We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Christopher Maher a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Christopher, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What was your school or training experience like? Share an anecdote or two that you feel illustrate important aspects or the overall nature of your schooling/training experience.

When I was in SEAL training, I was at the watch with another gentleman, whose name I’ll keep private, and a call came into the quarter deck. And the quarter deck is where, you know, all the staff comes through in the morning in order to get to their offices, and a call came in that night that an instructor, who was on duty, that his mom was in the hospital. And they said, leave a note for this instructor in the morning, so he can call his mom. And the guy that took the call, I was the roving watch. The guy manning the phone took the call, wrote the message down, and put it down for that instructor. And you know, we went about our business thinking nothing.

And that morning at breakfast, my class head officer comes up and says, Hey, listen, you need to go see Senior Chief McCarthy. And we’re like, okay, so me and this other individual, we run over, we meet him in his office, and he just starts flipping out, throwing desks, throwing chairs, this is like, you know, this is this is a, this is a big, powerful man, do you know what I mean? And he’s just so on fire and upset. And he goes, Do you guys know what you did wrong? And I was like, no senior chief. He goes, my best friend’s mom died in the hospital last night. Because you didn’t go over and knock on his door and let him know that his mom was in a hospital. And you know, the call came in at like, I don’t know, two, three o’clock in the morning when we were on the watch. And no one told us that we had permission to do that, right.

And in SEAL training, there’s this thing called drop on request. And he kept freaking out. I mean, I’ll be honest with you, I was a little scared. And I remember feeling nervous inside. I was a little shaky. But the other kid…we went back to breakfast. And by the time we finished breakfast, and got ready for the next evolution, I was looking around for him to talk to him. And I asked other guys in a class where’s such and such? And they said, Oh, he quit. And I said, Wow, that’s unfortunate. And then I just can’t I kind of moved on. And the thing is, is that it was our job to put the note in the instructors slot so he could see it in the morning and we did that. And we did exactly what we were supposed to do. And so I didn’t feel like I was in the wrong, right?

So I moved through fourth phase through first phase, into second phase. And I go into second phase. And here is this guy, Senior Chief McCarthy, who’s the leading…He’s the highest ranking enlisted man in that phase now. And he then decides that he’s going to figure out how to get me kicked out of training. And so the only way that he could do it, is by giving me safety violations. So in SEAL training, you’re only allowed three safety violations. And when you get your third, you go to a board, and it’s members of the training staff at SEAL training, plus a couple of officers, and one high ranking officer and I go into the meeting.

And they’re going around the room, basically naming off my safety violations, and they go, what do you have to say for yourself? And I told them the truth, I go, Listen, I was a new recruit. I was a roving watch during the watch, and such and such, took that information that came on the call, and he wrote it down and put it in the instructor’s slot. And I was never informed to do this. And Senior Chief McCarthy has had it out for me ever since. And that wasn’t my fault. And if you look, luckily for me, I had made copies of all of the other instructors signing off on my equipment, saying that the equipment was good. It’s when I came back from lunch, that senior chief McCarthy had gone over the equipment, and then said that it was wrong. So either he hasn’t trained his staff correctly, or he has it out for me. And then I just said, Look, I feel like potentially he has some upset. That has nothing to do with my performance. I’m meticulous, I’ve done a very good job. And I stood up for myself and I called him out in front of his peers. And they said, step out into the hall.

I stepped out into the hall. There was like all this like loud rah, rah, rah, rah, rah era, like, I could hear voices in and I was standing out there, and I came back in and they said, Listen, we have removed your three safety violations, and you’re welcome to go back to class.

So if I hadn’t stood up for myself, right, if I had just, like, closed my mouth, right, didn’t say anything, I would have been removed from SEAL training for three safety violations. And in my mind, it would have been the wrong thing. The wrong…how do I say this? I think the lesson for me was to stand up and say, what’s true and honest, regardless of what someone else is saying about you, and when someone else has it out for you. If you’re doing the right things, and you’re doing good things, people will stand up for you.

And you gotta imagine, he’s a senior chief well respected guy in the SEAL teams and in SEAL training, he’s part of their staff. And somehow, a handful of these guys decided to stand up for me, which means they went against their own staff member. I think when you’re doing the right things, if you stand up for yourself, others are willing to stand up for you. And they did and I eventually graduated through SEAL training.

But when I got into third phase I got out of his phase, right? He then attempted to influence his friends in third phase to again get me removed from training. And so I had fallen off an obstacle called the slide for life and severely injured my ankles and fortunate for me, my partner at the time, my girlfriend, her uncle was a podiatrist. And so he built a cast for me, a removable cast that I fit inside of my combat boots, which would allow me to run on that ankle.

And I show up to take a third phase, four mile timed run, which you have to do all of your timed runs. And I show up and then I see him there. And so I go, Okay, I’m gonna walk up slowly, I can see he’s going to try to get them to stop me. But fortunate for me, one of the MDs at the time, came up and told me Hey, Senior Chief McCarthy is going to try to get you kicked out of SEAL training for not doing this run, you’re going to have to do that run so show up in the morning. And I showed up. And there he was standing there at the line.

And they said, Okay, 3-2-1, you know, and they have like a little gun that goes, poof, your fake gun. And I took off. And I did the run anyway. Right? I just ignored them as if I didn’t hear them. Because I knew if I didn’t do that run, they were going to say, Oh, you didn’t complete all of your timed runs in SEAL training. And I was the fastest runner in a class, which didn’t make any sense. But he was looking for any avenue to continue to influence instructors in SEAL training to get me out of SEAL training. I mean, in the end, it never worked. But fortunate for me, I was a well liked student. And I just thought that, you know, whenever you’re doing the right things, and you’re doing good work, people are going to look out for you. And people looked out for me that were, you gotta understand, these were officers in the military that were telling an enlisted gentleman that hey, look, you better watch out for this, this and this. And I was able to move, I was able to finish SEAL training and move into the SEAL teams, which was a goal and a dream of mine. And the lesson there is when you’re doing right and good, and you stand up for yourself, other people will stand up for you when they know someone is doing things that are wrong and bad.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

At the age of 22, Christopher Lee Maher was a Navy SEAL, in his prime with a sleek 1.8% body fat and pound for pound, he was one of the fittest people on the planet. He was also completely unaware of the full impact that stress would eventually have on his physical, mental, energetic, and emotional wellbeing. He trained all day long, at a level on par with professional athletes. In fact, after the SEALs, he began focusing on his dream of making it to the US Olympic trials, in track and field. A lack of awareness of the impact of high stored stress loads kept him from ever manifesting his dream.
Like many high performing athletes, he dealt with pain on a semi-consistent basis. Over time, that escalated to pain in every joint, in his feet, lower back, and neck. He was headed for a full-blown hip replacement, resorted to reading lips because his hearing was shot, and his vision wasn’t much better. He barely slept and spent his days like a zombie.
How could a person in peak condition be so unhealthy, and yet, so unaware, particularly when others saw him as a model of peak physical health?
Piled-up stress causes severe and traumatic damage over time—what Christopher calls Strauma, a combination of stress plus time that transforms into trauma.
Anyone who has been under complex stress loads or abuse has enough to cause serious emotional, energetic, and physical damage. Even if you have a tiny amount of stress every day, it eventually adds up and stunts your evolution.
Through intense pain, Christopher devoted all of his energy, time, and resources seeking out answers that would alleviate his discomfort. Eventually finding relief, Christopher applied the learned techniques and worked on himself 5 to 6 hours every day for 7 years. He put every biological system that was out of balance back in balance.
This process led to a deep understanding of what it takes for the body, mind, energy, and emotions to perform optimally.
Christopher went on to study at the Pacific College of Oriental Medicine and Yo San University where he learned Traditional Chinese Medical Practices and an equal amount of Western science and pathology. He has spent the last decade studying at The Universal Healing Tao System and is a Master student of Grand Master Mantak Chia at the Universal Tao Master School in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He is currently pursuing his masters and doctoral degrees in Traditional Chinese Medicine.
From his own relentless search to evolve and heal himself, he now innately understands the correlation between the emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of a being.
His knowledge and experience led him to develop a comprehensive system of total physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing and integration: the True Body Intelligence technology.
You won’t find much online about Christopher, as his clients built his practice through word of mouth. With his help, his clients have succeeded at the highest levels in sports, entertainment, business, medicine, and international politics.
Christopher’s practice is located in Los Angeles, CA. He is an author, inventor, entrepreneur, speaker, coach, and innovator in the fields of health, wellness, and longevity.
At True Body Intelligence, we empower individuals, communities, and organizations by providing education, tools, and experiences to decrease the complex stressors that bring struggle and strife as well as prevent them from reaching elevated states of well being. True Body Intelligence is comprised of five systems that have their foundations rooted in five separate continents, Icentric Strength (North America), Body of Light (Northern Europe), Bio-Energetic Self Transformational Sequences (India), Ma Xing (Asia), and Sha King (Africa and South America).

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Yeah, it’s easy. So we were in hell week and it was Wednesday night, which is hump day in Hell Week. And I didn’t get enough food to eat because we were in Camp Pendleton. Because the sewage pipe busted in San Diego that leads out to the ocean. And the ocean was highly polluted. So we weren’t allowed to go into the ocean. So they shipped us up to a Marine Base, north of San Diego to finish up Hell Week. And I was freezing. Like super, super, super, super cold. And one of my buddies said to me, man, you know, we were getting like, I don’t know, like a cup of water or something. And one of my buddies in SEAL training from Philly said to me, Hey, man, you’re not shaking like everyone else. And I said, it’s weird. I feel warm. And then I remember this video that my sixth grade teacher Gary Hall Baker showed us about hypothermia. And this story about this Eskimo. And I remember that during the National Geographic film that we were watching that they said that the Eskimos who get trapped in the cold right before they die from hypothermia, they feel really, really, really warm. And then as I was walking back to the circle, where all the other guys were to share jokes for hump night, during hell week, I remember that story. And I was like, Oh, okay. And it’s just sort of crystallized in my mind. And then we went into sharing stories, there was like a fire. And we have to get up, and they’ve lined all of our boat oars in a maze and if anyone knocked one of them down, we were going to have to go back in to the ocean for surf torture. And I was the last one out of the circle, I knocked down every oar because I couldn’t keep myself standing. And one of the instructors recognized that something was wrong. And they determined that I had full blown hypothermia. They took a rectal thermometer, inserted that, found that my core temperature was, you know, like 87 or 86.3 degrees, and then they got out some blankets and you know, huddled in around me. And then they took me off to the hospital. And there I was having what was called ventricular fibrillation. And they slowly warmed me up. And, you know, I went to bed that night, woke up in the morning, I got shoved back, had to go back into SEAL training, they told me I needed to gain 25 pounds. I eat a bunch of food, gained a bunch of weight, went back in the SEAL training, went back in the hell week. And at the end of that hell week, I received an award from the training staff, a first phase for my energy and my effort and my leadership. So I went from, you know, being rolled back out of SEAL training to classes to then, you know, getting this award. And, you know, the irony is that award is what was also presented when Senior Chief McCarthy was trying to get me kicked out of SEAL training, right. So, you know, if you look at these steps, all these things had been set up for me to have success. And regardless of what the steps are in front of me, I am going to figure out how to succeed if success is possible. And I gained the weight that I needed to you know, and I did whatever was necessary in order to let people know that I was very serious about you know, the training that I was in and in the end, I graduated.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Okay, so a funny lesson that I had to unlearn, which is after I left the SEAL teams…I was looking for my next goal. My next challenge. What I chose was to go into something that was near and dear to me, which was racing, which was running track and field.

And I had set a goal for myself to get to the Olympic trials. And I went full bore. I took all of those life lessons from SEAL training and I applied them to training for track and field. And the lessons that I learned was in SEAL training, is if you’re in pain, and you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.

What that means is, even though you have knee pain, if your goal is to get to Olympic trials, you just keep running. Right? If you have hip pain, and your goal is to get to Olympic trials, you just keep running, eventually, the pain will go away.

Well, what I didn’t understand was structure biomechanics. And that, and what I mean by that is this is that you can never go from something like SEAL training into something like track and field and sprinting, using methods from SEAL training. And so my, my effort that I gave at every practice was 110%. So I never knew how to give 90, right. And so what would happen is, I would train hard every day. And then we would get to a race. And all the guys that were my teammates that I was beating in practice, they were scorching me in races. And so I was burning myself out during the week, looking like a champ at practice, and then looking like a chump when it came to performing on race day.

And I didn’t understand it until my last let’s say warm up race that we did before the championships. And I remembered that when I raced in high school, I always went out last. So the first cup, you know, the first part of the race, I was in last place, and then I would slowly pick up the pace, right?

Well, I was applying SEAL training to racing. So the second the gun went off, I was running as hard as I could. Right. And that really never worked out for me. And what happened is I ended up frustrated, confused and agitated. You know, to the point of being so frustrated, I would cry. Right? Like I don’t get it. This doesn’t make any sense. I show up. I work hard. I give 110% On every effort. And how come I’m failing?

And the reason that I was failing is that I was giving 110% on on every single effort. Okay. And when you’re talking about grunt work, yeah, you can give 110% for grunt work, because it’s all based on endurance, right? But when you’re talking about sophisticated racing, you can never ever participate that way. Because how can you give 110% every rep during the week and then have anything left for your race? And so I had to unlearn a very deeply ingrained strategy for success. Which was I can outwork everyone, if I can outwork you, I was under the assumption that meant that I could outrace you. And nothing could have been further from the truth.

Because my teammates seemed like they’re slacking today. Right? But I went hard all day, every day. And so that assumption, that inability to shift quickly enough, is what caused me to physically, physiologically and structurally be in a lot of pain and discomfort, emotionally, be frustrated and agitated. And, you know, psychologically, mentally be confused. And fortunately, my body broke down, and I had to go look for answers somewhere else.

And by the time I got those answers, I was no longer interested in that strategy anymore. So I realize that at some point, you have to be able to shift your strategies relative to your goals. You can’t take one single minded strategy and apply it to everything because it was a limiting belief. And that limiting belief I ran it hard for like three and a half years I applied it. And all it did was cause me pain and discomfort and confusion and agitation. So, applying a SEAL Team mindset to everyday life has its limitations.

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