Most men are taught the body is a machine to push and the brain a problem to solve. Jon Butler learned something different. After twenty years in some of the world's best kitchens, he left one of the most physically demanding careers there is for one of the most mentally demanding: finance. What carried him through both was not mindset or strategy. It was his body on a trail, on a rock face, where the only thing that exists is the next thing to hold. Jon is our first male guest, and this conversation about the body and brain is one few people are invited to have.

We get into:

• Why leaving a twenty-year career felt less like quitting and more like outgrowing it
• How the body tells the truth when your working life is telling you who to be
• The kitchen as constant fight-or-flight, and what happens when the stress never stops
• Matching your outlet to your load, so the reset is as big as the pressure
• Taking one small action when you're frozen at a crossroads

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why your body knows you've outgrown something before your mind admits it
• What happens when chronic stress becomes your baseline, not an emergency setting
• How choosing a hard thing shifts what your brain believes you're capable of
• Why settling the nervous system first leads to clearer decisions at a crossroads

🎙️ GUEST:
Jon Butler is a mortgage broker and former chef in Southern California. Before finance, he spent 20+ years in hospitality, with apprenticeships at Arzak and Noma and leadership roles at République, 71Above, The Rose Venice, and the Michelin programs at Sparrows Lodge and Holiday House. Today he helps clients navigate home financing and complex lending. Outside work, he climbs and pursues alpine adventures worldwide, volunteers with the Riverside Mountain Rescue Unit, and spends time with his wife, Laura, and their French bulldog, Nico.

⏱️ CHAPTERS:
[00:00] Welcome Jon Butler
[3:45] 20 years in the kitchen and chasing the next challenge
[8:42] Realizing he'd outgrown the profession
[19:42] Taking one small action to bring the prefrontal cortex back online
[23:02] The kitchen as chronic fight-or-flight and what constant stress does to the brain
[32:09] Building your own prison and holding the key out
[44:08] Why a challenge you choose rewires the brain: allostatic loading in reverse
[45:35] The dopamine, norepinephrine, and endorphin hit that makes it stick
[50:22] Starting small when a curb feels like a mountain
[59:16] Settling the nervous system before the big decisions

🔗 CONNECT WITH JON BUTLER:
Website: jon-butler.com
Email: jonb@barrettfinancial.com
FB/IG: @jonbutler84

🔗 CONNECT WITH US:
The Raw Onion: https://www.therawonionpodcast.com

🔗 CONNECT WITH STEPHANIE:
Let's Talk: https://scheduler.zoom.us/stephanie-ohannesian/30-mins-discovery-zoom

🔗 CONNECT WITH YOSHIE:
Let's Connect: https://lotusflowerjourneys.com/contact

They handed her a cake. They sang. Then they asked her to bring a pen and paper into the other room and hand over her laptop and her phone.

Stephanie got fired for calling out a toxic environment. A few months later, the exact people she named were fired for the exact things she named them for.

This episode is about what made her speak up the second time when she stayed silent the first. Same kind of company. Same behavior. Completely different response. The difference was not courage, and it was not willpower.

Discipline is downstream of regulation. When the body does not feel safe, the fastest route to relief wins. That is not weakness. That is biology.

We get into:

• The ER visit that ended the first chapter
• Why self-discipline rises and falls with your nervous system, not your resolve
• The moment she named what was happening to her team
• The birthday cake, the laptop, the escort out of the building
• The people she named getting fired a few months later
• A new job forty-eight hours later, and eventually Triage

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why willpower is the wrong explanation for standards that collapse at work
• What chronic stress changes in the brain, and why silence starts to feel like the only option
• How the same environment can show up twice and land completely differently
• Why sleep, connection, and a sense of control are conditions for repair
• What it cost to speak up, and what staying silent was already costing

⏱️ CHAPTERS

0:00 I got fired

3:30 The burnout that started it all

6:58 Discipline is downstream of regulation

12:03 What chronic stress does to the prefrontal cortex

16:23 Sleep, connection, and a sense of control

19:00 Calling it out: not on my watch

20:57 The birthday cake and the firing

22:26 The irony a few months later

31:04 Forty-eight hours later, and how Triage was born

🔗 CONNECT WITH US
Website: https://therawonionpodcast.com

Email: hello@therawonionpodcast.com

IG: https://www.instagram.com/therawonionpodcast

🔗 CONNECT WITH STEPHANIE:

Stephanie works with high-performing individuals and teams to understand what is actually driving the loop, and reset it at the level where it began. Neuroscience-based, practical, and built for people who have already tried everything else.

Website: https://triagebalancedlife.com/

Let's Talk: https://scheduler.zoom.us/stephanie-ohannesian/30-mins-discovery-zoom

🔗 CONNECT WITH YOSHIE:

Yoshie Barnett is a Crossroads Coach and the founder of Lotus Flower Journeys, working with high-achieving women in midlife who are meeting a crossroads and finding that perfectionism no longer gets them through it.

Website: https://www.lotusflowerjourneys.com/

Connect: https://www.lotusflowerjourneys.com/contact/

Everything on the outside can be faked now. The one thing that still can't lie to you is your own body. This week, yoga instructor and Yoga Moxi founder Michele Carrión Yopps joins us to talk about what happens when we stop trusting ourselves, and how to build that trust back.

We get into:

• Why corporate environments are built to numb the body's signals
• The heart's own nervous system and what that means for "gut feeling"
• The eight limbs of yoga
• Why chronic burnout physically changes brain tissue, and what helps it rebuild
• Inherited stress and where the body stores what the mind forgets

In this episode, you will learn:

• Why your body may register something before your mind catches up
• How corporate spaces are structured to quiet the body's signals
• What the gut-to-brain pathway means for how you process the world
• How chronic burnout changes brain tissue, and what helps reverse it

⏱️ CHAPTERS:
0:00 Welcome and the question of trust

6:16 Meet Michele Carrión Yopps

10:05 The crossroads: burnout hiding in plain sight

15:31 The heart's 40,000 neurons

18:32 How corporate spaces numb the body

20:55 The eight limbs of yoga

24:50 About Yoga Moxi + coming soon: a collaboration with The Raw Onion

26:31 The gut-brain highway, 80 percent starts here

37:25 Joseph LeDoux high road/low road

43:26 Flow state and breath

53:00 A hospital bed and shrinking gray matter

57:00 Fascia, memory, and inherited stress

1:03:56 One breathing hack to leave with

🎙️ GUEST:

Michele Carrión Yopps, founder of the Yoga Moxie app. Certified in Hatha Alignment Yoga, Yoga for First Responders, and Yoga Nidra. She has also trained with Master Paulie Zink and Gioconda Parker. Spent over 20 years in corporate media and marketing before crossing into yoga full time.

🔗 CONNECT WITH MICHELE CARRIÓN YOPPS:

Website: https://yogamoxi.com/

App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/yogamoxi/id1639610883

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yogamoxi/

🔗 CONNECT WITH THE RAW ONION:

Website: The Raw Onion

Email: hello@therawonionpodcast.com

Subscribe to our YouTube channel

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🔗 CONNECT WITH STEPHANIE:

Website: Triage Balanced Life

Let's Talk: Free 30-min call

🔗 CONNECT WITH YOSHIE:

Website: Lotus Flower Journeys

Let's Connect: Free clarity call