Finding Your Way Back: Neil Markey on Healing, Resilience, and Life After Burnout

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🗓️ 17 November 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Guest Neil Markey joins host Martin for a grounded conversation about mental wellbeing, resilience, and the realities of finding calm after high-pressure lives. A former Army Ranger who later entered the corporate world as a McKinsey executive, Neil speaks openly about post-combat PTSD, burnout, and the long path toward rebuilding a workable inner life. He describes how these experiences led him to Beckley Retreats, a legal psilocybin program that integrates modern research with meditation, m...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today we have with us, former Army Ranger and McKinsey Executive, who now leads Beckley retreats.
0:23.4	He's committed to addressing high-functioning burnout and trauma without glossing over complexity
0:28.2	or relying on quick fixes.
0:30.7	He also uses modern research with methods like meditation, mindful movement, and purposeful
0:36.5	time outdoors.
0:38.3	Neil McCarthy, welcome to Papa Bear Hikes.
0:42.3	Thank you for having me.
0:45.3	So Neil, we try to cover the connection here.
0:48.3	We talk a lot about mental health and the outdoors. I'm a strong believer in that it's important to our mental health.
0:58.2	But before we get into that, could you just tell us a little bit about yourself?
1:03.0	Sure. I usually start my story. I was doing my undergrad at University of Maryland. September 11th
1:10.5	happened.
1:13.1	I thought I was doing the right thing.
1:16.7	I joined the officer program trying to be helpful and then ended up in Iraq.
1:24.1	In Afghanistan, the Afghanistan trips were with a small special mission unit called the Ranger Regiment.
1:28.0	And so, you know, it left some marks on me.
1:33.6	And I got out in 2012 and went to graduate school.
1:39.3	And when I was at graduate school, is when I realized I was having some trouble with the transition back to regular life and letting some of those things go.
1:42.8	And I would say that nature connectedness has been a huge part of my unwinding and
1:49.5	resettling.
1:51.3	And yeah, now I run a company.
1:54.6	Yeah, there's a lot of things that happened between then and now, but to be a bit
	...

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