Episode 38: Zeez & Eric | Wellness DAO - Bringing Mindfulness and Wellness to Web3
Newsletter Copy?
Status
Zeez & Eric – Wellness DAO
Timestamps:
00:00 - 00:44 - Introduction to Crypto Sapiens
00:45 – 01:37 - Guest Introduction
01:38 – 05:26 – Zeez's introduction & Journey into Crypto
05:27 – 9:16 – Eric’s introduction & His Crypto Journey
09:17 – 14:22 – How your personal wellness practices influenced the development of the DAO
14:23 – 20:22 – Journaling Prompts.
20:23 - 24:20 – Advice to someone whose mental well-being has been affected by the space.
24:21 – 28:20 – The process when someone discovers wellness DAO
28:21 – 31:11 – Importance of missions when moving a DAO
31:12 – 32:13 - Conclusion
Humpty: Welcome to Crypto Sapiens, a show that hosts lively discussions with innovative web3 builders to help you learn about decentralized money systems including Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Defi. The podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only and it is not financial advice. Crypto Sapiens is presented in partnership with BanklessDAO, a movement for pioneers seeking freedom from the limitations of the traditional financial system. BanklessDAO will help the world go Bankless by creating user-friendly on-ramps for people to discover decentralized financial technologies through education, media, and culture.
Hello, and welcome back to Crypto sapiens. I'm excited to be chatting today with Zeez and Eric, co-founders of wellness DAO. Many times especially in web3 I think we find ourselves putting off our mental health and wellbeing in order to keep up with all the development news and speculation. So today we'll explore this topic framed by the personal journeys of Zeez and Eric in WellnessDAO
we kick off the discussion, learning about their own wellness practices, such as yoga, meditation, and journaling, and how it influences, how they connect and engage with their community. We also discuss how NFTs can be used to promote and reward participation and align the community as a whole. Lastly, we close out on a conversation about the importance of having a clear mission to inspire a strong culture and future development of the DAO, so let's get started.
Zeez: I'm Zeez, I am currently living in San Francisco, but actually about to move to New York in five days. My background is I actually started my career in TradFi and you know, was working at a investment bank and financial advisory and so you know I do feel like there is still quite a big culture gap between you know, the contingent of people who work in TradFi and who have this conventional understanding of financial markets and financial assets and you know at the other end of the spectrum is the you know, deep you know, OG Bitcoiners, so to speak who have been in Bitcoin since, you know, 2013 since the early days, 2008, and so that was sort of the context that I grew up in and started my career in. While I was there you know I learned about the asset class and, you know as a young person figured it made sense to diversify even if I didn't really understand the technology itself or you know didn't really understand the value of it you know, it's just good to have your money across lots of different places and you know not just in the S and P and not just in, you know, real estate or not just in bonds, so I started investing a very standard on ramp, you know buying a few you know, a couple hundred dollars of Ethereum and Bitcoin every month but over time as I transitioned out of that industry into what I do now which is early stage investing, I started hearing more about web3 about the consumer and social applications that are built on top of it, about NFTs, about defi and you know, really this Cambrian explosion of different use cases for this underlying decentralized compute system that people are building, you know, as we're starting to realize now, a lot of those used cases are not really use cases they are you know, yield farms or they are Ponzi schemes, or they are, you know, marketing schemes built on top of the core technology but I think that there ends up being this interesting conflation of the two between what is blockchain technology and what are its capabilities versus what are the use cases or what are the consumer facing experiences that we have today using the blockchain? So that is, you know, the area that I'm explore continuing to explore and invest behind is like, what are real infrastructure? You know, what are meaningful applications of decentralized computing systems that we should manifest into the universe? And also, you know how do we not recreate the same you know misaligned incentive systems that we saw in web2 you know how do we create a new world order and a new culture of mutual support and care you know, I've heard it described as like a collective capitalism the fact that sort of this financialization of digital assets can empower a collectivist to capitalism as opposed to a centralized capitalism and you know, whether or not we deliver on those things it's still super early to tell, but I think that's a lot of my underlying motivation and interest in the space is just you know, how do we envision a more optimistic and a more egalitarian future that is not, you know the way that we live today which certainly has a lot of advantages and has a lot of benefits but also leaves a lot to be desired in terms of decentralizing power and decentralizing data and decentralizing access to capital, so that's been about me.
Humpty: That's great thank you. That's quite comprehensive and even there I think that there's a lot that I would like to explore and unpack as we go through the conversation. But Eric why don't we go ahead and give you a chance here to give you an introduction about yourself and same like, kind of that crypto journey you've had up to co-founding wellness DAO.
Eric: For sure, thanks for having us once again. My name is Eric, I am based in New York City, I also used to live in San Francisco. I recently moved here in the middle of last year. My crypto journey has been quite interesting. So I started my career in web2 at Salesforce, big tech was a software engineer. Then I moved to kind of the sales and solution side, according pre-sales team and I've always been a huge enthusiast in crypto, I was investing on and off, you know shitcoins or altcoins, but me and my buddies would trade them on cool coin, So always have been a fan of, you know the kind of retail investing side in buying and trading. And then recently last year around this time when I started to go in a deep rabbit hole by NFTs, and I learned that you know, obviously there's like a ton of FOMO in this space, there's a ton of blue chip projects and in the beginning, I was also in it to make a quick flip but then I realized there's so much utility behind it and the whole space brings about so much interesting utility by like, you know, token gating things. Yeah So we just thought that you know now the technology is here now blockchain provides utility for let's say, you know instructors and teachers to be rewarded financially and incentivize people to Zerodha coin about decentralizing these big systems, so like content creators on YouTube, you know they put out their content but YouTube owns it right? So I was thinking, you know, I've been a Yogi for quite a while, started practicing maybe in 2016, I recently finished my teacher training so I was thinking yeah we should reward these you know, fitness instructors, these meditation teachers and they should be able to own their own content in this new ownership economy and collect royalties on it so that's when we kind of came together, met Zeez through a mutual friend and we decided to start, you know, wellness DAO and our vision for this is just to promote these mindfulness practices, you know, we don't want to token gate it, you don't have to buy to join our community, but, you know, eventually, we did wanna do an NFT drop and You know, reward holders by going to retreats and doing more in-person utility and bringing that aspect to things. As far as like my wellness journey, I started to embark on a spiritual path as I was exploring different martial arts, discovering my true self, trying to figure out what stuck. I ended up really identifying with practices like yoga and meditation and as the pandemic hit, I started to dive deeper and fully fuller into my practice. And that's when I realized yoga is, you know, it's a form of self-expression, it counters a stagnant energy that we have all day sitting at our desk job, it's a movement, it's a meditation. So it really helps me, you know, just find my own space in the mornings every day and I finish my 200-hour yoga teacher training and would like to share this practice with others. So that's kind of our vision for wellness now is to just really bring this to everyone just really share what we know and build a community around all these different practices.
Humpty: That's wonderful, and thank you so much again for the comprehensive introduction. Similarly, to what Zeez was saying I think that there's a lot to unpack here, and you kind of nicely led us into my first question and that is how to have your personal wellness practices, right you know, what that means to you influenced those processes maybe that have been developed for wellnessDAO yeah,
Eric: I can go first on this one, basically, yeah you know I came from it, you know from a Yogi's perspective of, you know everyone's on their own path, right? I'm by no means like a master or, you know, like more advanced than anyone, you know yoga's a practice where we cater to all levels right? And the important, the most important part is showing just showing up to the mat and just, you know setting aside time for yourself and knowing that time is like interrupted you don't have to think about what's next you think about, you know, you're just there, you're fully in the moment. So, we really tried to, wanted to kind of like bring, build community around these practices, to have people to share this with right, to have people to, you know, practice together, discuss together so that's where I think the community aspect of web3 is so strong. So, it made complete sense to, you know integrate and start this.
Humpty: I love that. Zeez do you have any, you know, wellness practices that are important to you that get you through your day or maybe that's how you kick off your week that you feel are crucial to the design and processes at wellness style?
Zeez: Yeah, definitely I think, you know, Eric's point around showing up and you know it doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be best at something, but you know the act itself and the act of showing up for yourself and carving out that space for yourself is really important. So for me I'm a very active journaler and so I journal every night, it's sort of like how I close off my day before I you know go to sleep and I think more broadly it ties into a practice of self-reflection and you know constantly thinking about what I am grateful for and what there's so much to be grateful for and so much optimism in the world and then I think that really in web3, you know there's always a lot happening and so it can be relatively easy to, you know jump around from place to place and sort of lose sight of the flow and the underlying act of just showing up being enough and so that's sort of how we wanted to encourage people to think about web3 as well is you know, there's so much in the mix and you can get caught up and overwhelmed and burnt out if you try to do everything all at once and even just a simple act of showing up, you know learning one new thing a day or writing, you know, one thing you're grateful for is in itself plenty and just this constant cycle of self-reflection in holding yourself accountable to whatever emotions or experiences you may be having. I think that's something that, you know currently I feel like we, you know, somewhat lack as a, as a broader culture in web3, just this sort of self-regulation and showing up for yourself and that's sort of what we wanted to provide an opportunity for people to do as they come to wellness DAO and to other similar communities and other places where there's so much focus on the moving forward and learning more and, you know, making yourself better, making more money, et cetera. But sort of coming back into the present moment and saying what I have already is enough and I'm grateful for all of that already.
Humpty: Yeah, that's beautiful. I think that's beautifully put, I think that there's something along that I guess that that's a common thread between yoga practice and journaling, and that is the state of being present in the moment, right? Whether it is, you know by focusing on a pose, breathing exercises or pen to paper and just being mindful of what it is that happened that day that you want to document, and then just kind of meditate on I think that's a really powerful connection between the two and I think that that's really important and amazing to hear that, you know, wellness DAO has these practices that allow for their community to, you know, kind of practice these things mindfully and hopefully get into a better mental state.
Eric: I wanna also highlight like how wholesome the community is, We have a journal together channel and which is kind of like, yeah it easy kinda the instigator, this idea but Kind of just jump on a call and you go over a few journals prompts and people, you know jump in the voice channel and just vibe, right? You know, maybe you're sharing your prompts maybe you're not, but It's just so wholesome to me, just this community and the people that we've brought together to do these things together, to do these practices together.
Humpty: Yes, Zeez do you wanna talk a little bit about some of those journaling prompts maybe share like what you would potentially share with the community there, and then maybe even describe some of the experiences that the community has shared back in terms of either a, this has helped me to be more mindful in this or, or just something or the other like that.
Zeez: So, yeah, the journaling together started actually rather spontaneously, I think we just had a voice channel and be journaling, you know, we're some, we're playing music in it and so I would just hop on the voice channel and be journaling and, you know people would join in as they so choose It's not a very like rigorous practice of oh we have to go on at, you know XYZ time and you have to show up every day and you know we encourage people to share their journal entries but they don't have to, of course it's a deeply personal experience but, you know I think the overarching takeaway again that I always come back to is like, you know doing a little bit of something is better than doing nothing and so it doesn't you know nothing that you do when it comes to wellness has to be perfect or comprehensive or you know the gold standard it's just about showing up again and again and some of the prompts that now we're starting to work through and starting to talk about you know maybe putting together a, like a cohorted program or a, you know more organized offering around I think are, you know very similar to what you would see in therapy or in sort of cognitive behavioral therapy and this, you know medically driven process of getting to know yourself better you know, oftentimes it's done in reaction to things, you know, when you start to feel like things are not going well, you may want to seek treatment but I think these are practices that don't necessarily have to come just when something is wrong, you know my therapist said something to me that was really interesting, said no, yeah, I went to school and I have a PhD and I have I am a doctor and all of these things, but you know, at the end of the day, it's, it's not rocket science, it's just sitting down and verbalizing and processing and talking through your feelings which if you think about biologically, you know, in the course of evolution, like how did humans, how did sapiens evolve to live? We, you know, we started off in smaller groups in groups of, you know sort of the social studies that have been done in groups of, you know 10, 20, 30 people so much smaller, more intimate communities. There was a lot more free time sort you know, free time that was very different from the free time that we have now, in which maybe you just sit on a rock and talk about your feelings or just talk about what's going on around you and I think, you know as a society there's been a bit of, you know, this push towards always being busy and always, you know hustling towards something and less of a focus on turning inwards and really internalizing what is going on around me and how am I processing these things? And not suppressing you know everything that's going on at once, and so some of the prompts come back to, you know what are like my core values, like what motivates me every morning to get up and do the things that I do, what is my attachment style and how do I you know communicate and bond with other people? What is my you know what are the, what are the manifestations of the ways in which I respect myself in which I care for myself in which I love myself, which by the way are all very different things right? You know we talk about self-care, a lot in the wellness industry but self-care is just one piece of it and it's not comprehensive, you know you can do all the self-care practices in the world and you can, you know journal every night and do yoga and drink a tea and whatever but if you don't have, you know an underlying sense of self-esteem or an underlying sense of self-respect it's really one of those things where the sum of the parts is much greater than the whole, and it's a very holistic integrated practice. So those are sort of the things that we're thinking through and how do we incorporate those at scale, obviously it's a much harder question then, you know just asking these questions in the universe and hoping that people answer them because it does require a lot of investment and a lot of self-reflection and that's something that we're trying to think about is like, how do we use, you know, how do we like build up like product or sort of like technology around this sort of accountability, such that, you know, maybe you have like a public ledger that records when you do these little check-ins, you know, maybe not the data in the check-in itself since that's deeply personal, but you know, even like this accountability mechanism and then, you know, is there an incentive structure that you can put in place in which people can earn something, earn tokens, earn points, whatever in order like, and, you know, hold each other accountable, you know, can you put in place group mechanisms where the group as a whole has to commit to working towards something together and if one person doesn't do then the group as a whole, you know loses something, and so those are sort of like the structural things that we're thinking through. If you've heard of a group called mochi, they do stuff like this and they run sort of these cohort-based sprints similar to how like engineering sprints work and tech I think, and so, you know, how do we integrate all these different learnings from, you know, what are productive ways to collaborate and to work together but you know, more towards the angle of how do we not create economic value or productivity, but how do we create a greater sense of understanding ourselves and understanding others and building this long-lasting yeah self-awareness and emotional intelligence that pays a lot of dividends into the future.
Humpty: Yeah, thank you. You know, one thing that comes to mind and I know when we talk about wellness, it's maybe the first things that come to mind are like the very, you know positive outcomes but, you know maybe we fail to recognize that we seek wellness because of the chaotic space that we live in, what informs our choice to want to seek out these wellness practices right. So currently, and I think around the world, and for some time we've. Living in a chaotic space and now even in our ecosystem, the web3 space market changes affect people's ability to focus people's ability to be happy certainly I think that there's something to be said about like allowing yourself to live outside of this a very, very small niche community right? And maybe take a walk outside and say, oh, well, it's not that bad, but I wonder you know, some of the thoughts that happen within the wellness style in terms of maybe someone coming in and saying, oh, like I'm, you know, I'm always fumbling into things or right now the market's you know changing and so this is all affecting my mental health, my mental wellbeing, my ability to be positive, my ability to contribute. What are some of the things that you would say to someone who's coming in like that and what is the track that maybe they could very easily jump into and find maybe a more balanced way of like thinking?
Eric: I feel like I'm a victim to this, you know I there's so many projects and like so much alpha and trying to, you know get the next blue chip and try to mint but at the end of the day, to me I think you just have to let go, right? It's way easier said than done, but you know at the end of the day it's just knowing that we can't make everything. So, we do internally have some discussions around this too, is like you know what are we minting? What are we, you know buying and we're in the crypto space, so that's all fair but at the end of the day, you know sometimes, you know you just have to be okay without right? Just know that you're not gonna make everything. So that's why, you know, we promote these mindfulness practices. It's all about balance, right? And like you know, understandably so there's gonna be drops we miss out on, right? There's gonna be white lists that we don't get, but you know, to me, it's like, okay, whatever right? Like, you know, work on yourself because health is wealth, right? Like your mental health should be a priority right now it's like this afterthought, you know, once we feel burnt out then we turn to wellness. So, we really wanna flip the script on that and change the narrative to prioritize and make this a daily lifestyle, daily habit, and daily routine so, yeah.
Humpty: Yeah. I like that. You know, I'll just share a little bit a story about myself, like previous to COVID and being on lockdown I used to go to my yoga instructor regularly and just practice, you know, I got so much out of that but, you know, Post our mid-COVID and post COVID. I've just tried to bring that home and just try to find a way to like, replicate that as best I can but one of the fun things is my kid, I have a toddler, she loves taking out the second yoga mat and practicing next to me and it's such a beautiful, enjoyable experience, not just to be able to like try to find a, you know a center, like trying to get myself back to just being mindful and, you know being happy and grateful but also to see that there is an influence and a thoughtfulness that you could also kind of share and that is echoed within some of the, you know, some of the rest of your family in my case my young daughter so it's really a really cool experience to be able to share that. So walk me through like what happens when someone discovers wellness DAO? Like what's the process? So they hear of you through this podcast or they find you on Twitter, they join the discord, what are some of the things that they can do to get started? I heard something about an NFT drop, how is that connected? How are you using that to engage the community, to enhance that connection to the DAO?
Zeez: So when someone hears about wellness DAO, I mean in its existing form, it's a community that you can come to, to learn about new practices and so what we usually recommend is, you know, follow us on socials, follow us on Twitter, pop in the discord where most of these conversations happen, we host virtual programming in the form of, you know guided and social meditations, that sort of thing but by no means, are those requisite or you know something that you have to do to be a part of the community. I think it's, you know something that we want to offer just as a public good or as a free service so that people can, you know start to take action on their wellness practices, there’re you know some people who want to be more involved like choose to become contributors and sort of take on part of the engineering work or the marketing, or sort of the day to day operations of what we, what's happening in order to like schedule events and we've been hosting some external sessions for other groups as sort of like a DAO to DAO, or like a B to B mechanism and so some of you know, the legwork that is involved there, we have contributors that help out with that. And, you know, ultimately, we wanna bring the community into like physical IRL form and so we host events in, you know, hub cities where there are people from our team to plan them. And so historically we've done events in New York, SF and Miami. And so we're hoping to, you know, host a few more events in New York this summer, typically they're centered around a practice or centered around yoga or meditation or breath work generally very chill, you know, no experience require that type of thing. And we just find that it's a very different type of event profile than, you know, what you usually see in web3 which is more, you know, social mingling or, you know having drinks or, you know, going to a party, that type of thing. So that's the pipeline and so we don't have an NFT or a pay, sorry, we don't have a membership NFT. We issue NFTs for participation in sessions and these are sort of, you know, you can think of them more as POAPs as, you know things that we issue and they don't have any monetary value, but it's more token of, Hey, thanks for coming to the sound bath, now you get this cool, like 3d artwork that we designed of our logo and with the metadata that attests to when the session was, what you did, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, we're hoping to incorporate some of this participation into the actual, you know, membership NFT itself. You know, maybe there should be a discount or maybe there should be a, you know, premier access point for people that have participated historically but I think, you know, given where, how dynamically NFT and, you know, token markets are evolving right now, we are always trying to be more cautious and on this side of not wanting to issue things that have financial value such that people may, you know, we don't wanna contribute to the noise of people, you know, losing money on things when that's not something that is a requisite right now to participate in the community.
Humpty: Yeah, that makes sense. I know, certainly, there's a, something to be said about the alignment of values, access to maybe sustaining members that have contributed to the growth of a project have added or have made an impact right? I think a lot of that is interesting. Mm-hmm, I think NFTs is one way certainly, obviously, I think both of you are very familiar with some other, maybe non-transferrable ways of doing that, like through Verify credentials so it's really interesting to kind of see how the technology may contribute to the ways that we can evolve and build out our communities and certainly align ourselves a lot more closely, you know, along these shared values. And I really, I just wanted to highlight one thing that I think you've now said a few times, and that is, you know, things not being perfect. Just showing up. I think in terms of wellness, it's important to also recognize that for new contributors or new members to a DAO, it is incredibly stressful to identify well, first of all, to learn, you know, what a project stands for and to identify if there's any alignment with who you are in your own personal mission, just generally in life or in web3, and then to identify where they could potentially add value. So, I think it's worth repeating that similarly to wellness practices for contributors coming in, it's like look you showing up is actually already. Part of your contribution to the space you came in, you connected with us, you shared, you know, that energy with us and if you choose to contribute in any other way, you know, it's not gonna be perfect I think we're all kind of growing and experimenting the space together and so it's okay, Like identify what really vibes with you and how you feel that a, either your skill set or your passions can translate to this space and to the mission of our project and in this case wellness DAO.
Zeez: Yeah. And I think that you know, to your point about there's a lot of different moving pieces like I think that's why mission becomes more important in building a DAO rather than you know, a traditional startup or a company, you know, where, where the mission is not a huge part of the transaction of the sort of expected value that a contributor gets to the organization. Like obviously it helps, you know, companies that have strong mission alignment and have, can build teams around that amazingly different modality of building a company and we see this in early-stage startups too. You know, you can tell which teams have an alignment of mission and which don't and I think when it comes to DAOs, you have to have that it's no longer a nice to have, it's a need to have in order to scale this more decentralized self-identifying contributor model.
Humpty: And that's a wrap. I truly enjoyed my chat with Zeez and Eric and I hope you did. To learn more about them, please follow them on Twitter @ bienamii and the web3 Yogi respectively. And to learn more about wellness DAO go to their website@wellnessdao.live and on Twitter at wellnessDAO. All links are available in the show notes.
Thanks for listening to crypto sapiens. If you could give us a five-star review wherever you enjoy your podcast, it would mean the world to us. Also, follow us on Twitter at crypto sapiens underscore and find our archives on our website@cryptosapiens.xyz. I look forward to reconnecting with you at our next discussion.