like, oh, I'll get it checked out and all of that. And then she actually, the second time she came to me,
she had gotten the diagnosis, but she didn't even mention it until I asked her.
And you know, by that time I think it was just like she was still in my cell, like, oh, I'll try this and I'll try that. But I think at some point like, it takes the comm.
Commitment.
The commitment to be like, I'm going to do everything I can to save myself, not like I'm going to try to save myself.
Mark Richard: Yeah, no, that's. You know, ever since I got sick, I told myself I want to help people heal.
And if I. If I made it out, when I made it out, that's another thing too, is mindset. In the beginning, I was. I had the victim mindset. Poor me, poor me, poor me.
At some point, when I got direction, I read all the books. I felt confident. I knew what I was doing. I knew why drinking green tea was good. I knew why EGCG, why Quercetin was good,
why vitamin D3 was good, all of these things. I had read the research on it and I thought, okay, I know what I'm doing. And I felt super confident that it was gonna work.
And then when it started working, I felt really confident. I mean, I felt like a warrior, like a gladiator. Like, I got this. This is not gonna kill me. And that I think, even moved the dial even farther.
But you're right, mindset is huge. I talked to people maybe 40, 50, 60 people over the last six years that have cancer.
And mindsets are all different. You know, I hear 83 year old people say, yeah, you know what? I've lived a good long life. I'm good, I'm cool.
And there was this one man, Phil, really great guy. Well, Phil was 83, but also Alan was 83. Both of them said the same thing.
And Alan was the one that really impressed me. Super strong handshake, good smile, looked good, strong. Everything said, nope, I'm good, Mark, I'm done.
Three days later, he died.
And I was like, wow, you know, he decided not to do. He didn't want to change his lifestyle. He didn't want to do anything. He was 83 years old. And same thing with Phil.
He said, I'm not going to start juicing. I don't want to do all that stuff, you know,
but,
you know, I talk to people that are younger. And I had a conversation because I talked to people. Maybe I talked to a lot of people now. A lot.
People call me all the time. And I just talk to them because that's what I want to do is help them. I don't charge anything for it. I just help them.
I tell them my story, you know, tell them I'm not a doctor, but I just tell them what I did. And I had this conversation with this woman. She's 44 years old.
And she said, I just want a few more years,
like three.
And I thought,
whoa.
I didn't say anything because my first and next reaction was what Cause for me, I wanted to live. When I was sick, I wanted to live. I wanted to walk my daughter down the aisle.
And I did. And I've got a granddaughter, I've got a second one on the way. I would have missed all of that. And there was no way it was going to kill me.
I mean, it was like three years. No, I want, you know, give me 50, thank you very much, you know.
But I was talking to her and I found out her life,
you know, in the next 90 minutes we talked, we had a long conversation because I wanted to know why a 44 year old woman was saying she's done in three years.
And she said, I just want to travel and there's a couple of places I want to see before I go.
And I was like,
my mind was going crazy, but I just asked questions, I said, so tell me, tell me what's going on. Like, you know,
what's going on in your life. And her marriage isn't good.
She's stuck in a place where she's not healthy now.
She's not, she doesn't, she doesn't see this,
this,
you know, this life, you know, ahead.
And I think that's another thing that's really important because one thing I found was I was in that work, work, work mode, which I didn't have a good life. And now my life is spectacular.
I feel like I'm 63 years old, just about to turn 64. I feel like a little kid.
I was telling somebody the other day, I have the mind and the curiosity of an 8 year old.
Sometimes I act like an 8 year old because I feel this newborn love for life right now.
You know, all of these experiences and everything else you gotta have that love of life, I think is really good. And people that have a tough life, I think they really need to change their environment or when they get healthy, know that they can change their environment and develop this newfound love of life and want to live,
because that's super important.
But she's 44 years old and she said, I just want three more years. And then I thought to myself afterwards, wow, there's people who commit suicide, they don't even want to live one more minute and they're in their 20s or teens.
So there's that,
that mindset and that love of life, that wanting to live. It's also super important too,
or at least knowing that you can change your environment, you know?
Valerie: Oof.
Oh, that is so true.
Some people find that, you know, in, in the most unexpected of times. But it is, it is really important. Actually, one of the, the women that I interviewed for this podcast,
her revelation and her near death experience was that she didn't want to live.
Mark Richard: Wow.
Valerie: Yeah. But it, she turned that around.
So,
you know, I think it is like people we just never know, but like sometimes we are, we're so limited in what we can see of what's possible for us that we forget that there's so much available to us and the potentials of our bodies are so actually just our,
ourselves, our being is, is very unlimited in a way.
Mark Richard: Yeah, yeah, yeah. For me, they'd say having that, that new desire to live, that wanting, that love of life.
For me, it's connection with people. I mean, the most important thing that I've come in the last,
you know, several years, especially with the mindvalley group and Joe Dispenza and breath work classes and all the other stuff, is there's really beautiful humans out there.
Really, really amazing people.
And I think you, you have a,
a condensing of those types of people in certain groups, you know,
So I love it. For me, it's just that that connection with humans on the level now that I connect with humans on is really remarkable. I don't need the money.
I just need enough money to travel to the places where I can go find the beautiful humans,
you know.
But yeah, it's really good, you know, I mean, and there's ways to do it. Anybody that's having a hard time right now, I know, I've been there, you know, it's.
But there is a beautiful life out there.
It's just focusing on that and finding it, making it your rendezvous point, making it the place where you're going to be. That's the way you want to go. How do you get there?
Well, it's friends.
I mean, you know, when you get to that, when you get to be 90 years old or 100 years old, you're on your deathbed, you don't want to be like, I got lots of money, but I didn't have the experiences.
I don't have any friends. Nobody's here,
you know, who loves you and who do you love? I think is super important. And they're out there. Good people are out there. Really beautiful humans are out there. There's lots of them,
you know, and I think finding those people is, to me, that's. Life is amazing. Right now, you know,
so,
you know, I'm just.
It's really, really remarkable feeling reborn at 63 years old. It's pretty cool.
Valerie: Yeah.
Well, thank you, Mark. You've been such an inspiration. You're giving so much of us also. Hope so. And I know that you love to connect people, so tell us how we can find out more.
Well, actually just connect with you. If somebody wants to have a conversation, wants to ask questions.
Mark Richard: Yeah, the easiest way is, you know, I don't have anything because I coach people one on one, but I do have a Facebook page that people can connect with me on and I can give you the link.
And is that something that you can put on your place on your podcast there? Okay, cool. Yeah. And then if anybody wants to connect with me there, that's, you know, just DM me through that.
I mean, I talk to people all the time. Just send me a message and we'll talk.
You know, I help people if they're sick, even autoimmune diseases, too. I tell them what I did, you know, because it all works, so.
Or if you just want to chat.
Valerie: Awesome. Well, thank you, Mark, so much for being on here today.
Mark Richard: Cool. Yeah, it was really nice. Thanks. Valerie.
Valerie: Thanks for tuning in to from the Ashes. If this episode sparks something in you, I want you to know your evolution matters and we're rooting for you all the way.
For coaching, community, and resources to help you rise into your full potential,
visit intrepidwellness Life and check out what we have to offer.
If you loved the episode, please leave a comment, share it with a friend, or tag me on Instagram ntrapidwellness, Val, because I'd love to hear what resonated for you.
Until next time, keep rising.
