He’s sometimes known as Dr. Amazon, and he is the embodiment of Eastern mysticism meeting Western science and ideas. It was no easy journey for him to reach that embodiment, and today he is sharing his well-earned wisdom on today’s episode of Awesome Health Podcast. Despite growing up in a traditional household, Dr. Stefan marched to the beat of his own drummer from early on. As a child he would play outside and would feel as though the plants were speaking to him. He loved the connection he felt to them and it is something he honors today. With his own drum beat still calling him forward, he attended Duke University for his undergraduate studies. He was drawn to Duke in particular, and later he discovered why: they had a parapsychology department and he was fascinated! That fascination led him to meet some equally interesting people like Elmer Green, the biofeedback innovator. And eventually those experiences led him to study transpersonal psychology and earn his PhD. But those weren’t the only intriguing events of his life, today he shares his own near-death experience, and what it was like to work with Wall Street experts. You’ll also hear about his time spent with indigenous peoples and how he came to be the medical ambassador for the Navajo Nation. Dr Stefan is helping them to build a native children’s hospital and to find ways of bringing new mental health care via technology for their underserved people. Join us for those tales and so much more on this episode of Awesome Health Podcast! Resources: Dr. Stefan’s web site Dr. Stefan on Instagram Podcast and I'm here with Dr Stefan and we'll get into his variety of names, his variety of lifetimes, his variety of interests. Dr Stefan is an incredible guy. Sometimes some people call him Doctor Amazon as he's a naturopathic doctor. He also studied, uh, medicine at Duke. He's going to talk about that. He's also an extremely spiritual guy. He's into a lot of psychological stuff and he's one of the most remarkable individuals I know. In fact, I've been friends with Stefan for, well, geez, it must be getting close to 13-14 years. It's a long time. It's a long time. We met in Sedona, Arizona as both of us we're kind of engaged in a spiritual, said, path. And that is our journey for self-realization to ourselves. And we have found that we had a lot of common interests. Wade Lightheart: But let's get into a little bit about your background because you know, it's hard to peg you down, doc. I mean, geez, you've done so many things and you have such a broad brush stroke. Can you give our people before we get into today's talk, which I think is gonna mind blow about what you're doing with indigenous people, what you're doing with some of these, uh, medicines that are found in the Amazon. Of course, your medical background, your naturopath, the background, your psychological way. I mean it's just you're just a Jack of all trades and you're really good at all these things. How did you get here? How did you get on this journey and where's it going? Dr Stefan: Well, my friend, I want to thank you for the opportunity to, to spend some time with you and do this lovely chat. It reminds me a little bit of the kind of talks we had in the Amazon with the indigenous tribes where in, you know, instead of watching television, we spent our time tell a vision. So here we are sharing stories with each other and, and life is about stories and the Epic journey we're, we embark on, we all have these, these stories in us and I feel privileged that I've had a chance to live out some amazing ones. I really have. Um, so yeah, there's so many things to cover, but I definitely want to share some salient bits of my story and, um, you know, invite your listeners to go on that journey with me if they feel the resonance. So, yeah. Um, I mean I just, I just know when I was a kid, I was born in a traditional Ukrainian household, if you will. Dr Stefan: Even though I grew up outside