Chapter 1: What is the background of Coleman Ruiz?
Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Coleman Ruiz. Coleman Ruiz is a former Tier 1 Navy SEAL Special Operator. I think it's fair to assume that most of you have never heard of Coleman Ruiz before.
And in fact, it was part of his former life job description to be largely covert, such that only his family and friends really knew what he did for a living.
Chapter 2: How did childhood experiences shape Coleman's journey?
He is, however, now living as a civilian. And the reason I invited Coleman on this podcast was essentially to tell us his life story, which of course includes his time in the SEAL teams, but includes so much more that I'm certain is of value to everyone.
Today, Coleman shares with you his remarkable journey from childhood through his teenage years into the military and some of the things that happened during his time in the military, which then informed his post-military civilian life and what it is to be a father, a husband, and somebody who has experienced tremendous loss at various stages of his life, as well as tremendous triumph.
Indeed, if ever there was a life that could be framed within the context of the so-called hero's journey, it is the life of Coleman Ruiz.
Coleman Ruiz's life is one that embodies focus and pursuit, family and friends and love, all the things that we think of in terms of having a rich life, but also one that includes many unforeseen tragedies, many unforeseen challenges, both internal and external.
Coleman also shares with a rare and extraordinary degree of vulnerability the extent to which challenges in life, both external and internal, have helped shape him as a human being. What follows is a discussion that everyone, male, female, young, or old, and regardless of position in life, is sure to derive tremendous benefit from.
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.
Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up. Waking Up is a meditation app that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and NSDR, non-sleep-deep-rest protocols. I started using the Waking Up app a few years ago because even though I've been doing regular meditation since my teens and I started doing yoga nidra about a decade ago,
My dad mentioned to me that he had found an app, turned out to be the Waking Up app, which could teach you meditations of different durations and that had a lot of different types of meditations to place the brain and body into different states and that he liked it very much.
So I gave the Waking Up app a try and I too found it to be extremely useful because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate, other times I have longer to meditate. And indeed, I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation
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Chapter 3: What were the pivotal moments in Coleman's teenage years?
For those of you who don't know, yoga nidra is a process of lying very still, but keeping an active mind. It's very different than most meditations. And there's excellent scientific data to show that yoga nidra and something similar to it called non-sleep deep rest, or NSDR, can greatly restore levels of cognitive and physical energy, even with just a short 10-minute session.
If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, you can go to wakingup.com slash Huberman and access a free 30-day trial. Again, that's wakingup.com slash Huberman to access a free 30-day trial. And now for my conversation with Coleman Ruiz. Coleman Ruiz, welcome.
Thank you. Very excited to see you.
It's great to have you here. I'm guessing most people are probably not familiar with Coleman Ruiz. So let's start at the beginning. Where were you born? What was the context of your home life? And maybe let's get up to maybe elementary school, middle school, and whatever top contour or deep details you want to get into, we're all ears.
Chapter 4: How did wrestling influence Coleman's life and mindset?
Okay, I'll bring us up to seventh grade because I would say that was probably the first big inflection point in my life. I was born in New Orleans in a suburb called New Orleans East, we call it. And I have an older sister, two younger brothers. My dad was a welder. My mom was a dental assistant. And we had a couple of boxers and dogs. And we had a very modest, very modest upbringing.
I won't overdramatize it, but, you know, admittedly, you know, sometimes we got cheese from the lady across the street who didn't want her welfare cheese. And it was one of those, you know, I could tell my parents were fighting for every nickel. And but it was great. I mean, my cousin grew up across the street from me. He's exactly my age.
We had that at least some of my memory, Andrew, of it was it was very pleasant. I learned later that you forget a lot of things in your childhood that were unpleasant. But my initial memories when I started thinking about this kind of thing and, you know, as you and I have discussed, getting professional help and you start to learn a little bit more about your childhood.
But I remember it being very pleasant. You know, we've... You've told me about your background in skateboarding and stuff. You know, we skateboarded the neighborhood. BMX was a big thing when we were kids. It was very much a rat-the-streets upbringing. There was a park behind the neighborhood. We would cut through the fence and go, you know, this kind of thing.
I played football and baseball and very normal in that regard. Went to the neighborhood school. And then in sixth grade... I went to what was my high school, but it went fifth through 12th, called Holy Cross High School in the Lower Ninth Ward, which that spot is now vacated because the school, I went back after Hurricane Katrina, the whole school had to be moved.
And I went there in seventh grade. And it was a hellacious start. I mean, it was detention after detention, you know, fist fight after fist fight, and damn near. Were you the instigator of those fights? Probably some. I definitely fell in with the wrong crowd initially in that sixth and seventh grade years. And, um...
I wouldn't say it was so extreme that like it was complete mayhem, but I was definitely on, you know, problem situation number whatever when my parents were called in and it was kind of the last straw type thing. And I got cut from baseball. My grades were fine. I was always a pretty good student. It was just teenager shenanigans. And then I went out for wrestling.
Can I just pause you for a second? So on the violence part, I have a little bit of experience with this, but violence can come from trying to protect others, instigating. It can come from the wildness, just trying to see what it feels like, experimentation, and any number of other things, all the way to pure sociopathy, which we know you are not and weren't.
Do you recall feeling something inside that inspired this? Was it for attention? Did it feel good afterwards? Can you recall what it was about?
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Chapter 5: What role do mentors play in Coleman Ruiz's life?
Something that close friends, close male friends of mine have told me, these are friends that are married with kids. And I've heard this from people that were in the military and as well as those that weren't, was that it was very important to them to marry somebody who, were they to die, they knew their kids would be well taken care of.
Oh, that one's not even, there's no question about that.
Yeah, so that was like a primary criteria. And I think in your line of work, I mean, that must be especially important because the probability of dying is, Well, let's face it, it's much higher. As my sister, who doesn't like sharks, once told me, she said, you know, the best way to not get eaten by a shark is to never go in the ocean. You know, there is a way to limiting probabilities.
She'll swim in the ocean a little bit. But the point being that when you're in the military and your shoot, move, and communicate is a big part of the job description. And the enemy is also taught to shoot, move, and communicate that there's a decent probability that you could die. So... Did you ever think, okay, well, if I die, my kids are okay because Bridget's solid?
Or were you still just operating on this 24-hour schedule that you had adopted way back in the seventh grade?
No, I think, well, maybe. I'd have to ask her that question. I think I was backed away from the 24-hour ledge a little bit. I knew that the boys obviously would be taken care of with my wife. That never crossed my mind probably until you just asked the question.
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Chapter 6: How does Coleman describe his experience with emotional pain?
That was almost just like table stakes. Back to this adaptive but maladaptive behavior. When Doug was killed, I just realized I had to work even harder to try to stay alive. Because if you met the guy, there is, I'm going to say it probably multiple, there is not a fucking human on the planet that was as tough and as focused and as hyper dialed in to how to do the job 100% effectively as he was.
And it happened to him, you know. And I just never, it's almost embarrassing, Andrew, to say I never thought about it like that until Doug was killed.
And yet, and I'm not challenging that at all, of course, I mean, life, circumstances, the other team gets a vote too. Totally. Right? I mean, somebody can be seemingly indestructible, oh, so capable and talented and get T-boned at an intersection and die. Right?
Chapter 7: What insights does Coleman share about seeking help?
Like that. Yeah. We've known people like that. All of us, you know, you hear these things. That's why they're called tragedies.
Yeah, to put it in context, what we have to remember is part of the beauty of taking a young person and taking all the ingredients that a person comes into special operations, pick your service. I'm agnostic. I mean, some of my best buddies are Army and Marine Corps. I'm agnostic to the service head.
When you end up at a certain point and you look back, you realize for 10 or 15 years, I've been indoctrinated in a very adaptive way. to believe that I'm immortal. Because if you didn't, you certainly wouldn't jump out of aircraft at 25,000 feet with no lights. And you for hell for sure wouldn't go into some of these fucking towns we go into and end up in these firefights.
Like you have some weird, I'll speak for myself, I was entirely convinced that I couldn't be killed. And just because I was in some way, Andrew, convinced that our training was so good that that shit wouldn't happen to us.
Let's take a step back for a second and acknowledge the truth all around that set of statements, which is that I think most people can think of the government and the training programs as honing the body. But it's probably not lost on you at this point in your life that you're a weapon. Your mind became a weapon, right?
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Chapter 8: How has Coleman's perspective on manhood evolved?
Your body became a weapon. You were a weapon of the military. from the inside out. And in the statement you just made encapsulates that. And that weapon honed itself for a long time, but then that's what the military is. It creates weapons out of humans. And I'm not demonizing the military whatsoever. I want to be very clear.
I realize that statement could be construed differently, but that mindset encapsulates that.
so um so with the other guys i want to make sure i finish your question so it started with doug and then you know i don't know what direction you want to go here specifically but then it just kept going andrew right like at that time doug was 07 and then we went to iraq in the winter of 07 08 which was complete mayhem and the troop was i mean my my troop in the winter of 07 08
were like fucking superheroes. And a guy named Tommy Valentine was the troop chief. And we got home and he was killed in a parachute accident. After all that shit we went through. Badger, a guy named Mark Carter was killed in that deployment. We got home and Tommy was killed in a parachute accident.
And me and a guy named Dutch, we went up to Minnesota to notify Tommy's parents and his sister and his brother. And we're not, the Navy calls them CACOs, like casualty assistance officers. These are jobs in the military where you're trained to do this stuff. You know, one of the things that's amazing about us is if a guy gets killed, we send a team guy there. But think about the team guy.
Like, it's great for the family that you send the team guy, but we don't know shit about sitting with a family who's about to be notified that their son, in this case of Tommy... Britt went to Christina's house, his lab, Britt Slabinski. He went to Christina's house, and me and Dutch went up to Minnesota. And I'm shaking right now. Like, I was shaking the whole drive.
We had to get to International Falls all the way up north. The Valentines are incredible people. And, I mean, notifying a family was just... It was brutal. And so this is, this is the, this is 08 and then it just keeps coming. It's Nate and it's Mike and it's Lance and it's extortion in 2011. And in the middle of that, Adam gets killed, right?
Like tons of people know about extortion because it was one helicopter, obviously full.
Well, maybe we just briefly want to mention that was August 2011, as I recall.
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