I’ve been living in Prague and Austria for the better part of the past 20 years. So, I managed to miss almost everything about The Summit Series. I did hear that a group of folks bought a mountain somewhere and they were putting together events around the world. Interesting.
Summit, in a nutshell, is a group of amazing people making the world a better place in a very swift and well-thought-out manner. From my limited exposure to this group, I can tell you that they are utilizing every instrument available to create experiences that are beyond peak. This congregation was the largest discrepancy between expectation and outcome that I’ve ever experienced. I was expecting a conference on a boat. What I got was deep and meaningful conversations and experiences with some of the most creative and influential people alive today. Without going overboard, the agreements of Summit say it all: Learn, Build Friendships, Embrace Synchronicity, Show Love (and Respect) and Practice Absolute Integrity. It’s an incredible group of people doing amazing things.
I ended up there because of a health product that I had been working on in India for the past 3 years (HANAH ONE) had found its way into the hands of Courtney Boyd Myers and Ester Hillebrand. The unique taste profile provoked a long conversation about the tonics that could be made with it. Ester invited me to help co-create a few items for the menu at this year’s event, Summit at Sea.
At this particular Summit event, there were about 2500 founders, artists, and all around interesting individuals on a boat in international waters. The weekend was full of seminars, workouts, discussions, parties, and a tonic bar. I had made a few friends at the speaker’s dinner on Thursday night, but there was no cell service on the boat, so it was impossible to find anyone. Not having a cell turned out to be a good thing, as we all just kind of wandered around and let events unfold.
So, picture this: I’m on the boat, alone. I have no way of finding the few people I know. It’s Friday night and I’m just starting to get what’s happening on this boat. One minute I’m talking to two Finnish guys about harvesting and drinking cordyceps mushrooms, the next I’m talking to a contractor for NASA who’s building intergalactic power stations to enable flights throughout the solar system. Oh, and Edward Snowden just happened to link in via Google Hangouts and just talked with Chris Sacca and the rest of us. It was surreal, in the best of ways, and I was trying to make sense of it all. Sensory overload.
So HANAH ONE was in the tonic bar, which was also alcohol-free. As a purveyor of the finer things in life, especially, let’s call them “late evening endeavors,” I thought it might be a great idea to avoid drinking alcohol for as long as possible. That way, I figured, I could maximize these extreme high-density collisions that were happening amongst so many amazing individuals.
I found myself sitting with Jimmy Chin up in the tonic bar discussing what it was like to start a never-before-climbed mountain that had a base camp near the source of the Ganges, amongst other things. So here we were, Friday night, on a boat, sailing off to the Bahamas. The energy is very high, which usually leads to equivalent amounts of alcohol, and yet we’re sitting in an alcohol-free bar and LOVING it.
If you’ve never spent the night staying up late, talking about incredible things and eating superfoods and fish bone broth I highly recommend it.
We started out with a huge tablespoon of HANAH ONE. Then a red snapper bone broth that was mixed with green chilis and a bit of HANAH ONE to balance the salt.. It was a sort of Moroccan Tajin style flavor. It was amazing. (I drank 37 cups of this (+/-) over the next 3 days. Not that anyone was counting). We then moved on to a ginger + turmeric tea which was energizing and stimulating. We ran the gamut of non-alcoholic beverages, everything from a light coffee mixed with cordyceps mushrooms, to a Kava Kava ceremony with Colter and Sharon from Elixart. It was stimulating. It was light. It was invigorating. It was heartfelt. We definitely pushed the limits, we tried every elixir the bar had to offer.
There was a different vibe in the air. Yes, mainly due to the overall Summit experience that was happening on this boat, but also in that tonic bar. Everyone was clear headed and connecting. Due to the fact that I wasn’t drinking alcohol, I was able to have coherent conversations well into the night (5am to be exact). It was a great experience, and proof that a concept like this works. All you need is an open mind and someone crazy enough to be mixing exotic tonics with ingredients like “Shilajit” or South East Asian Kratom.
Bottom line: Tonics work. And, the experience is cool enough to make my list of Late Night Endeavors to be further explored...
Summit at Sea was an amazing experience on so many different levels. I look forward to being a part of and watching the juice / tonic bar experience blossom into something that will be more available to all of us. Until your neighborhood gets its own, you can make one of our favorite elixirs:
HANAH Zen
A centering blend of tea, coconut oil, Ayurvedic Ghee (or Grass fed Butter) and a heaping tablespoon of HANAH ONE, a proprietary superfood blend of 30 wild-harvested, hand-picked botanicals in a base of honey and grass-fed ghee designed by Ayurvedic principles to give you balanced energy, focus, and recall throughout the day.
- 16 oz of your favorite herbal tea (Or coffee, or Caffeinated tea)*
- 1 tsp Coconut Oil
- 1 tsp Ghee (Or grassfed Butter)
- 1 tsp HANAH ONE
Let the tea cool down to a drinkable temperature, place in blender with other ingredients and blend.
*The healthy fats and adaptogenic herbs (such as Ashwagandha) found in this blend provide for a sustained release of energy without any of the crash or jittery side effects of straight caffeine intake
