Sacred Hunting

Is there anything “sacred” about hunting? What can it teach us, technically, emotionally, or spiritually? Kyle Kingsbury, former MMA professional and Human Optimization Director at Onnit, talks about the lessons he’s learned from hunting that have influenced his perspective on his relationship to nature, his own masculinity, and ancestral wisdom.

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Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript, the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Kyle Kingsbury.

How could hunting ever be considered sacred? Is there something emotional, primal, or even spiritual about it? This is episode 462. Our guest is Kyle Kingsbury. Kyle is a former mixed martial arts professional, the former Director of Human Optimization at Onnit, and the host of the Kyle Kingsbury Podcast. In this episode, Kyle explains how each hunt teaches the hunter something different, either technical, emotional, or spiritual. He covers lessons he has learned during some of his hunts about the importance of slowing down and even praying. He also talks about what he’s learned about healthy masculinity and ancestral wisdom through hunting, farming, and leading his family.

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Check out Kyle’s Website: Kyle Kingsbury

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Welcome to the show, Kyle.

It’s so good to be here. Thank you for having me.

Let’s start with a description of a hunt you were on. I believe you were hunting bighorn sheep in Texas. Tell us about that moment in time.

It was a couple of years back when they called it the snowpocalypse. We had one of the biggest snowstorms in about 100 years. Thankfully, we were all bundled up with warm-weather gear. What was cool about the land was that they had so many different full-on herds of exotics. They had animals from all over the world, Argentina, Africa, and Europe. There were American bison. There were red stags. We were hunting aoudad which is a Northern Barbary Coast sheep from Northern Africa. They had all sorts of different stuff.

I’ve never been to a place where all of that was available. The animals are so intelligent. They know if you’re hunting them or not. We couldn’t find aoudad anywhere and then everything else was right there in front of us. There was this beautiful red stag. It looked like Harry Potter’s patronus. Twenty yards away, there was this majestic angelic being.

We had to do some laps and we finally got to him. I was so excited. I shot over the back of the entire herd. That kick from the 300 Win Mag zeroed me back in. It was like, “Wow.” That focus came from it. It took us five more laps on this 2,000-acre property to find our animals. At 200 yards, which isn’t a super tough shot, I was able to calm myself and zero in. We were supposed to get only females. I got a male who had one defective horn, so it didn’t cost us any extra. The landowner was happy with that. That was interesting too.

We hunt in pairs. We had a small team with us of about six people. When we went down, we approached very slowly. You don’t want to run the animal off and get it scared. You certainly don’t want all of that stuff pumping through him, like adrenaline, fear, and things of that nature. I remember coming up on the animal and he popped up and looked at me. It was the only time I’ve ever done this where I, out loud, talked to the animal down. I was like, “It’s okay, buddy.” I get emotional talking about it. I don’t know that this happens with most hunters, but I’ve cried every time I’ve killed something. It’s probably the only thing on earth where I feel every emotion. Maybe childbirth can compare to that where it is all the things all at once.

There’s no excitement like it. I used to think knocking somebody out when I fought in the UFC was a peak experience. When you’re successful in a hunt, that is truly a peak experience that speaks to something primal. It’s in our DNA. It goes back as long as we’ve been here. That’s coupled with I took something’s life to feed me, my family, and my tribe. I feel the weight of that every time. I was feeling that. I remember timing my breathing with the animal. We timed his last breath. I swear to this day that I watched its essence evaporate into everything as it took that last exhale. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before and haven’t experienced since. It was magic.

Wise Traditions | Kyle Kingsbury | Hunting — Hunting: When you’re successful in a hunt, that is truly a peak experience that speaks to something that’s primal.

What did that experience teach you about yourself?

It’s hard to put into words because every hunt teaches us something different. There are technical lessons, like, “I was a little too fast and spooked him,” or, “Even on the shot, I was a little too fast and I missed him entirely.” We went with the group, and the group was experiencing a lot of stuff and a lot of energy moving. People were in various pickles in their own lives coming to this. For me in particular, it was about slowing down.

You have different guides. One of the guys that I go with, Mansal Denton, who organizes the sacred hunts trained under Dr. Will Taegel for six years and has learned from many different indigenous elders all over the world. He’s like you. He travels. He has worked with the guys who fly the eagles in the Gobi and different things like that. He was in Eastern Russia looking for Siberian tigers. He does cool stuff. He is about as dialed in on every level that I can imagine. He’s the perfect guy.

We also have people who are excellent shots and marksmen but come from a more traditional hunting background. We’re like, “You got him,” and he was like, “I did.” What was cool was he could tell I wanted to honor the animal. Generally, there’s some offering we give. There’s a tobacco prayer right when we get there. We do a 7 Directions prayer and ask for permission effectively from the apex predators of the land. In that area, it was the mountain lion and the Texas rattlesnake. We call those spirit animals to be there with us to guide us and to grant us permission to be on their land and to hunt with their skill.

I didn’t have any tobacco on me, so I ran out of the house for round two on a Saturday. I asked him. He was a good old boy. He didn’t seem like he was going to be with it. He said in Europe, they would put food in their mouth. They’d give him one last meal when they send them off. We grabbed grass and put it in his mouth. That in and of itself was cool because there was more to my guide than I had given him credit for. It felt like a natural way to say thank you and have that connection built right from the beginning.

You said this earlier, but there is a link with how our ancestors lived. Hunting is how they got food. I’ve been to Kenya. I’ve been to Ethiopia. I’ve spoken with the men who are hunters. You’re right. It’s a very primal and traditional experience. Yet, the words sacred and hunt or sacred and hunting, most people would’ve never put those two words together, though our ancestors might have. Tell us what sacred hunting means to you.

There are so many points to it because there are so many things that come out of that experience. Many of them you only get after having gone through that experience. It’s about reconnecting us to ourselves, to the inner wild man, the inner wild woman, the warrior, or the huntress. Mansal, who is the guy who did that many times, had his first all-female group. These things are big in men’s work.

A lot of stuff comes up in the all-women’s group too. One of the ladies that was in there had three older brothers. Dad would always take them hunting and she was never allowed to go because she was his little girl. You can imagine how tough that would be in the modern world. Finally, she was on her first hunt and was successful. How meaningful that was to her.

For me, the sacred hunt is, in many ways, tapping into something that I can’t get anywhere else. As a father and a dad, I want to be a provider. I want to have those things. There’s this weird disconnect with, “I make more money. I buy better food. This is how it works.” Amazon delivers to the house and all that stuff where there are so many disconnection points from our food.

It reconnected me to being able to go out to Roam Ranch, bring my son at four years old, and have him sit on my lap for a bison harvest. That was something that was a first tier before he was ready for hunting to bridge that. He knows. I talk about it when we eat. I am like, “This is why we thank the food on our plate because we’re taking life. It takes life to live, and we want to honor that life as best we can.” There are so many things with figured hunting, but it is about connecting to the inner wild spirit within us all. That brings up a lot. The different archetypes that I connect with are different every single time I’m out there.

The sacred hunt is about connecting to the inner wild spirit within us.

It’s so ironic that in our very connected world, connected virtually, we are so disconnected from who we are, from creation, or our place in it. Hunting helps us reconnect. Another thing I’ve heard you say is that modern man is overworked and painfully domesticated. How so?

I got that from Don Miguel Ruiz. I’m not sure if that was in The Four Agreements or The Mastery of Love, but it’s early on. He talks about the domestication of men. The first time I read that book, I was like, “This guy seems bitter and pessimistic. That’s not the case. We’re not domesticated.” As life has unfolded, it’s a hard pill to swallow. We’ve been domesticated. It’s not necessarily a nefarious thing. I don’t think powers that be want to control us like sheep. Maybe, but maybe it’s because convenience has offered us so many things that make life so easy that we forget those things.

Dr. Will Taegel wrote a great book, Walking With Bears. He has a PhD in Psychology and a PhD in Physics. He was a brilliant man. He was also a Native American elder. That’s where he got the bulk of his wisdom from before he passed away. He talked about growing up in Texas in the ‘60s and how air conditioning came. He lived in Houston.

The first air conditioners came in 1968. For anybody who has experienced a Texas summer and complained about it while having an air-conditioned car and an air-conditioned house, they had high-rise buildings in the ‘60s and no air conditioning. They had a fan. You lift the window open and scalding hot steam comes in. Thank God I don’t live in Houston. I appreciate Austin’s weather quite a bit more. It frames a different way of life. It frames a much different way of life when you consider the indigenous cultures that lived here forever. For thousands of years, they have thrived in this area and many other areas.

I came from Northern California. I came here about 5 or 6 years ago and I’d never experienced winter. I certainly didn’t experience a summer to the degree that I do here. It has been something that reconnects me to the seasons. I know what time of year it is. I follow Pachamama’s annual clock because I’m inherently interwoven with the rhythms of that, and it’s unavoidably so.

I think about those things as we get to lean into that. We get to lean into some of the older technology when I do a sweat lodge, a sauna, or an ice bath. I’m experiencing these things that convenience has taken away from us. It re-enlivens that part of us that makes sense and has a whole host of other benefits to it. You talk a whole show on the benefits of these things. Spiritually, it’s a thing that allows me to feel what time of year it is and to experience what nature is. It’s not an easy thing. We’ve made it easier, but in part, that’s part of the thing that has domesticated us.

I love the word re-enliven that you used because we’ve become so comfortable. It’s like we’re dead already. We’re not experiencing the swings of temperature or genuine authentic connection with nature and animals, appreciating that they’re smart, realizing that we have to outsmart them to get our food on the table. We’re far too comfortable and it’s deadened something inside of us, I believe.

No doubt. There are ways to reawaken it. It has certainly been the case in the sacred hunts and it has also been the case in getting into regenerative agriculture. We’ve made quite a few bonehead arrow mistakes in there. We were probably the only people in Texas who put food on the land, a flock of sheep, without protecting them. I assumed our 8-foot game fence was going to be plenty of protection. We lost 6 sheep in 1 night from coyotes.

We started camping out every night. We got night vision goggles, thermals, and all the things to destroy the coyotes. Something in that didn’t feel right, so I started researching. Coyotes, uniquely, if there are 20 in a pack and 18 die and there’s 1 female and 1 male left, she can go into estrus the next day and get pregnant. She makes the roll call, like, “It’s down to those two.” She’ll go into heat the next day and be available to make babies. It’s an amazing thing that nature has done that for them, but they’re pretty much exterminator-proof. They’re apocalypse-proof in many ways. Killing them is not the answer because they always come back stronger.

For livestock guardians, it is figuring that out and getting a big group of dogs out there. They know. It’s not that we don’t want them on the land, but we also don’t want to lose our entire flock. Having them cushioned from livestock guardians has made a big difference. That, too, is something where death is upon us everywhere. As Joel Salatin says, it’s life, death, decomposition, and regeneration. From hunting and farming, both of these things are starting to be reawakened and more alive inside me than they ever have been before.

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Coming up, Kyle discusses ways we can have a better relationship with death through sacred hunting and regenerative farming.

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Is that something you’ve learned through hunting and that the folks that you take out learn as well?

Yeah. I’m sure you’ve seen the documentary Kiss the Ground and then Common Ground that’s up. They’re fantastic. I’m not sure if it was in those movies. It might’ve been in Common Ground when somebody chooses a vegan diet because they don’t want to kill anything. This isn’t a poo-poo on various types. Weston A. Price, having studied him, there are a lot of people depending on where you’re at that ate various foods that were natural to them and thrived. If it’s for spiritual purposes and things like that, they have the wrong idea.

That’s what they’re pointing to. It is how much death occurs to get the plants on your table. You’ve got to battle snails. You’ve got to battle all sorts of things, like rodents that want to eat your stuff. We have a 400-fruit and nut tree food forest. If we’re not out there every day picking it when it’s ripe, somebody else is going to get to it. That’s the nature of nature. It’s food for all of us. If we want to mitigate that in any other way, it requires killing things. It requires pesticides and herbicides, setting up nets, and doing different things that we don’t want to do.

It’s a consistent reminder that presence is one of the ways we work through that and having things in the right relation where there’s a balance point. The coyotes know they have to keep their distance. We’ve got geese and emus to help protect our chicken flock and things like that. We set up things like that, and still, we got to go pick our food when it’s ripe and make sure that we get to it before anyone else does.

What a different relationship and mindset you must have with food in general. I think of where I live in a city. I’m sure some children think chickens are born without bones and skin because they only get the nuggets and think that maybe they come that way from nature. The kids have no idea. These young children grow into adults who also have misconceptions about our connection with food.

They did a great job of that in Food Inc., talking about, “The package shows up and this is how it looks,” and the disconnect from that. Our farm’s name is Gardeners of Eden. We’ve had people out for community processing where we do a field harvest. We will harvest the animal on site. As many people want to participate in that can. They’ll see the animal go down. They’ll see us bleed the animal out. We’ll hang the animal where more blood comes out and then we’ll field dress the animal. We’ll start working on stuff, grinding, and everything. It’s all done in front of everyone.

One of my best friends runs the farm. He’s the general manager. He has 3 homeschooled kids and we have 2 homeschooled kids and they’re all good friends. They take jiu-jitsu together, nature school, and things like that. His eldest, a ten-year-old girl, wanted to work on the head. She worked on getting as much tongue out as she could and a number of other things. It was like, “What a cool experience for her to be able to have this experience and understand it.”

Her mom’s a terrific cook too. I went on an elk hunt earlier and was successful. She made elk chili for everybody. It was this deeper level of gratitude that comes from knowing what it takes to put the animal on your plate and knowing what that looks like. It’s like the children’s story of the Little Red Hen. We’re all getting loaves of bread. We didn’t have to do any other part of the process and we got the loaf of bread. Participating in any piece of that process connects us a little deeper to nature and what we’re putting in our bodies.

There’s a deeper level of gratitude that comes from knowing what it takes to put the animal on your plate. Participating in any piece of that process connects us a little deeper to nature and to what we’re putting in our bodies.

I think of the confidence aspect. That little ten-year-old is willing to go for it because she has probably been in the kitchen with her mom or maybe she has helped dress other animals. The confidence that she grew, I imagine you’ve experienced that and other hunters have as well. It is like, “I have the ability to provide for myself and provide for my family.” That must be incredibly confidence-boosting.

It’s something that drew me to it. With 2020 and everything happening in the world, it was like, “I need to be proficient at this. If grocery stores close or we’re not allowed in without a certain pass or things of that nature, I want to still be able to have food on the table.” It is invigorating like nothing else because it is something where I’m providing more than enough for us and more than enough for my friends and family.

It’s a special thing to participate in. Even on the hunts themselves, you’re going through something that’s challenging together and coming out on the other side closer because you’ve been through rigorous things. A lot of the hunts can be incredibly challenging physically, mentally, and emotionally. You factor in these other things like what time of year you are hunting and how hot it is. Is it scorching hot? Is it draining you in that way? Is it freezing cold?

When I field dressed the aoudad, it was eighteen degrees outside. Snow was falling in slow motion, drifting back and forth. It was one of the most beautiful things. I had overalls on and a coat. I took my coat off because the animal’s body kept me warm. Our skin-to-skin was keeping me warm. The best word I can describe that is intimate. There’s no other experience I have with an animal at a store where there’s any layer of intimacy and connection point in that way.

A lot of people get drawn to it for various reasons, but I found that sacred hunting stands alone in its class of being able to teach people about these other things that the indigenous elders held. The knowledge and the gnosis of asking for permission and the honoring of the animal in the best way possible does make a difference.

Do you think another way to honor the animal is to eat nose-to-tail? Have you felt that as well as a way to honor the animal?

No doubt. My first sacred hunt was with the carnivore doc, Paul Saladino. Paul is massive on the nose-to-tail. Weston A. Price was massive on the nose-to-tail. These things were highly sought after. I pride myself because both my kids’ first food was beef liverwurst and liver pate. They have no idea. I got that from Sally’s book, The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby & Childcare. Their palate hasn’t adjusted to anything other than milk. You can give them savory food like soft-boiled egg yolk, sea salt, and mashed avocado and they don’t know any difference. That’s their first food. They’re incredibly healthy and incredibly gifted little beings.

The nose-to-tail is such a big one. When I went on my elk hunt, I used a 300 Win Mag. I was in 30-mile-per-hour winds, so my kill shot was slightly forward a little bit. It took out the front shoulder. That quarter was mangled. It was a very big round. We brought that back and the chickens had devoured it in a day. They’re meat eaters. They eat insects all the time. That was put to use.

I get to recycle her body in part back to our land to regenerate our land. I take her body and give back to our plants and the soil from her. It’s cool to see these things start to work full circle. You talk about it, but when you see it and feel it, it’s like, “There’s something I can do with her.” That meat would’ve gone to waste otherwise. If I brought that to a processor they would not have used it. They would’ve thrown that out. It’s special to think about the different ways in which we can honor them.

I talked about the bison harvest. I have her skull there. I have a Euro skull and her fur. That’s something we’ll lay on and stretch and play board games on. It’s a part of our life. It’s a part of the way we honor that animal. We know that story. We can tell the story of her. I can tell the story of each kill. I can tell the story of each harvest. There’s always more to the story than animal dying. That encapsulates something beautiful about those experiences.

Sometimes, we forget that when we partake of the animal or when we eat animal products, the meat, or the organ meats of an animal, it is becoming part of our DNA. It’s becoming part of our bodies. Wasn’t your pregnant wife at one of the field kills? The bison that she ate became a part of your unborn baby’s body to form. That’s wild to think about.

It’s what grew our little girl. She was in the womb. It grew all of us in certain ways. We were placing cells at certain rates, these things that became every one of us. It was growing her in the womb. What a special experience. They had a herd of 80 at the time. It was my son’s first time witnessing any type of field harvest or anything like that. I wasn’t going to take the shot because I wanted to be able to hold him through it and make sure that he was not scared and okay with it.

We did a 7 Directions prayer and asked for her to come forward. She separated from the herd at 80 yards, walked to us, and presented herself broadside at twenty yards right in front of us. You can’t make that up. It was her that we had to have because she was a little armory. She was hooking the ranch hen and flipped him up in the air 3 or 4 times, so she needed to be removed. She was not as domesticated as the rest of them were.

That was so special. They could hear the prayer. They could acknowledge the prayer. I’ve seen that time and again in various ways where we had to harvest an emu. We had 2 males and 1 female. The males lay on the eggs. They were fighting over who had dad rights apparently. One of the males was laying on the eggs and the other male picked all of his feathers off of his backside. It was like, “This guy’s getting tortured.” He would stoically sit there and not move. We harvested the male. On that day, we did the same thing. We made the prayer. It walked with me out away from the donkeys, the other emus, and all the chickens. It removed itself from the equation.

We have a center divide in our food forest where this big red live oak is right in the middle. They’re incredible medicine trees out here. He posted there. We talked for a while, and then at 5 yards, it wasn’t a hunt. It was a harvest. That in and of itself told me he understood on some level and the other animals there as well. No one came buttoning around like, “What are you guys doing?” Everyone kept their distance other than him. That in and of itself was special.

Let’s say we’re not hunters and harvesters. We’re not farmers or ranchers, and we also don’t go on these hunts. Do you think there’s a way that we can better reconnect with nature and animals where food comes from? What suggestions might you have for a person like that?

When I fought, I didn’t make any money even at the highest level in the UFC. I lived in my mom’s detached garage for about five years. She had a quarter acre of land in Northern California. I asked her, “Can I plant fruit trees here and maybe make a raised bed?” She was like, “Yeah. Go for it.” I started planting fruit trees. It was everything that I loved. I planted a peach tree and a plum tree. She had this vine along her driveway. I was like, “Can I rip the vine out and put in this?” She was like, “Go for it.” We grew pumpkins and watermelons. Everything grows in California. That was one nice thing about it. That was the first introductory thing with me.

I started having different encounters with various pollinators like bees and hummingbirds. It was always while I was watering these plants that I had planted. There was this connection point because I was giving something to the earth and in turn, the earth was showing me it understood that. It can be as simple as that.

We go to The Great Outdoors. It’s in Austin. It’s a wonderful organic nursery. Every time we go there, I let my kids pick out something. Oftentimes, they want trees. Bear, who’s my oldest, wanted a fig tree. I was like, “I don’t know if you’ll like figs, but let’s get one. I’ll eat them.” We got it. We gave it some good organic compost. It’s still in the pot because we’re moving to the farm in 2024 and want to be able to have that by our house.

It produced seven figs already before the cold came. We got to have fresh figs. When it goes, we’ll be able to make fig jam and different spreads. There are a million things you can do with that. If something can produce fruit, it’s a draw. If it doesn’t fruit, that’s up to you to figure out what’s happening with that tree. You’re like, “What does it need that I’m not supporting it with.”

For people that don’t have kids, they are like, “I’ll get cats, I want to get a dog,” and these kinds of things. They’re great because they interact with you, but the plants interact with you as well. If you’re listening and tentative to them, you have a relationship as their caretaker to provide what they need. That’s a cool thing. Like kids, they need a lot of help in the first couple of years. After about seven years when they’re well-rooted, then they’re pretty good to stand on their own. They don’t need a whole lot of help after that. It is a lot like kids in that respect. It’s something you get to watch grow over time. That ties you in with the seasons and the cycles of time that a few things can.

The plants interact with you as well. If you’re listening and tentative with them, you have a relationship as their caretaker to provide what they need.

You sound so nurturing. I know you were a football player and a fighter. What got you interested in tapping into this ancestral wisdom and this nurturing harmony with nature?

I have a boxing coach, believe it or not, who was Mestizo, Aztec, and Mexican. He would take us out to a Native American reservation for sweat lodges, and he did so with a lot of the guys on the fight team. That was the entry point because we’d sweat together and go through challenging experiences together. We’d hang out for hours talking. He would tell us a lot about the indigenous wisdom that he had followed from the Mayans to the Aztecs to Northern Native Americans, Sundance, and different things that he had experienced and been to. That was my first deep dive. He set me up with different authors and people to track. Much of that was resonant.

One of the tips that I get from various people who know how to communicate with nature is they’ll say, “If you ask a question and it’s a yes, you’ll feel like an opening. If it’s a no, you’ll feel a little constriction. You might feel warmer or you might get cold. There are different ways in which the body can respond.” I remember everything that he was telling me resonated on a soul level. I could feel my body saying yes in agreement. It was beyond the mind. For me, that was the first time where I was experiencing that. I was like, “Oh.” I had to learn about it later about what was happening, but there’s a visceral yes. It was like a knowing inside that’s agreeing with what I’m being taught.

If you ask nature a question that’s a yes, you’ll feel an opening; if it’s a no, you’ll feel a little constriction.

I know it’s not the nature of this show, but eventually, it turned me on to various plant medicines in a guided ceremonial way. That continued to further that process which ultimately led me back to having a relationship with the land. I was like, “How can I plant things? How can I tend the land? How can I take care of animals? How can I restore the soil, sequester carbon, and do all the things that are regenerative?” That’s been such a beautiful blessing to have him. He passed away about five years ago, but he planted a seed that continues to plant seeds. I always honor him.

That’s so beautiful. It’s important for us to connect with ourselves probably before we can connect with anything else. His invitation to have you become more aware of how your body was responding to give you clues about which way to go and what to do is powerful advice. I want to ask you this. Maybe they’re getting a no about hunting or harvesting. What do you say to the person who thinks maybe it’s unethical to eat animals?

There’s no food you put in your body that isn’t death. There’s a great book that I highly recommend people get into. It’s called The Unlikely Peace at Cuchumaquic. It’s by Martín Prechtel. You look him up. It’s on Audible. He’s awesome. He reads his own book. He deep dives into this. One of the things, and I’ve heard this from many different elders amongst indigenous communities, is that all things are animated with the same life force that we are and all things are created from the creator. They emerge from the same source. The more alive a thing is, the better it is for us. That’s how it works. The more dead a food is, if it can hang out on my shelf for seven years, that’s not something I need to put in my body.

One of the things he speaks to is there’s no hierarchy. If you understand plant medicine, plants are conscious. They have a lot of wisdom. There’s a life force energy inside them. When we consume good plants that have that vibrant life force energy, we feel that life force moves through us. The same thing goes with animals. The kids know it. If we’re on the road, they’re like, “Is this a sad cow or a happy cow?” I have to tell them the truth if we’re eating a sad cow or a happy cow. Being able to participate in it is the very best way to come to terms with that with yourself.

Even USDA stuff is not a good process. You could buy the best regenerative animal and it still gets shipped away from home. It gets clamped on all sides. The no country for old men goes thunk right in the back of the brain. That’s not the best way to go. The best way to go is with its family. It’s got a mouthful of food and the last thing it remembers is being in peace in nature with its family. There is a way to do that when you are doing it yourself. That forces us to be better.

Most hunters have taken a bad shot. I have taken a bad shot on a pig. The sounds that it made I’ll remember for the rest of my life. This is why you don’t take a bad shot. This is why I’ll never take a bad shot again if I don’t have it. In and of itself is fuel to be better, to be more proficient, and to do what’s necessary to be proficient, to practice, and to do all the things. That’s the honing of the breathwork and finding my center when I have the opportunity to take a shot and the knowing of when I don’t have it and saying, “That’s okay, I’m not going to take this shot.”

This is such a far cry from where we started this conversation, talking about how overworked and domesticated we are. The person who is connected to who they are and is connected to nature knows we need to be better. They’re eager to grow and nurture. There are so many beautiful things that you’ve described as you’ve talked about what it means to get involved in sacred hunting. I want to ask you as we start to wrap up the question I’d love to pose at the end of the show. If the audience could only do one thing to improve their health, what would you recommend that they do?

The low-hanging fruit here is to love yourself. Paul Chek is one of my mentors. He has the last four Doctors you’ll ever need. Those are Doctor Diet, anything you put in your body, Doctor Quiet, your sleep and meditation practices, Doctor Movement, every form of movement from running to lifting weights to yoga, and then Doctor Happiness. Doctor Happiness is this big picture. It is your life’s vision, your dream of what you’re creating here, and the legacy you leave behind. It’s also how you fill your cup every single day.

I don’t lift weights every day. I don’t box every day. I certainly don’t hunt very often, but those things fill my cup. When my cup is overflowing, it touches everything that I touch. My kids have a better dad. My wife has a better husband. I work better. People I work with can feel that energy. It’s magnetic, powerful, and a very real energy.

I can do that from any of the various practices, whether it’s big-picture stuff like hunting, at least annually. Filling my cup on a daily basis means going for a walk and being in nature. It means tending to animals and planting trees. It means doing a sauna and an ice bath, lifting weights, or going to the gym and doing some martial arts. All of these things for me tick my boxes. That will be different for everybody. It is putting yourself first in that respect. If you feel your cup every day, it will pour over into everything else that you’re doing.

100%. That energy will overflow. Thank you so much for this conversation. I enjoyed it. Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

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Our guest was Kyle Kingsbury. You can visit Kyle Kingsbury’s website, to learn more. I am Hilda Labrada Gore, the host and producer of the show for the Weston A. Price Foundation. You can find me at Holistic Hilda. Now for our review from JGM 40 entitled Great Weekly Podcast. JGM says, “My weekly favorite listen, packed with knowledge to keep me healthy and wise.” JGM, we are so happy that you’re tuning in. You too can leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Click on Ratings and Reviews. Give us as many stars as you’d like and tell us what you think of the show. Thank you so much for tuning in. Stay well and remember to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.

About Kyle Kingsbury

Kyle Kingsbury is a former football player (Arizona State), a retired American professional mixed martial artist (UFC six years), former Director of Human Optimization at Onnit and host of The Kyle Kingsbury Podcast.

While fighting at the highest level, Kyle became fascinated with nutrition, performance, and recovery. Since his MMA retirement, his focus has shifted to learning more about longevity, plant medicines, and inner peace.