Ido Portal: The Science & Practice of Movement

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.260 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.900 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.360 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:13.260 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:15.240 | Today, my guest is Ido Portal.

00:00:17.580 | Ido Portal is somebody who truly defies formal definition.

00:00:21.880 | He is, however, credited by many

00:00:23.780 | to be the world expert in all things movement.

00:00:27.260 | Movement is one of the more fascinating

00:00:29.060 | and important aspects of our nervous system.

00:00:31.460 | In fact, it was the great Nobel Prize winner Sherrington

00:00:34.680 | that said, "Movement is the final common path."

00:00:37.380 | And what he was referring to is the fact

00:00:39.760 | that so much of our nervous system is dedicated to movement,

00:00:43.020 | and in particular, that the human nervous system

00:00:45.660 | can generate the greatest variety of forms of movement.

00:00:49.260 | We can run, we can jump, we can crawl,

00:00:51.240 | we can move at different speeds.

00:00:53.000 | Far more variation in movement

00:00:55.360 | and different types and speeds of movement

00:00:57.140 | than any other animal in the animal kingdom can perform.

00:01:00.640 | My interest in bringing Ido Portal onto this podcast

00:01:03.800 | stemmed from a discussion about just that,

00:01:05.900 | about Sherrington and the enormous range of movements

00:01:08.740 | that humans can engage in.

00:01:10.200 | Ido is both a practitioner and an intellectual.

00:01:13.480 | We all know what a practitioner is.

00:01:14.920 | It's somebody who walks the walk,

00:01:16.260 | who actually performs the thing

00:01:18.220 | that they are knowledgeable about.

00:01:20.300 | And indeed, Ido has studied capoeira,

00:01:23.260 | a number of other martial arts, dance, gymnastics,

00:01:26.140 | various forms of sport.

00:01:27.460 | He's trained top athletes like Conor McGregor,

00:01:30.220 | and he has many, many other credits to his name

00:01:32.720 | as a practitioner and teacher.

00:01:35.100 | However, he is also a true intellectual of movement.

00:01:38.900 | I define an intellectual as somebody

00:01:41.100 | who can both think about and talk about a subject

00:01:44.300 | at multiple levels of granularity,

00:01:46.380 | that is with exquisite detail and with exquisite simplicity,

00:01:50.700 | depending on their audience

00:01:51.940 | and depending on the topic at hand.

00:01:53.580 | And as you'll soon hear from my discussion with Ido,

00:01:56.240 | he is both a practitioner

00:01:58.360 | and a true intellectual of all things movement.

00:02:01.500 | Today, through our discussion,

00:02:03.060 | you will learn how the nervous system generates movement

00:02:06.080 | and the different forms of movement,

00:02:07.460 | the different speeds of movement.

00:02:08.980 | You're also going to get an incredible insight

00:02:11.180 | through Ido's mind and eyes

00:02:13.380 | of how movement can serve us in the various contexts of life,

00:02:17.660 | not just in sport, not just in exercise,

00:02:20.460 | but in every aspect of our lives

00:02:22.780 | from the time we get up in the morning

00:02:24.200 | until the time we go to sleep at night,

00:02:26.140 | how we engage with others, how we engage with ourselves,

00:02:28.940 | indeed, how movement even informs relationships

00:02:31.840 | of different kinds.

00:02:33.500 | I found our discussion to be one of the most enlightening

00:02:36.620 | and interesting discussions that I've ever had,

00:02:38.720 | not just about movement, but about the nervous system.

00:02:42.100 | I can assure you that by the end of this episode,

00:02:44.460 | you will not only learn a tremendous amount about movement

00:02:47.820 | through the eyes and mind of the one and only Ido Portal,

00:02:51.340 | but you also will learn a tremendous amount of neuroscience

00:02:54.940 | about how the cells and circuits and hormones

00:02:57.260 | and neurotransmitters of your body assist in creating

00:03:00.720 | the various forms of movement that you can generate,

00:03:03.000 | that you're trying to learn and generate,

00:03:05.020 | and that perhaps you should think about

00:03:07.220 | trying to learn and generate.

00:03:08.860 | And indeed, you'll learn some protocols and tools

00:03:10.820 | for how to do that.

00:03:11.980 | In science, we have a phrase, actually it's a title,

00:03:14.780 | that's reserved for only the rarest of individuals.

00:03:18.300 | We say that somebody is an N of one,

00:03:20.980 | meaning a sample size of one.

00:03:22.900 | And as you'll soon learn, Ido Portal is truly an N of one.

00:03:27.340 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:03:29.860 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:03:32.460 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:03:34.380 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:03:36.820 | and science-related tools to the general public.

00:03:39.340 | In keeping with that theme,

00:03:40.380 | I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

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00:07:45.260 | And now for my discussion with Ido Portal.

00:07:48.560 | Ido, thank you for coming here today.

00:07:51.740 | I've been looking forward to sitting down with you

00:07:53.460 | to talk for a very long time.

00:07:55.760 | I was first exposed to your work,

00:07:58.660 | my post or a podcast, I believe,

00:08:02.160 | of you had a group of people walking down handrails,

00:08:06.260 | literally the handrails along stairwells.

00:08:08.220 | And as a, I don't want to say former skateboarder,

00:08:11.020 | once a skateboarder, always a skateboarder.

00:08:13.060 | As a skateboarder, handrails have a particular meaning,

00:08:16.620 | but I was really struck by, first of all,

00:08:20.000 | the incredible range of skill that people had

00:08:24.260 | and yet their willingness to do this, right?

00:08:27.740 | I think of handrails and walking on handrails

00:08:29.800 | or skateboarding and handrails as a potential hazard.

00:08:32.220 | And yet some of the incredible proficiency

00:08:35.380 | that some of the people there, including yourself, had.

00:08:37.500 | So like many people, I was drawn to your practice

00:08:40.300 | and your work initially through a wide-eyed, wow,

00:08:43.500 | they're doing some incredible stuff on natural objects,

00:08:46.260 | much as skateboarders or parkour folks do.

00:08:49.100 | But over the years, we've been in communication

00:08:52.160 | and I've come to realize that you're a true intellectual

00:08:55.600 | of the topic of movement.

00:08:57.320 | And I define an intellectual as somebody

00:08:59.080 | who can understand a topic

00:09:00.660 | at multiple levels of granularity,

00:09:02.940 | detail, general, specific, connections, et cetera.

00:09:06.540 | So to start off, could you share with us

00:09:11.200 | your conception of this idea of movement?

00:09:15.340 | Obviously movement involves translation through space,

00:09:20.840 | but when you talk about a movement practice,

00:09:23.860 | what are you really thinking about?

00:09:25.700 | What are we talking about

00:09:26.780 | when we talk about a movement practice?

00:09:29.080 | - It's a big question.

00:09:33.180 | I somehow left the definition,

00:09:38.840 | the very tight definition of it out for myself

00:09:43.840 | because I felt it was starting to constrict me

00:09:46.360 | and be around me

00:09:47.200 | and I let the practice itself really define it.

00:09:49.920 | But I think part of our sense of everything

00:09:55.920 | is actually a sense of movement

00:09:58.300 | and then the stillness in the background of that.

00:10:02.340 | So for me, this is the entity that I refer to as movement

00:10:06.520 | and using that perspective for self-evolution, development,

00:10:11.520 | of course, the physical side,

00:10:14.560 | but also movement of emotions, movement of thoughts,

00:10:17.600 | and any other movement streams.

00:10:21.780 | And by switching these layers

00:10:24.180 | and examining it from different places,

00:10:26.200 | you get a better and better sense of it.

00:10:28.340 | I think the visuals nowadays and media

00:10:32.540 | are what defines for people in the beginning things

00:10:36.200 | and then little by little with experience,

00:10:38.080 | they can dive deeper, which is good.

00:10:40.240 | There is some aspects, sexy aspects or not so sexy aspects,

00:10:45.040 | and then you pull on it and you start to examine

00:10:48.200 | and dive deeper and then you receive the gift

00:10:52.380 | of finding out more.

00:10:54.960 | - I heard you say once that we are not just a brain

00:10:58.540 | with a body, but we are a body with a brain,

00:11:02.040 | which I absolutely love because as a student

00:11:05.240 | and a researcher of the nervous system,

00:11:07.360 | I never think about the brain as its own isolated thing.

00:11:10.720 | I think about the nervous system and the fact that the brain

00:11:13.040 | and the spinal cord are connected to the body

00:11:14.780 | and the body is connected to the brain.

00:11:18.080 | In every direction, everything truly is connected

00:11:21.960 | at the physical level, physiological level.

00:11:24.960 | Could you just share for a moment

00:11:26.800 | how you think about this body-brain relationship

00:11:29.400 | in terms of, you mentioned movement of emotions,

00:11:34.320 | movement of the body,

00:11:35.560 | that you can't really separate the two.

00:11:37.900 | And for the typical person who's listening to this,

00:11:40.940 | they might not immediately understand what that means.

00:11:44.040 | Maybe it's something that has to be experienced,

00:11:45.980 | but when we think about the body and the brain

00:11:49.600 | and the whole thing working as one cohesive whole,

00:11:52.400 | what does that mean to you?

00:11:54.440 | Or put simply, when you do a movement practice,

00:11:58.520 | what are you focusing on?

00:11:59.800 | Are you focusing on the movement of your limbs?

00:12:01.980 | I have to imagine that's true,

00:12:03.140 | but are you also focusing on how that makes you feel

00:12:05.560 | or how your feelings make you move?

00:12:07.940 | - Okay.

00:12:09.780 | Okay, so some thoughts.

00:12:13.100 | I will try not to answer any of your questions

00:12:16.880 | during this interview,

00:12:17.960 | but I will definitely give some thoughts

00:12:20.360 | and then we can play with it.

00:12:21.920 | I think these definitions,

00:12:27.800 | and in general, the limitation of words,

00:12:30.800 | ends up creating some kind of a corruptive process.

00:12:35.800 | The words corrupt us and corrupt our understanding.

00:12:41.880 | So I think the brain, body,

00:12:43.420 | this Cartesian state of mind and thinking,

00:12:47.760 | brought a lot of good,

00:12:49.680 | but also brought a lot of problems.

00:12:52.080 | And movement for me is the entity

00:12:54.360 | that ties everything together.

00:12:56.500 | It's the magic.

00:12:57.720 | It's the forza anima.

00:13:00.240 | It's when the coin spins

00:13:02.960 | and you see both sides appear at the same time.

00:13:06.240 | It's a beautiful analogy from a friend of mine,

00:13:09.240 | Dr. Rasmus Olme.

00:13:10.560 | So the mind and body are one of those pairs,

00:13:16.480 | and I call it the movement-body-mind system.

00:13:19.640 | When it's integrated, it's in motion.

00:13:23.640 | There is also a stillness that appears there, of course.

00:13:26.980 | Without it, there can be no motion,

00:13:28.820 | but maybe that is a very good way

00:13:33.820 | to start to think of things.

00:13:35.280 | There is no really pure mental processes,

00:13:38.200 | cognitive processes.

00:13:39.320 | There is no pure physical processes.

00:13:41.420 | Everything touches everything.

00:13:44.280 | There is a wholeness, and that wholeness is in motion.

00:13:47.360 | Yeah, the movement practice takes these bits

00:13:53.860 | and examines them, and here is a pragmatic thing.

00:13:58.200 | The scientist, the cerebral thinking about movement.

00:14:02.660 | This is important.

00:14:05.720 | The emotional side.

00:14:07.540 | Coloring, feeling the colors and the textures of motion.

00:14:12.480 | A lot of people who are involved with a movement practice

00:14:15.000 | never end up feeling motions,

00:14:17.400 | really focusing on how it makes you feel

00:14:19.840 | or how it feels itself.

00:14:22.060 | And then the actual movement, the action.

00:14:24.520 | So it's action, emotion, and thought.

00:14:27.480 | And those are three streams of movement,

00:14:29.680 | and they interlace together

00:14:31.040 | into this kind of braided experience and whole experience.

00:14:36.040 | And I try to bring all these aspects into my practice

00:14:40.360 | and the way that I live my life.

00:14:42.920 | - I think most people who embark on a movement practice

00:14:47.920 | will first want to know which movements to do, right?

00:14:52.520 | Squats, planks, pushups, pirouettes, right?

00:14:57.520 | Pick your movement, it could be any movement.

00:15:01.280 | Are there any sort of just basic entry points

00:15:05.860 | that you believe everybody should walk through

00:15:09.180 | as they embrace a movement practice?

00:15:10.760 | The first time and maybe even every time

00:15:12.860 | they do a movement practice.

00:15:14.360 | I mean, earlier today I had the great privilege

00:15:17.600 | of being guided through a long series of movement practices.

00:15:21.520 | And yet the first practice we did involved,

00:15:23.840 | at first anyway, stillness, not movement.

00:15:27.320 | So if you would, could you inform us

00:15:30.880 | how people should think about approaching

00:15:32.960 | a movement practice?

00:15:34.960 | What is the first layer of any good movement practice?

00:15:40.080 | - So you touch the word movements

00:15:42.000 | and it's important for me to separate it

00:15:44.420 | from the word movement with a capital M.

00:15:47.500 | Movements are the containers and movement is the content.

00:15:53.440 | And the content cannot be carried

00:15:56.000 | in any way without containers.

00:15:58.520 | So the first entry point is to choose containers.

00:16:01.760 | And then the second thing to make sure

00:16:03.840 | is to put specific content into those containers

00:16:08.440 | and then enjoy them.

00:16:10.480 | I tell people that it's like a cup of water

00:16:12.960 | and you're being handed that cup of water

00:16:14.640 | and nowadays, very often, people will start

00:16:17.800 | to chew on the cup instead of drinking the water,

00:16:20.920 | making it yours, discard the cup.

00:16:23.420 | And then maybe later you want to have bone broth or soup,

00:16:26.540 | so you use a different container, a bowl.

00:16:29.400 | So a movement practice can start from anywhere.

00:16:32.500 | It's a rhizome, it's an open system,

00:16:36.280 | it has no center, it's decentralized

00:16:38.720 | and it can be approached from anywhere

00:16:40.800 | and that's its magic and that's the benefit of it.

00:16:45.400 | Some people find the body a good entry point.

00:16:49.520 | Some people don't even enter from the body.

00:16:51.880 | Sometimes you can enter from other perspectives

00:16:55.800 | and then inside the body, for example,

00:16:57.840 | where should we enter if we decided

00:17:00.080 | to take the body approach?

00:17:01.800 | The spine can be a nice decision

00:17:03.600 | but some will choose just the pelvis.

00:17:06.540 | Any one of those points are valid

00:17:09.500 | and then playfulness can be an entry point,

00:17:11.960 | an attribute or, and this is so open.

00:17:15.160 | So I don't want to limit people and limit their minds

00:17:19.640 | in the way that they engage with a practice

00:17:21.560 | but I also want to encourage the self-inquiry,

00:17:26.560 | am I doing movements practice

00:17:29.400 | or am I doing a movement practice?

00:17:32.220 | - So could you help me distinguish the two

00:17:34.040 | a little bit further?

00:17:34.880 | I think I understand the difference

00:17:36.060 | between a sort of the noun versus the verbs

00:17:39.280 | and in some ways here we are dealing with the challenge

00:17:42.660 | of the barriers that language present

00:17:45.720 | to something that's physical, right?

00:17:47.000 | I mean, indeed, there may not be a,

00:17:51.460 | I have to assume there is no perfect verbal language

00:17:54.840 | for movement.

00:17:55.680 | There are certain movements that defy language.

00:17:57.600 | I could say somebody jumped at a particular trajectory

00:18:01.100 | at a particular speed and moved this limb and that limb

00:18:03.440 | but by fractionating it, something is most definitely lost.

00:18:07.680 | So if someone wanted to, let's say,

00:18:11.040 | get in better touch with their body, in quotes,

00:18:14.060 | in order to explore the infinite space that is movement,

00:18:18.720 | how might they begin to approach that?

00:18:21.560 | Is it, does it begin with an awareness,

00:18:23.820 | with practice or both?

00:18:25.880 | - It begins with education

00:18:27.760 | and that's probably the most stable point of entry,

00:18:31.580 | awareness to something as a concept,

00:18:35.020 | that it is a concept, that there is a validity

00:18:38.520 | or because sometimes people look for that

00:18:41.460 | to looking at this entity, this open entity

00:18:45.660 | and that's part of the reason why answering questions

00:18:49.380 | is not something I can do or even attempt to do.

00:18:55.560 | I believe in the power of the non-complete process,

00:18:59.960 | like making this table but leaving something undone,

00:19:04.960 | not perfecting the product.

00:19:07.640 | Why?

00:19:08.480 | Because it offers some kind of a dynamic nature of evolution

00:19:11.760 | that naturally unravels from it.

00:19:14.060 | Almost like sometimes I do it,

00:19:19.720 | I count reps and I'll only count to nine

00:19:23.880 | because it tends to leave people in the count

00:19:26.880 | and it keeps going instead of giving them the 10.

00:19:29.760 | - Everyone wants to end on 10.

00:19:31.440 | - Yeah, which is because of the decimal system, et cetera.

00:19:36.000 | So, all kinds of things like that is also important

00:19:40.120 | with the movement idea is to discuss, to examine,

00:19:43.480 | to look, to taste, to try

00:19:46.040 | but then also not to try to capture

00:19:47.840 | because if you like the invisible loop of Hofstätter,

00:19:51.360 | if you look at it too closely, it's gone

00:19:54.480 | but if you look away, it functions

00:19:57.240 | and exists just like us very powerfully

00:19:59.680 | and obviously gives us the experiences that we have.

00:20:04.680 | So, when people enter movement practice,

00:20:07.840 | it is about education,

00:20:09.760 | bringing some awareness to the fact

00:20:11.480 | that they are living in a body,

00:20:14.560 | that they are living in motion,

00:20:16.560 | that their mind is a type of movement,

00:20:19.460 | that their life is a type of movement,

00:20:22.280 | bringing attention to the movement of the emotions as well,

00:20:26.360 | bringing just attention to the fact

00:20:28.320 | that things are in motion,

00:20:30.240 | the euracletus pantare, all in flux.

00:20:36.340 | Nothing stops besides something that is the background of it

00:20:42.360 | and allows it to express and this is the beauty of things

00:20:46.200 | and this for me is the movement practice,

00:20:48.960 | is this examination and bringing this awareness into things.

00:20:52.680 | As we see it now here, I'm also aware of my body.

00:20:56.320 | I'm also aware of the way that things make me feel,

00:21:01.140 | the way that your face is communicating to me

00:21:04.040 | and I'm not just in some limited

00:21:07.560 | and very verbal, overly verbal state

00:21:11.380 | because it misses a lot of the beautiful flux.

00:21:15.400 | I'm going to inject some or project some ideas

00:21:18.920 | and perhaps you would tell me if they're ridiculous,

00:21:22.760 | potentially useful or useful.

00:21:25.460 | As I understand what we're talking about now

00:21:29.120 | and what we've discussed earlier is that movement

00:21:32.080 | can and should be incorporated into one's entire life.

00:21:36.000 | I've even heard you say that even before getting out of bed

00:21:38.160 | in the morning, one can experience movement

00:21:40.820 | and it doesn't necessarily have to be of the intimate kind

00:21:43.120 | with somebody else, it can be paying attention

00:21:46.480 | to the rhythm of one's breath or how you get out of the bed

00:21:49.240 | or actually in anticipation of you arriving here today,

00:21:52.360 | I noticed that as I was going up and down the stairs

00:21:54.480 | in this house, that I was injecting a little bit

00:21:59.240 | of playfulness in the way that I might have

00:22:01.200 | many, many decades ago but haven't for a very long time

00:22:04.800 | and I asked myself whether or not that's what Ido

00:22:08.340 | is referring to when he talks about threading

00:22:11.240 | this body awareness throughout the day as opposed to,

00:22:15.480 | but of course not exclusive from just saying,

00:22:17.560 | I have 45 minutes, I'm going to do movement practice

00:22:21.040 | before I shower and have some dinner, right?

00:22:23.100 | I have to imagine both are helpful but in terms of moving

00:22:25.440 | through the day and having bodily awareness,

00:22:27.640 | clearly there are an infinite number of ways

00:22:30.400 | one could do that, maybe you could just share a few.

00:22:32.520 | You mentioned, I mean, one could pay attention

00:22:35.040 | to their breath, could pay attention to posture

00:22:37.880 | and this notion of play is a very attractive

00:22:40.560 | or as we say in science, it's a sticky concept,

00:22:43.120 | a concept that kind of draws one in.

00:22:45.560 | Maybe if you would, could you share with us

00:22:47.520 | just some ideas to get people thinking about

00:22:49.500 | or maybe even incorporating movement practice

00:22:51.900 | into their day and maybe even touch on the potential role

00:22:56.640 | of play or playfulness.

00:22:58.280 | - Okay.

00:22:59.120 | Yeah, those are some good directions.

00:23:04.980 | I think one thing is this what you call wordlessness.

00:23:09.400 | I have been recommending to people nonverbal experiences

00:23:14.240 | and the awareness of the body which is not really

00:23:18.040 | the awareness of the body as you know,

00:23:20.760 | not purely or not fully, the awareness of motion

00:23:25.520 | is a very good way to start, to bring awareness

00:23:30.080 | to that layer and that layer will start to get clarified

00:23:33.360 | more and more and more the more you practice

00:23:35.680 | and then it will enable for most people a safe haven,

00:23:39.300 | away from many states and difficulties

00:23:42.000 | and will unlock a lot of potential attributes

00:23:47.000 | and strengths and freshness and a lot of beautiful things.

00:23:51.360 | Really one of the pretty perspectives about who we are

00:23:56.800 | comes from a person who influenced my thinking

00:24:00.120 | a lot, Moshe Feldenkrais, the late Moshe Feldenkrais

00:24:03.000 | and he talks about the body as the core three elements,

00:24:07.080 | the core nervous system.

00:24:09.460 | Two is the mechanical system of muscle, skeleton, et cetera

00:24:14.460 | and the third is the environment

00:24:17.280 | which is a unique way to look at it

00:24:20.240 | and he talks about how the nervous system

00:24:22.080 | is both receiving information from the outside

00:24:26.320 | and from the inside and in the first years of life,

00:24:29.140 | you work a lot on differentiating what is me

00:24:34.140 | and what is not me and I think movement,

00:24:38.340 | when you feel movement, you feel the movement of the outside

00:24:42.240 | that is, of course, arriving to you and receiving this

00:24:45.440 | and also your own internal movement

00:24:47.400 | and the same can be said for stillness.

00:24:49.740 | So, bringing the attention into those layers,

00:24:54.360 | it's a tricky thing.

00:24:55.560 | It's one of those elusive things to look at

00:24:58.840 | but it's definitely of huge benefit to start to train it,

00:25:02.760 | start to practice it, to feel not our thoughts,

00:25:07.600 | not necessarily our body but to start to recognize

00:25:12.600 | the dynamic nature, the flux, the motion

00:25:15.920 | and it occurs in all these layers.

00:25:18.560 | So, you will need to find it in multiple locations

00:25:22.840 | before you start to more and more make it your own,

00:25:27.240 | make it really yours.

00:25:28.560 | How, for example, simple pragmatic things.

00:25:33.460 | I used to do this, I spent some time in Hong Kong

00:25:37.200 | and I would need to get my practice in

00:25:39.480 | but I'm really turned off from commercial gyms

00:25:43.680 | and there is not a lot of nature accessible there

00:25:46.720 | so I would just strap on my bag

00:25:48.900 | and I would walk the streets of Hong Kong

00:25:50.920 | which are very crowded

00:25:52.320 | and then I would try to avoid touching anyone

00:25:55.720 | and it would be like two hours of just like moving,

00:25:59.100 | involved, fully involved, fully in my body

00:26:01.480 | and experiencing beautiful things

00:26:04.400 | and enjoying and developing myself as well.

00:26:06.980 | In all kinds of scenarios, up and down

00:26:08.980 | and in the escalators and off.

00:26:11.560 | So, this is an example of a way to practice

00:26:16.560 | and then the way that we're sitting, like these chairs,

00:26:20.400 | for example, our chairs are not very dynamic

00:26:22.960 | but there is rocking chairs, right?

00:26:24.440 | And this is something I recommend for a lot of kids.

00:26:27.800 | Like in schools, I used to rock on the chair

00:26:30.920 | which is very common.

00:26:32.320 | - Yeah, I used to have my skateboard underneath my chair

00:26:34.160 | and roll it back and forth

00:26:35.200 | and the teacher would tell me to stop

00:26:37.580 | and just slowly, little by little,

00:26:39.080 | trying to get the most subtle movement I could

00:26:40.700 | without them telling me they were gonna take it away.

00:26:43.700 | Or try.

00:26:44.540 | - Which is probably horrible, horrible advice and instruction

00:26:48.620 | just like sit up straight and chew with your mouth closed

00:26:51.800 | because they remove a lot of the self-education

00:26:56.200 | and a lot of the self-development

00:26:57.760 | and the practicum and discoveries that are necessary

00:27:00.440 | and even will damage focus and thinking processes

00:27:05.440 | in some ways.

00:27:07.360 | So, for example, I would make the chairs even more mobile

00:27:12.880 | and I would support more motion

00:27:17.000 | and then I would be able to bring attention there

00:27:19.200 | but I would also be able to bring attention away from it

00:27:22.260 | into other things and it keeps refreshing me

00:27:26.280 | so I don't become stale, the water doesn't stand.

00:27:29.240 | This is the beauty of movement.

00:27:30.880 | So you can focus for long periods of time

00:27:33.320 | and do incredible things with the mind, with focus,

00:27:35.760 | with awareness, attention, and it's with skin in the game.

00:27:40.280 | So I'm not talking as some meditator

00:27:43.000 | and he's describing the act of being very focused

00:27:46.640 | but then I put a stick on the edge of his fingers

00:27:49.320 | and I tell him, "Balance it."

00:27:51.080 | Everyone can do it for 10 seconds

00:27:52.840 | and I tell him, "Okay, now hold it 10 minutes."

00:27:55.560 | And you see that the skill has, he has no skin in the game.

00:27:59.840 | It wasn't developed in various scenarios

00:28:02.880 | but so there is a delusion that start to develop.

00:28:05.540 | And that's how movement keeps me very honest

00:28:11.200 | and humble in the way that I view humility

00:28:14.840 | and in a way that protects me and keeps me fresh.

00:28:24.520 | - I love the example of moving through the crowded street

00:28:27.800 | with a backpack because of the way in which

00:28:29.440 | it's completely adaptive to the situation

00:28:31.760 | you happen to be in and highlights the fact

00:28:33.800 | that one doesn't need a gym or any specific scenario,

00:28:38.800 | although we will certainly touch

00:28:41.240 | on ideal learning circumstances for movement

00:28:43.800 | and some of the work that you're doing, of course.

00:28:47.600 | - The less of your own personal practice

00:28:50.480 | and understanding and knowledge you've done,

00:28:53.560 | the more toys you need.

00:28:55.040 | The more you've really worked on yourself,

00:28:59.180 | the more high-tech you are.

00:29:01.800 | The more low-tech are your tools,

00:29:03.800 | the more high-tech you are.

00:29:05.280 | And this is the most advanced technology

00:29:08.720 | by far on this planet with all the advancement.

00:29:12.000 | It doesn't even start to scratch and you know it

00:29:14.840 | from the way that we understand the eyes

00:29:17.600 | all the way to, with all due respect to the Boston Robotics,

00:29:23.080 | five-year-old motion movements or animal motion

00:29:28.080 | was very underdeveloped still relatively to us systems.

00:29:33.000 | So important to remind ourselves.

00:29:37.000 | - A lot can be done with the body and gravity.

00:29:40.080 | - Floor, a piece of floor, a piece of wall,

00:29:42.320 | a corner of a room is a beautiful scenario

00:29:45.560 | which you can become, discover in and play in.

00:29:51.200 | But we are not so developed.

00:29:53.160 | So we don't see those options.

00:29:55.000 | And this is something that I try to stimulate

00:29:56.920 | and that's why I made it a point to avoid

00:29:59.760 | any of the big sponsorship and high-tech tools.

00:30:04.760 | And I at one point brought a stick into big conventions

00:30:10.000 | or sometimes I use a shirt with holes in it.

00:30:16.000 | Just like I use shirt as a point to make

00:30:18.240 | when I'm addressing a crowd to keep things

00:30:21.720 | where it's important.

00:30:24.440 | And it's important, we are important

00:30:27.360 | and our experience is important

00:30:30.040 | and we have to be very careful.

00:30:32.720 | These habits and these directions,

00:30:36.360 | they come from many times good intention

00:30:38.680 | but they are the devil many times.

00:30:42.080 | They turn into the devil just like our technology nowadays

00:30:46.160 | and what is happening with people, with depression,

00:30:48.960 | with meaninglessness, also with the body

00:30:53.960 | in various perspectives or even I will also flip it

00:30:57.720 | into high performance sports and their price

00:31:02.480 | because for me this is not a movement practice.

00:31:04.680 | It erases the person in the center of it.

00:31:07.800 | And then came places like skateboarding or breakdancing

00:31:12.880 | where somebody with a disability becomes the best

00:31:16.280 | in the world, turns it into the biggest advantage

00:31:19.160 | but you would never be accepted into gymnastics class

00:31:22.320 | and I love that.

00:31:23.880 | And that change, to place change in the center,

00:31:27.560 | it's important.

00:31:31.160 | - You touched on mention of a few sports.

00:31:33.820 | Maybe it was Charles Polquin or maybe it was another trainer

00:31:37.960 | that I heard once say that for kids,

00:31:42.640 | one of the worst things they can do

00:31:44.280 | is over-specialize in a particular sport.

00:31:47.360 | The idea being that it leads to improvements in performance

00:31:51.520 | in a very narrow domain but they raised the idea

00:31:55.400 | that it perhaps also constrains the development

00:31:59.400 | of the nervous system such that certain emotional states,

00:32:03.080 | certain intellectual abilities will forever be shut off

00:32:06.240 | because of the intense plasticity that occurs early in life.

00:32:09.160 | The more I learn from you, the more I'm thinking

00:32:12.360 | that that statement really should be extended

00:32:14.160 | to all of life.

00:32:15.360 | And I loved to remind people,

00:32:18.120 | because I started off as a developmental neurobiologist,

00:32:20.360 | that development doesn't start and end.

00:32:22.240 | You don't have childhood and adulthood.

00:32:24.160 | Our life is one long developmental arc

00:32:25.920 | from birth until death, however long that might be.

00:32:28.680 | So if one is going to be anti-specialist,

00:32:32.780 | maybe even we call that a generalist,

00:32:35.680 | what does that look like?

00:32:36.680 | What are the different domains of movement practice?

00:32:39.600 | And as I asked this, I realized I am in serious danger

00:32:44.600 | of fractionating movement into a list of words

00:32:48.280 | like strength and speed and explosiveness and suppleness,

00:32:52.560 | a word that I've heard you use before.

00:32:54.440 | And yet I think for most people,

00:32:55.520 | because we think in words often,

00:32:58.440 | some of those categories can be useful.

00:33:01.520 | So let's say I was going to embark on a movement practice

00:33:03.600 | or a child was going to embark on a movement practice

00:33:06.920 | either throughout the day or for a dedicated period of time.

00:33:10.880 | What are the sorts of categories of movement

00:33:12.760 | that I might want to think about?

00:33:14.760 | Ballistic movement, smooth movement,

00:33:17.040 | maybe you could just enrich us

00:33:19.060 | with some of the landscape around that.

00:33:21.920 | - Okay, first I'll address the first part that you mentioned.

00:33:26.620 | And I've learned from you about certain changes

00:33:31.320 | in the way that things develop later in life

00:33:35.280 | versus earlier in life.

00:33:36.960 | And you're right, this was something

00:33:38.520 | that Charles Poliquin also mentioned

00:33:40.320 | and I learned from back in the day as well from him,

00:33:42.920 | which can seem dark a bit and kind of hopeless,

00:33:47.840 | but then you should go beyond that.

00:33:52.280 | One thing that does seem to appear for me when I look around

00:34:01.680 | is the concept of unique postures.

00:34:05.880 | And I think this is true for postures of thought,

00:34:12.160 | emotional postures and movement postures.

00:34:16.100 | Truly, earlier in life,

00:34:18.740 | we are creating these unique postures

00:34:21.840 | and they get into these drawers or like a language, letters.

00:34:29.880 | Later in life, the process moves more towards integration

00:34:34.880 | of these unique postures into all different organizations.

00:34:39.160 | The beauty of it is that you can use very few postures

00:34:41.820 | to create many possibilities,

00:34:44.260 | just like Leibniz's search for a language

00:34:47.580 | that contain one symbol only versus two,

00:34:52.040 | which he discovered.

00:34:56.220 | And this is something that is often seen.

00:35:01.220 | Like, you take someone who moves in a certain way

00:35:04.960 | and you teach him all these new sports or techniques,

00:35:08.240 | but essentially, if you look deeply and you're sensitive,

00:35:11.500 | you see it's the same postures

00:35:14.080 | that he will have to work with till the end of his life.

00:35:17.080 | The same thinking postures.

00:35:20.620 | And this is really problematic,

00:35:24.300 | where we are not freeing the mind beyond this,

00:35:29.300 | how would I say, a scaffolding of thinking,

00:35:37.860 | and we are actually letting go of the content.

00:35:40.360 | We get more and more focused on the way of thinking

00:35:45.360 | versus the thinking itself,

00:35:50.360 | or habitual ways and forms of thinking,

00:35:54.600 | associative thinking, et cetera, and emotionally the same.

00:35:58.600 | We are constructing these emotional postures,

00:36:01.040 | and then we have to go through the rest of our lives

00:36:03.320 | working with that.

00:36:05.000 | So, this is the dark side, right?

00:36:07.560 | But of course, there are always possibilities,

00:36:11.880 | both, I think, invading this early system to some extent,

00:36:17.960 | even if it's 5% or 7% or whatever percent.

00:36:21.960 | And also, on the freeing yourself

00:36:24.900 | of going beyond all postures, period,

00:36:27.840 | working with the postures you have,

00:36:30.940 | but towards a posture-less way of doing things.

00:36:35.280 | So, this is something interesting

00:36:37.120 | when people work with movements,

00:36:40.440 | but finally are able to go into movement,

00:36:44.480 | and this magic starts to happen,

00:36:46.080 | and then the techniques fall apart,

00:36:48.560 | and something appears, and it's a phase change.

00:36:53.560 | It's a transformation.

00:36:55.840 | It's not a, it's a binary moment.

00:36:59.400 | There is a jump there, for sure,

00:37:00.840 | and it's very rare to see,

00:37:03.440 | both in thinking and emotionally and in other ways.

00:37:06.880 | We have many names for it,

00:37:08.360 | and some talk about enlightenment,

00:37:10.640 | and some talk about all kinds of processes related to it,

00:37:13.560 | and I think most of them are shadows of the sun,

00:37:18.560 | but it's not the sun itself, really.

00:37:20.680 | And then talking about ways of thinking about movement,

00:37:25.560 | this is where I use something I call my slice and dice.

00:37:30.000 | Because of the problem of using words

00:37:32.280 | and definitions and categories,

00:37:33.820 | I try to create a lot of them,

00:37:36.680 | and I write them on the paper,

00:37:39.240 | and then I crumble them, throw them into the bin,

00:37:42.280 | and I keep doing it all my life.

00:37:44.900 | The writing them down and the geeking on it

00:37:47.920 | is very important, also very important, to let it go.

00:37:51.060 | I tell people, what you forgot is not the same,

00:37:57.080 | forgetting is not the same as never knowing it.

00:37:59.960 | The crumbling and throwing away is a form of forgetting,

00:38:03.440 | but it leaves some kind of a homeopathic trace behind.

00:38:10.040 | So let's take some slice and dice and try to look at it.

00:38:14.460 | Here is a physical one, contraction, relaxation.

00:38:18.920 | That's a spectrum,

00:38:21.880 | and pretty much everything falls on this spectrum.

00:38:24.880 | Also, in terms of analyzing a person or yourself,

00:38:28.480 | you can tell me if you feel closer to this side

00:38:31.800 | or closer to that side,

00:38:33.920 | and then it allows you to examine your practices.

00:38:36.240 | How many of the practices are moving you towards balance,

00:38:40.980 | and how many are it's your addiction

00:38:43.040 | of just doing what you're good at versus what you need?

00:38:46.160 | Here is another example, physical culture.

00:38:50.260 | So we have the dance, really,

00:38:53.920 | working with internal concepts and expressing them,

00:38:58.760 | abstract concepts, expression.

00:39:01.220 | Second perspective, the martial concept,

00:39:06.000 | but not in the sense of just fighting, but also partnering,

00:39:09.720 | working with another person,

00:39:11.840 | a dynamic entity that is communicating with you.

00:39:15.440 | The third one is, I call the elements,

00:39:17.480 | working with the environment.

00:39:19.560 | The next one is a somatic one, is the internal practice,

00:39:25.860 | and of course, they are all gray zones,

00:39:27.920 | and another one is object manipulatory,

00:39:31.280 | which you can think of it also as the environment,

00:39:33.160 | but it's more small objects, heavy objects,

00:39:36.320 | many objects, few objects,

00:39:38.000 | and then you can look at this way of thinking,

00:39:40.720 | and you can say, oh, I have many of my practices

00:39:43.760 | in this direction, but not,

00:39:45.360 | and you can draw it for yourself.

00:39:47.800 | So that's another perspective,

00:39:49.420 | and this way, I use dozens of perspectives,

00:39:53.100 | and with the years, it gives people a sense

00:39:56.480 | of where they wanna go, how they want to do it,

00:39:58.920 | and what they need to address

00:40:00.480 | versus what they like to address, et cetera.

00:40:02.900 | - Is it helpful?

00:40:03.740 | - Very helpful.

00:40:04.660 | Those different bins are very helpful.

00:40:06.820 | I really appreciate that you mentioned

00:40:10.220 | that people will often practice what they're good at

00:40:12.880 | as opposed to what they need.

00:40:14.640 | In gym culture, we refer to this

00:40:18.400 | as the guy that always skips leg day person, right?

00:40:22.400 | Big upper body, skinny legs,

00:40:23.880 | or you'll see people that have these enormous thick torsos

00:40:27.320 | and they're bench pressing all day,

00:40:28.600 | but they clearly need to pull on an object

00:40:31.520 | every once in a while to create some balance,

00:40:33.360 | but they don't do it because they, for whatever reason,

00:40:37.640 | they have an obsession with moving

00:40:39.500 | greater and greater poundage or something like that,

00:40:42.000 | which in certain sports like powerlifting,

00:40:45.780 | where aesthetics aren't the goal,

00:40:47.560 | and it's simply to push more weight off one's chest,

00:40:49.920 | you could imagine that there's something beneficial there.

00:40:52.220 | However, I think that it's really important

00:40:55.880 | in intellectual endeavors and in movement endeavors,

00:40:59.920 | if I understand correctly, to bring oneself

00:41:02.520 | to a place of real challenge on a regular basis.

00:41:05.480 | In fact, earlier today,

00:41:06.720 | I was in a state of constant challenge

00:41:08.220 | 'cause it was all new to me.

00:41:09.880 | And as much as I told myself,

00:41:11.600 | beginner's mind, beginner's mind, beginner's mind,

00:41:14.040 | it's hard, I confess, to not want to do well,

00:41:17.240 | to perform well, right?

00:41:18.440 | And I think that's a natural and healthy thing.

00:41:21.640 | - Not only natural, it is necessary,

00:41:24.820 | but I want you to keep it on that side

00:41:28.440 | and to bring something to balance it.

00:41:31.320 | If there is not this challenge, the process will not work.

00:41:35.840 | It has to be this scale,

00:41:37.440 | and you're talking about scales of pain, pleasure,

00:41:40.240 | and this is another scale.

00:41:42.920 | And this discomfort, again, is necessary

00:41:46.340 | and should be recognized as I'm in the right place.

00:41:49.900 | When it becomes too high and I'm unable to resolve

00:41:54.580 | to make any progress, I went overboard.

00:41:59.340 | But when it's not present, I don't do nothing here,

00:42:03.400 | nothing that I'm truly interested in.

00:42:05.300 | I'm just gratifying myself, wankery.

00:42:08.380 | In essence, it's not about searching for the discomfort,

00:42:15.120 | but it's a marker.

00:42:19.840 | And I think the question should be, who am I serving?

00:42:24.840 | 'Cause people do not serve themselves, in essence.

00:42:29.660 | They serve part, parts of it,

00:42:33.800 | some kind of a fraction of themselves.

00:42:37.800 | And this separation of oneself from oneself,

00:42:41.560 | and this is also a result of the practice, a good practice.

00:42:47.340 | I think maybe the biggest gift I received from the practice

00:42:51.420 | is I can say, although it will take maybe a certain context,

00:42:56.420 | I am not my friend.

00:42:59.340 | At times I am, but many times I am not my friend.

00:43:05.120 | And by creating this separation,

00:43:07.220 | I can assume a certain stability in the face of everything

00:43:12.220 | all the way up to our own mortality and death,

00:43:16.360 | which is, and maybe beyond, who knows.

00:43:19.680 | - It was a striking moment for me earlier today

00:43:24.160 | when I was really challenged

00:43:25.740 | with one of the practices we were doing.

00:43:28.940 | And you said, this is exactly what I experienced

00:43:32.320 | this morning, Andrew, that's what you said.

00:43:35.180 | And I couldn't imagine that you were having challenges

00:43:37.400 | doing what I was attempting to do.

00:43:38.940 | And of course you weren't.

00:43:39.920 | I believe what you were referring to

00:43:41.220 | is that you had put yourself at that edge earlier in the day

00:43:44.540 | in which you were making failures.

00:43:46.860 | You were failing to execute the way

00:43:48.900 | that you were attempting to execute movement.

00:43:51.920 | I should just, to inject some neuroscience

00:43:54.340 | and neuroplasticity there, I can't help myself.

00:43:57.400 | This is what I do after all.

00:43:59.040 | There are beautiful data in animals and humans

00:44:01.820 | showing that in the seconds and minutes

00:44:05.120 | after a failed attempt at a motor execution of something,

00:44:09.140 | the forebrain is in a heightened state of focus.

00:44:11.700 | And when you hear it, it suddenly makes perfect sense.

00:44:14.380 | Of course, why would the nervous system change

00:44:16.700 | unless it got a cue to change?

00:44:18.860 | And the cue almost always comes in the form of frustration.

00:44:23.280 | The ah, or as we said earlier, nah.

00:44:26.700 | The nah signal is the one that preps you

00:44:29.680 | to extract more learning from the subsequent trials.

00:44:33.660 | And yet for a lot of people, they feel that,

00:44:36.380 | oh, that failure to execute,

00:44:38.440 | or even to approximate execution,

00:44:42.060 | and they feel and experience that ah, negative signal,

00:44:46.460 | and they lean out of the practice.

00:44:48.980 | They start to depart either mentally or physically or both.

00:44:52.540 | And if there's anything I think that perhaps we can offer

00:44:55.860 | is this understanding that that edge, as some people call it,

00:44:58.320 | or that failures aren't just necessary,

00:45:01.180 | they are part of the learning process.

00:45:03.720 | They are the entry gate to neuroplasticity.

00:45:07.660 | Yes, contextualizing or re-contextualizing,

00:45:12.260 | that sensation is something I work a lot with

00:45:15.260 | and I just remind it to people,

00:45:16.780 | and I also remind it to myself.

00:45:18.980 | And if it wasn't difficult

00:45:20.620 | and we didn't need to redo it again and again,

00:45:23.660 | we wouldn't be again on this correct scale,

00:45:27.220 | which is dynamic and moving, just like rolling downhill.

00:45:31.380 | So there is definitely a necessity to succeed, to orient.

00:45:35.660 | There is certain aspects that you want to achieve,

00:45:39.180 | but then there is also the letting go of it

00:45:43.620 | and the de-ambitioning of it.

00:45:45.780 | And within that tension,

00:45:49.300 | the plus and the minus comes movement.

00:45:51.440 | And that's how the,

00:45:52.700 | and again, if I stretch it too far away

00:45:55.100 | or if I increase one of them too much,

00:45:57.460 | then I would have some issues.

00:45:59.060 | But you will, with practice,

00:46:01.660 | learn to recognize the optimal point of progression.

00:46:06.660 | Of course, it takes many years

00:46:09.840 | and a lot of play and exposure to get a sense of it,

00:46:14.240 | regardless of the layer in which it is applied.

00:46:18.100 | So I'm sure in your field and in your pursuits,

00:46:22.280 | you are already aware of it and applying it in your life,

00:46:26.180 | talking about focus,

00:46:27.220 | talking about ways of thinking, creativity, et cetera.

00:46:30.940 | But then it's enough that I pull into another perspective

00:46:34.060 | and you will see that people are specialists

00:46:36.420 | and then they don't have really the real essence

00:46:40.540 | of the concept.

00:46:42.140 | It's not theirs.

00:46:43.340 | It's applied specifically.

00:46:45.740 | The one who changes all the time gets the general component

00:46:49.740 | because what appears when everything changes,

00:46:52.580 | that is that new entity.

00:46:54.400 | Everything changes, something stays.

00:46:58.080 | That's what we want to get,

00:46:59.180 | this concept and this understanding.

00:47:01.700 | - I've heard the statement before,

00:47:04.260 | we are just a meat vehicle, right?

00:47:06.340 | We're just a sack of cells.

00:47:08.420 | And I truly despise that statement because first of all,

00:47:12.860 | it deprives us of all meaning of our lives.

00:47:16.640 | And we can go down the route of philosophy

00:47:20.100 | as to whether or not there's meaning or not,

00:47:22.240 | but more importantly,

00:47:23.780 | it divorces us from the idea that the body and brain

00:47:26.300 | are interconnected and have at least equal value

00:47:29.980 | at any one moment, they're informing each other.

00:47:32.140 | Emotions inform movement, movement informs emotions.

00:47:35.760 | One thing that I've heard you say before,

00:47:37.700 | and I really love to hear you embellish on,

00:47:40.940 | is this important principle that human beings

00:47:44.440 | are truly unique in terms of the enormous range

00:47:47.720 | of movements that we can perform.

00:47:49.460 | And yet we are excellent, maybe superior

00:47:53.660 | to all other species at certain types of movement.

00:47:57.340 | The one that comes to mind is walking, strides, striding.

00:48:00.780 | So maybe we could just explore that idea

00:48:05.480 | because obviously a cheetah is very fast.

00:48:08.780 | The gibbon seems to have a lot of proficiency

00:48:10.980 | at grabbing and swinging from branches,

00:48:12.940 | but human beings perform an enormous

00:48:17.380 | or can potentially perform an enormous array of movements.

00:48:19.940 | Do you think all human beings are potentially able

00:48:22.540 | to explore all the different types of movement?

00:48:25.820 | And if so, how does one approach that?

00:48:29.660 | So basically what I'm doing is I'm tabling a concept

00:48:33.100 | which is not range of motion, right?

00:48:35.700 | For the gym rats, discard with range of motion.

00:48:38.580 | I'm talking about the variety of movements.

00:48:42.020 | - First, it's not important what I think,

00:48:47.340 | if it's possible or not possible,

00:48:49.500 | or if it's even possible for you or not possible for you,

00:48:53.540 | what is important is what you truly want to do,

00:48:58.540 | what you truly are after.

00:49:00.460 | And it's important for me because many times

00:49:02.660 | this way of thinking about things is already limited.

00:49:06.700 | I like to say a man doesn't go to the ocean

00:49:12.400 | to empty it with a spoon.

00:49:15.340 | A lot of the types of dressing up of the concepts nowadays

00:49:20.340 | is trying to fit an elephant into the hole in the needle.

00:49:25.100 | Like for example, the concept of practice.

00:49:29.480 | And then our lives, as if we have a life.

00:49:34.540 | We have some kind of a stream of behaviors.

00:49:41.380 | We have, there is an argument of free will, et cetera.

00:49:45.020 | There is a multiplicity, definitely a man is a legion.

00:49:49.420 | That's the real meaning of that phrase.

00:49:52.180 | One day you wake up like this.

00:49:55.820 | I say, Andrew, let's meet tomorrow at 7 a.m.,

00:49:58.320 | but I don't know who's gonna wake up tomorrow.

00:50:00.580 | And then you send me a text message.

00:50:02.420 | Oh, I'm feeling off, right?

00:50:07.060 | At 6.55 and go back to sleep.

00:50:09.540 | So examining that and seeing that,

00:50:12.280 | I think frees you up eventually.

00:50:14.180 | And start to orient you in a better direction.

00:50:17.600 | So what do you want to do and what,

00:50:22.300 | but in the orientation of also what you need to do.

00:50:25.500 | What you sense and what you are developing

00:50:28.980 | as an evolutionary direction for you.

00:50:32.820 | This is the important bit.

00:50:34.400 | Is it possible for everyone to engage

00:50:37.360 | in certain specific physical movement?

00:50:39.340 | For example, in Scandinavian countries,

00:50:41.840 | the squat is not very approachable.

00:50:44.640 | It's very difficult.

00:50:48.760 | They're more built for dragging heavy things.

00:50:51.660 | And also in this climate, I guess it makes less sense

00:50:56.600 | to squat and cause you're gonna freeze there.

00:50:59.400 | So this is, and then you see the squat in warm climates

00:51:03.840 | and it's like so open and accessible.

00:51:07.000 | They're very good deadlifters usually.

00:51:10.800 | Not good squatters.

00:51:13.000 | - They wanna get away from the ground.

00:51:14.500 | - Yeah.

00:51:15.340 | The shallow hip socket, which allows one activity,

00:51:18.760 | but then the stability of the deep hip socket,

00:51:21.160 | the architecture of the hip, the femur heads,

00:51:25.440 | the cue angles, the shapes, et cetera.

00:51:28.320 | So we are all unique and there are certain elements

00:51:31.260 | which like, for example, my squat challenge is like,

00:51:34.760 | for most people, there is something there.

00:51:37.440 | - Did you remind people what the squat challenge is?

00:51:39.680 | - The squat was my attempt to bring a new,

00:51:44.360 | fresh state of mind into the word squat.

00:51:48.200 | Not as a strength element.

00:51:51.460 | It's a fundamental resting position, really.

00:51:55.560 | Actually should be one of the most abundant ones.

00:51:58.000 | We replaced it with sitting, which is not really,

00:52:01.720 | doesn't work well if you're in a natural environment.

00:52:04.500 | It's not very comfortable, actually,

00:52:06.040 | to sit for long periods of time.

00:52:07.460 | Rocks and different terrains, so you end up lying down,

00:52:10.800 | standing, and squatting a lot.

00:52:13.360 | Also, when you're moving low and dynamic,

00:52:15.620 | like even collecting berries,

00:52:17.460 | the squat is much more dynamic and open.

00:52:20.920 | And then elimination is happening there.

00:52:23.000 | So it's like, it's such a fundamental thing

00:52:24.720 | and we totally eliminated it.

00:52:26.880 | We eliminated many other things.

00:52:28.540 | Overhead movements, behind the back,

00:52:32.020 | all kinds of back realm, what they call the back realm

00:52:35.380 | is totally absent in people's awareness.

00:52:39.240 | So that was my attempt to bring it back into people

00:52:41.420 | and I recommend it in order to really get the transformation

00:52:46.420 | going to accumulate 30 minutes a day in the squat position,

00:52:52.120 | unloaded, just resting down, not correct, not erect.

00:52:55.200 | Many people make this mistake.

00:52:56.720 | They didn't read through the whole thing.

00:52:58.720 | It's just resting down there.

00:53:00.480 | And of course, you have to be mindful of dosages.

00:53:03.280 | Some people will get hurt if they try to do it too quickly,

00:53:06.680 | so they might need a build-up process towards it.

00:53:09.060 | And also, I'm not talking about 30 minutes straight,

00:53:11.760 | but accumulation throughout the day.

00:53:15.360 | And this does a lot of good for digestive problems,

00:53:18.700 | for lower back pain, for hip pains, for knees,

00:53:22.600 | and generally for aging,

00:53:24.660 | because it's basically folding your body

00:53:28.760 | in the most basic way.

00:53:30.000 | Are you folding your body?

00:53:31.040 | If you're not folding your body,

00:53:32.820 | you will lose the foldability of your body.

00:53:35.140 | And this is probably the easiest

00:53:38.060 | and the most abundant way to fold a body.

00:53:40.160 | But this is an example of something that can be very useful

00:53:46.220 | with many, many people,

00:53:47.500 | but there will always be unique individuals

00:53:50.640 | which need something else.

00:53:52.640 | And there are benefits in examining things,

00:53:57.640 | and also there are benefits in getting hurt,

00:54:02.360 | which is not often discussed, especially not in these parts.

00:54:05.960 | So I'm one of the only ones, as a teacher,

00:54:10.520 | that says I injured many of my students.

00:54:12.820 | And if I did not do that,

00:54:15.660 | I would be totally useless for them as well.

00:54:19.980 | The totally safe system has nothing to offer, practically.

00:54:24.980 | Nothing is totally safe, and we can, of course,

00:54:27.860 | we don't approach it with a ballsy or machoistic thing,

00:54:31.300 | but we are aware that sometimes

00:54:33.120 | we have to go beyond the boundaries.

00:54:34.740 | And hopefully those would be the small injuries

00:54:37.420 | that will help us avoid the big injuries.

00:54:40.060 | But if you try to avoid the small injuries,

00:54:41.860 | maybe you'll get those big injuries in there.

00:54:44.740 | So examining which types and forms of movement,

00:54:48.700 | the location of the body, speed of execution,

00:54:53.180 | the type of organization of the body,

00:54:55.660 | which is a whole thing that we can discuss.

00:54:59.560 | All of this is up for the grabs,

00:55:01.660 | and it's something that we have to create

00:55:03.500 | individual relationship with,

00:55:06.440 | hopefully with good guidance,

00:55:08.260 | where we can get the right scenarios,

00:55:12.180 | a facilitator of good scenarios for our learning,

00:55:15.140 | which is what I try to do,

00:55:16.820 | and less of a technical state of mind,

00:55:18.700 | do this ABC or, yeah, like chunking,

00:55:22.720 | what I really dislike for a long time.

00:55:26.100 | It's like many people, they tell me,

00:55:28.820 | have you met this guy?

00:55:30.240 | He's an amazing teacher,

00:55:31.520 | because he chunked the process into these bits,

00:55:34.140 | and not even in the correct places to chunk.

00:55:36.340 | And it doesn't offer, it locks us, this state of mind.

00:55:40.960 | I talk about the chemistry model,

00:55:42.880 | I call it my chemistry model,

00:55:44.340 | where an atom, a molecule, and then a compound

00:55:48.460 | is conceptualized, versus just chunking.

00:55:50.960 | So there is an actual evolution,

00:55:53.120 | like I call it also sketch learning.

00:55:56.580 | I'm not going to try to draw you

00:55:58.740 | if I know anything about art and drawing.

00:56:01.300 | I'm going to start by capturing something very rough,

00:56:04.300 | and I need to practice that first,

00:56:06.160 | that dynamic entity, before I go into the rendering

00:56:10.140 | and the shading, et cetera.

00:56:11.660 | So the same way to learn things.

00:56:15.320 | So big picture to small details,

00:56:18.660 | and unlike many of my teachers that I ran into,

00:56:22.320 | and I say with the greatest respect,

00:56:25.140 | because I don't know who taught me more,

00:56:26.740 | my good teachers or my worst teachers,

00:56:29.060 | but some of them just teach from the small details

00:56:32.900 | into a big picture that never arrives.

00:56:35.680 | - Given that humans can generate such a broad array

00:56:39.460 | of types of movement, run, jump, duck, squat, leap,

00:56:43.340 | all these types of movements,

00:56:45.760 | do you think there's value in observing the movements

00:56:48.060 | of other animal species?

00:56:49.340 | I know I certainly enjoy watching other animals move.

00:56:54.860 | - I think the most, one of the more spectacular animal facts

00:56:59.180 | that was shared with me is when I was a graduate student,

00:57:02.100 | someone down the hall was working on the little petals

00:57:05.260 | of the chameleon, which can walk up walls,

00:57:09.380 | and it was a great mystery is whether or not

00:57:11.300 | they were suction, but it turns out they can do it

00:57:13.260 | in a vacuum, so it's not suction.

00:57:15.060 | Whether or not there was some sticky substance,

00:57:16.660 | and it turned out, I don't know,

00:57:18.700 | I feel compelled to share this with you,

00:57:20.020 | so I'm going to do it because I have a feeling

00:57:21.860 | it will lead us to an insight of some sort,

00:57:24.480 | that those little tiny petals are so thin

00:57:27.300 | and so close together that the chameleon

00:57:30.780 | actually sticks to the wall

00:57:32.020 | by what are called Van der Waal forces,

00:57:34.440 | meaning it's a very weak molecular force,

00:57:36.500 | but strong enough to stick to the wall

00:57:38.580 | because they are actually exchanging molecules

00:57:40.820 | with the surface they're on.

00:57:43.000 | So obviously we can't do that, and yet I spent hours,

00:57:48.000 | because they were in the lab next door,

00:57:50.260 | watching videos of these little chameleons walk,

00:57:53.100 | and the articulation of these feet is incredible

00:57:56.700 | because they're literally rolling those little petals along

00:57:59.680 | in a way that kind of defies anything else I've ever seen.

00:58:04.340 | I told myself this was useful,

00:58:06.580 | A, because I thought it was interesting,

00:58:07.900 | but B, because I never really thought about

00:58:10.520 | how I articulate my foot.

00:58:12.060 | I've thought about being a heel striker

00:58:13.500 | or a toe striker when I run,

00:58:14.860 | and no one can tell me which one I'm supposed to be.

00:58:17.420 | Maybe you can tell me, but the point is,

00:58:21.600 | or I suppose the question is,

00:58:23.680 | do you think there's value in observing

00:58:25.420 | the extremes of animal kingdom movement

00:58:28.500 | as a way to inform the play space

00:58:30.580 | and the exploration space

00:58:31.900 | of our own human movement practice?

00:58:34.280 | - I think so.

00:58:36.420 | I think it's, first, it's inspiring.

00:58:39.120 | It opens up, but I will take it away

00:58:44.120 | from the romantic point of view,

00:58:47.300 | and I would offer another way to examine

00:58:50.220 | all these movements exist in us in ways, in certain ways,

00:58:55.220 | like the work of Grokovetsky on the spine,

00:58:59.440 | the spinal engine, and to see how these old ways of moving,

00:59:04.440 | even all the way up to exoskeletons

00:59:09.200 | and primary, very ancient, or even single-cell things,

00:59:14.200 | are still within us to a certain extent.

00:59:17.820 | And then, of course, this gets developed,

00:59:20.580 | like the Darwinian state of mind got stuck for many years

00:59:27.260 | on the survival of the fittest.

00:59:29.260 | But actually, I believe, I always believed,

00:59:33.180 | and I saw some information about it lately,

00:59:36.140 | that mutation is the heart of the model,

00:59:39.380 | not survival of the fittest.

00:59:41.200 | - Yeah, people often hear the word mutation,

00:59:43.260 | and they think, oh, mutations are bad.

00:59:45.340 | There are maladaptive mutations,

00:59:47.940 | and then there are adaptive mutations, for sure.

00:59:50.780 | - And it displaces the word change in the heart of it.

00:59:54.500 | What it wants to do, change.

00:59:58.200 | So it does not want to become better.

01:00:00.980 | There is an inherent change in it.

01:00:06.980 | And then, of course, the become better at XYZ fittest

01:00:11.480 | is the secondary perspective that arrives

01:00:14.380 | in relation to certain things.

01:00:15.820 | But there is still a stronger,

01:00:17.260 | more ancient driving force into the process.

01:00:20.860 | So for me, this is cool to see these animals

01:00:24.440 | take it all the way to this extreme,

01:00:26.740 | but it's also still reflecting within us.

01:00:29.660 | So I love to do, like, for example,

01:00:31.540 | I introduce with people spinal waves.

01:00:34.500 | And by bringing these waves into the body,

01:00:37.540 | sometimes you get weird experiences,

01:00:40.740 | like emotional releases, and sometimes, and other times,

01:00:45.300 | it can become an incredible tool to help an athlete

01:00:48.760 | which specialized and reached the top of the top.

01:00:51.800 | And then you defrag his system a little bit

01:00:54.980 | and offer him some freshness and some segmental movement.

01:00:59.380 | And first you fuck him up.

01:01:01.740 | That's usually the case.

01:01:03.500 | Technically, he's off, his coordination's off,

01:01:05.960 | but later the growth will arrive.

01:01:08.860 | It's a form of playfulness.

01:01:10.660 | It's a form of examining things

01:01:12.940 | regardless of their success or failure.

01:01:15.380 | More understanding that change is important.

01:01:18.420 | And then after that, we can also look

01:01:20.980 | at the more competitive state of mind

01:01:24.380 | and the more success and failure orientation.

01:01:27.400 | But there is no game without change.

01:01:30.800 | So this is the primary one.

01:01:32.860 | And that's why I say, okay, you wanna succeed in the tasks

01:01:36.540 | like we did earlier, but you stayed within the game

01:01:39.660 | to sustain the game,

01:01:40.660 | the infinite versus finite game, right, perspective.

01:01:44.940 | To sustain the game means to continue to change,

01:01:49.220 | continue to transform, and then to win the game

01:01:53.740 | sometimes mean game over.

01:01:55.340 | So it's like, yeah, within that tension,

01:01:59.920 | I think it's beautiful to play and to exist and to be.

01:02:04.540 | - You mentioned something that for me

01:02:06.160 | is an incredibly important concept for a couple of reasons.

01:02:09.680 | And you mentioned these spinal waves, right?

01:02:11.840 | I have to assume that's taking the torso for us,

01:02:15.040 | you know, movement morons that I'll just refer to

01:02:18.160 | in course terms instead of thoracic spine.

01:02:21.200 | I mean, we'll stay away from the technical anatomy

01:02:23.400 | and the torso and creating movement either side to side,

01:02:27.200 | undulation or arching and extension of the spine.

01:02:32.200 | - Yeah, dorsal, ventral, side to side, rotational,

01:02:35.460 | this was spiraling.

01:02:36.660 | - Have you ever had the experience of yourself

01:02:43.180 | or other people engaging in those types of movements

01:02:45.340 | and experiencing particular categories of emotions?

01:02:48.740 | And I have a particular reason for asking this.

01:02:50.460 | There's no right or wrong answer, of course,

01:02:51.920 | but I'm just curious whether or not movement of the,

01:02:55.220 | let's call it the core of the body,

01:02:56.640 | things close to the midline as opposed to far away

01:02:58.980 | from the midline, like the digits far.

01:03:01.220 | Is there any, do you have any evidence

01:03:03.500 | that that can evoke a certain category of emotional states?

01:03:07.960 | - Evidence, I have none, but I have experience

01:03:10.840 | and I have some thoughts about it.

01:03:12.760 | Ida Rolf, who is known to have created Rolfing

01:03:18.960 | or structural integration,

01:03:20.200 | said the issues are in the tissues.

01:03:23.080 | And around the spine, the spine is us, as you know.

01:03:27.680 | It's like you can take an arm off a limb,

01:03:30.100 | but there's been attempts, but there is no brainy alone,

01:03:35.100 | this cerebral thing alone.

01:03:38.580 | The spine and maybe more parts and systems

01:03:42.240 | inside the torso are important.

01:03:44.020 | So that's why I like to start from that core entity.

01:03:46.820 | And then these little fluctuations, they create,

01:03:50.760 | they unblock things, they start to move things,

01:03:56.820 | and you can avoid, funny enough,

01:03:59.740 | mobilizing those areas by doing big frame motions

01:04:04.620 | and competitive motions and techniques all your life.

01:04:07.540 | So even some, most yogis, for example,

01:04:11.220 | they look extremely mobile.

01:04:13.580 | But then when you're actually going into the small,

01:04:15.900 | what I call the small frame,

01:04:17.640 | I borrowed this from Chinese martial arts,

01:04:20.220 | small frame, big frame.

01:04:21.580 | The big frame is these big changes

01:04:24.620 | of our total body in space posture.

01:04:28.260 | And then the small frame is barely moving,

01:04:30.380 | but mobilizing the little bits

01:04:32.420 | that comprise the same pretty much posture.

01:04:35.800 | So these are very beneficial,

01:04:37.220 | and it has totally disappeared from our physical culture.

01:04:41.740 | When you introduce it back,

01:04:43.280 | the small frame offers the big frame,

01:04:47.180 | but the big frame doesn't offer the small frame

01:04:49.420 | because, of course, the small detail

01:04:51.580 | come together into the big picture.

01:04:53.460 | So if I wanna place my body in a specific position

01:04:56.120 | and I have all these bits moving well,

01:04:58.160 | I can construct it in whatever way I want.

01:05:00.820 | But if I just work on the big one,

01:05:02.680 | most chances are I just mobilize certain areas

01:05:07.440 | while other areas are totally held or blocked,

01:05:11.060 | and then I'm specialized one more time.

01:05:14.600 | Take me out of this realm and I'll have difficulties.

01:05:17.920 | What will sit there in this stagnation?

01:05:20.340 | Emotion, material, thoughts, traumas.

01:05:25.160 | That's why people get discharges.

01:05:28.400 | And the body, memory is not what we think it is.

01:05:32.560 | That's how I believe.

01:05:33.400 | It is stored everywhere.

01:05:36.800 | And I've had those experiences.

01:05:40.660 | A lot of people have the opposite.

01:05:42.680 | When a certain emotion is evoked,

01:05:45.080 | they start to undulate the spine.

01:05:47.100 | So this can be worked from this direction

01:05:50.380 | or from this direction.

01:05:51.340 | And I believe by applying such a practice,

01:05:55.480 | it is wise.

01:05:58.880 | You basically turn over the land

01:06:01.580 | and you are allowing things to shift

01:06:06.440 | and to move and to adapt.

01:06:08.400 | So I highly recommend it.

01:06:09.960 | And we teach it in a very elaborate and gradual way.

01:06:13.780 | And this is needed really because people,

01:06:18.180 | when they just go into some general recommendation,

01:06:20.900 | they usually just get stuck into a new pattern.

01:06:23.380 | Ah, that spinal wave, okay.

01:06:25.540 | That's it.

01:06:26.380 | So I've been using, again, these slice and dice,

01:06:28.100 | like teaching dozens of systems of moving the torso

01:06:31.740 | until a person is free to really move the torso,

01:06:35.060 | like the language is created.

01:06:36.920 | The small enough units are created in your understanding

01:06:40.760 | from all these systems.

01:06:42.440 | And then you improvise.

01:06:43.660 | You reach the highest level of the practice.

01:06:45.820 | I love the answer.

01:06:48.480 | - Let me tell you a bit of why I asked.

01:06:51.320 | So there's a principle in neuroscience,

01:06:56.440 | but especially in neuroevolution, they call it evo-devo,

01:06:59.960 | sometimes evolution and development, how those link.

01:07:02.520 | If you look at, so we have motor neurons, as you know,

01:07:05.040 | but for the audience that live in our spinal cord

01:07:07.240 | that cause transmission and contraction of the muscles

01:07:09.660 | allow us to move our limbs.

01:07:11.440 | And then we have motor neurons up here

01:07:13.040 | called upper motor neurons that control the motor,

01:07:15.060 | lower one.

01:07:15.900 | So when something is reflexive or learned,

01:07:17.520 | we're not thinking about it, so to speak.

01:07:19.720 | We mainly use the lower motor neurons.

01:07:21.360 | We know this because you can do an experiment.

01:07:23.200 | It's a rather barbaric experiment,

01:07:24.600 | but it's been done many times

01:07:26.600 | called creating a decerebrate cat.

01:07:28.900 | You actually remove the neocortex

01:07:30.840 | and these cats will walk on a treadmill.

01:07:33.000 | It's called fictive motion.

01:07:34.400 | No problem at all.

01:07:35.520 | There are human beings who don't have a neocortex

01:07:38.380 | or much of their neocortex is missing.

01:07:40.400 | They generate perfectly fine movement.

01:07:42.640 | - The pattern has been downloaded.

01:07:44.260 | - That's right.

01:07:45.100 | It's truly downloaded into the spine

01:07:47.860 | and the connection between the spine and muscles.

01:07:49.940 | Now, the motor neurons that control the spinal waves,

01:07:53.820 | as you call them, are of a particular category.

01:07:58.260 | They have a molecular signature, a physiological signature.

01:08:01.180 | They were identified by, he's dead now,

01:08:03.380 | but a biologist at Columbia University named Tom Jessel

01:08:07.100 | and many of his scientific offspring.

01:08:08.960 | Here's what's interesting.

01:08:10.680 | In fish or in animals that really only have the opportunity

01:08:14.940 | to undulate and flap their little fins,

01:08:19.000 | the motor neurons that control undulation in those animals

01:08:24.540 | are identical molecularly to the motor neurons

01:08:27.000 | that control the spinal undulation in humans.

01:08:30.560 | What's been added in human evolution are extra rows,

01:08:34.500 | literally categories of molecularly distinct neurons

01:08:37.300 | so that as you move from the center of the body outward,

01:08:40.640 | unlike a fish, which can move its fins,

01:08:43.440 | but can't actually, it doesn't have digits.

01:08:45.840 | We have special motor neurons to move these little bits,

01:08:48.980 | these bits, these bits, and I can't do a spinal wave,

01:08:53.000 | but I can do the mudras thing, like the belly thing.

01:08:57.360 | And that comes from seeing the movie "E.T."

01:08:58.960 | when I was a kid and puffing out my stomach

01:09:01.060 | and then realizing that I could wave it,

01:09:03.140 | but only in one direction and currently not up.

01:09:05.800 | Anyway, the yogis out there can chuckle at that, but.

01:09:10.520 | - The yogis actually do it to the side.

01:09:12.420 | - Oh, do they? - Yeah.

01:09:13.560 | - I don't know if I can do that.

01:09:15.520 | Anyway, my spinal wave is weak, but I'll work on it.

01:09:19.500 | But what I find so interesting about these layers of,

01:09:23.480 | I don't want to say sophistication, but these,

01:09:26.160 | with evolution came the addition

01:09:28.680 | of more pools of opportunity.

01:09:30.880 | These motor neuron pools, as they're called,

01:09:32.400 | are opportunity to engage in new,

01:09:35.120 | more elaborate types of movement.

01:09:36.940 | But with each new pool became the opportunity

01:09:39.720 | to create combinations of new movement.

01:09:42.700 | And so the reason I asked you

01:09:43.940 | why spinal waves create one category of movement

01:09:46.920 | is that if you touch a fish on one side of its body,

01:09:50.180 | it moves to the opposite side.

01:09:51.840 | It never moves toward it.

01:09:53.500 | But earlier we were doing a practice somewhat similar

01:09:55.740 | of testing this similar reflex.

01:09:58.160 | And sometimes I or someone will move toward a touch.

01:10:02.880 | We don't deviate to the opposite side.

01:10:05.500 | So I have this untested,

01:10:10.500 | at least formally tested hypothesis

01:10:12.260 | that movements of small digits and portions of our distal,

01:10:16.500 | as they're called, far from the midline body parts,

01:10:19.640 | evoke different sensations,

01:10:21.560 | maybe even far more subtle sensations

01:10:23.760 | than movements of the core of our body

01:10:25.760 | and the stuff closer to the spine.

01:10:29.120 | Again, it's just a theory,

01:10:30.520 | but I am grateful for your answer

01:10:33.300 | because it lands at least in the general vector direction

01:10:36.140 | of my idea here.

01:10:39.500 | - The central orientation is mostly gone from our culture.

01:10:44.500 | We don't even walk basically these days.

01:10:47.920 | If you look at traditional culture,

01:10:49.740 | the amount of walking you do on a rest day,

01:10:52.980 | it's huge.

01:10:54.000 | And so we started to create technologies

01:10:57.620 | to bring everything into the periphery,

01:11:00.500 | controlling it with the fingertips, et cetera.

01:11:02.680 | So we have incredible neurological development

01:11:05.900 | relating to this,

01:11:07.220 | but our central patterns, swimming, running, jumping,

01:11:12.180 | throwing, throwing is not pushing away.

01:11:15.820 | That's an example, right?

01:11:17.140 | - Some people, when you give them a ball to throw,

01:11:19.460 | you can tell if they've never thrown a ball before.

01:11:21.200 | - Yeah, they throw like a girl.

01:11:23.400 | That is often said here in the US.

01:11:25.300 | And it's, of course, unfair,

01:11:26.760 | but it relates to experience, right?

01:11:29.480 | That is less maybe promoted or offered for females.

01:11:34.380 | So you get this peripheral pattern

01:11:37.860 | instead of a central generated pattern

01:11:40.400 | that progresses towards the extremities.

01:11:43.140 | One thing I wanted to ask you is,

01:11:48.080 | I know an area that is not often mentioned

01:11:51.500 | is that some of these ancient patterns and systems

01:11:54.500 | are primary in many ways.

01:11:57.780 | Hence, those newer developments inside of us

01:12:01.480 | are constrained by using the connections

01:12:04.700 | running through these ancient systems.

01:12:07.020 | Hence, we are much more limited by the gene pool.

01:12:12.020 | We are hitchhikers on a piece of DNA, I like to say.

01:12:19.900 | And that gene pool is driving something so primary

01:12:23.980 | that even when you are in kind of the driver's seat

01:12:28.780 | in your eyes, you're actually not,

01:12:30.900 | or you're being totally constrained by that.

01:12:34.380 | And I wanted to hear about this.

01:12:37.820 | - Yeah, recently we had a guest on the podcast

01:12:41.500 | named Eric Jarvis, he's a professor at Rockefeller,

01:12:44.380 | who was offered a position to dance

01:12:47.420 | with the Alvin Ailey Dance Company.

01:12:49.060 | So an accomplished dancer and comes from a musical family,

01:12:51.840 | chose to become a neuroscientist instead

01:12:53.540 | and study speech and language.

01:12:55.100 | But he said something incredible, several incredible things.

01:12:58.260 | Really looking forward to getting your reflections on.

01:13:00.900 | First of all, he said that when you look at the species

01:13:05.820 | in the kingdom of animals, including us,

01:13:09.100 | that have elaborate language and true song,

01:13:12.860 | they all also have the capacity to dance.

01:13:18.040 | All the, it turns out hummingbirds actually have a dance

01:13:20.780 | and a song capacity that perhaps,

01:13:25.180 | and this is the going idea now in neuroscience

01:13:27.600 | and evolution of the brain, that singing actually came

01:13:31.820 | before finally articulated speech and language.

01:13:36.320 | That voice involved first to sing, to communicate.

01:13:39.540 | I mean, to enunciate, ugh, or ugh, or you know, or mm.

01:13:43.120 | But then song may have come first.

01:13:46.220 | Where you have song, you have dance

01:13:49.020 | and the capacity to dance,

01:13:50.120 | which of course is movement of the body.

01:13:52.060 | And where you have song and dance,

01:13:54.300 | you always find that those species

01:13:56.660 | can generate elaborate language.

01:13:58.920 | Now, the simple version of this is, okay,

01:14:01.500 | sophisticated brains tend to create clusters

01:14:03.820 | of sophisticated capabilities.

01:14:05.840 | But the other possibility,

01:14:07.060 | and it's the one that Jarvis proposes,

01:14:08.700 | and I think it's in line with what you're perhaps

01:14:10.860 | raising here, is the idea that movement of the body

01:14:14.420 | and range and sophistication of movement of the body

01:14:17.760 | through all these different systems,

01:14:20.080 | may have actually promoted or even driven the evolution

01:14:24.160 | of the things that we think of as, you know,

01:14:27.880 | speech and language and the ability to have multiple words

01:14:32.140 | for the same concept or to have elaborate

01:14:34.660 | articulation of speech.

01:14:36.240 | I find this incredibly attractive as an idea

01:14:39.500 | because certainly from, as a hierarchy of needs,

01:14:43.220 | we needed to move first to survive and to mate

01:14:45.620 | and to flee and to attack.

01:14:48.300 | It makes perfect sense to me that the layers would be built

01:14:50.520 | up fundamentally from the body to the mind

01:14:52.580 | and not the other way around.

01:14:55.160 | So that's one piece.

01:14:56.200 | And then the other piece, which I'll just share

01:14:59.280 | for any reflections you might have,

01:15:00.640 | that just blew me away was Jarvis told me that when we read,

01:15:05.640 | if, and this has been done experimentally,

01:15:10.500 | if one records the EMG, the low level muscular activity

01:15:14.540 | in the larynx and pharynx,

01:15:16.100 | we are actually repeating the words that we read,

01:15:19.560 | but so subtly so that we don't actually speak them out

01:15:23.660 | unless there's some sort of neurologic deficit,

01:15:26.140 | which some people have.

01:15:27.280 | Some people mumble why they read,

01:15:28.520 | but what that tells me is that language is movement

01:15:33.040 | and movement is language.

01:15:35.060 | So again, we have this convergence,

01:15:37.180 | but at a very basic level, I'd love your reflections on,

01:15:40.780 | those are all his ideas.

01:15:42.020 | I want to say I'm just repeating what he said

01:15:44.180 | and not nearly as precisely as he did,

01:15:47.540 | but how do you think of movement

01:15:51.140 | as either the foundation of language

01:15:54.500 | or as its own language that perhaps even defies words?

01:15:58.640 | - Wow, those are beautiful perspectives

01:16:04.860 | and I definitely feel the same.

01:16:07.280 | There's a lot to say about singing and dancing as well

01:16:11.180 | and also as a form of ancient programs of transmission.

01:16:16.180 | Sometimes there is this, in some ancient practices,

01:16:24.980 | the mantras and people don't realize

01:16:29.980 | that they are tantric practices.

01:16:33.900 | They contain a form of vibrating and breathing

01:16:38.540 | all tied together into a very elaborate way

01:16:43.540 | to promote a certain effect.

01:16:48.060 | And how would you do something like this in ancient times?

01:16:50.520 | This is ingenious.

01:16:52.160 | We, even until today, we need a full book

01:16:54.500 | to describe something like this

01:16:55.340 | and it wouldn't work as well.

01:16:57.480 | So it's like a very ancient form of transmission.

01:17:00.540 | The more accurate we became with the language,

01:17:06.460 | the more dead it became

01:17:08.700 | because it is less of a movement entity.

01:17:12.620 | It is less of a dynamic entity from its nature

01:17:15.900 | and that's why Yukio Mishima says it's corrupting.

01:17:19.740 | It corrupts us.

01:17:20.980 | So definitely, definitely the conducing force

01:17:27.340 | or the primary force for me is movement that is experienced.

01:17:34.900 | Every time we talk about movement,

01:17:37.180 | basically, even now, we are spilling it into a container

01:17:41.220 | to call it what it is, but it is beyond that.

01:17:44.560 | So then it is applied into dancing,

01:17:49.020 | into singing, into language.

01:17:51.180 | There is no other language that I see as a primary mode

01:17:56.480 | and this is a nature of space, time, things moving.

01:18:03.380 | So I think everything moves into the direction

01:18:07.300 | of understanding that more and more

01:18:09.460 | and maybe it's not so popular to call it movement.

01:18:13.060 | People have some connotations and it's okay,

01:18:15.740 | you can throw away this word and put another word

01:18:17.900 | and we probably need to do that also, like, regularly.

01:18:20.860 | Like, I start to see the end of this word for me.

01:18:24.120 | Things get corrupted again, overused, abused,

01:18:29.120 | and then we need a new word.

01:18:32.840 | And even that word is only needed for communication

01:18:36.720 | and for specific processes of education, exchange.

01:18:41.460 | It's important to stay within the experiences.

01:18:44.320 | It's important to continue to promote scenarios

01:18:47.160 | in which the experience is primary,

01:18:49.420 | more open experience, let's say,

01:18:52.760 | and not try to hold down and define overly accurately

01:18:59.800 | or if it's done, throwing it away and starting again.

01:19:03.420 | So there is no winning concept.

01:19:05.900 | You got to the winning concept, you got nothing.

01:19:08.300 | You were able to grab it, you were able to,

01:19:12.700 | this is very science, right?

01:19:14.560 | Like, we got it, we got it.

01:19:16.560 | And then it turns out to be nothing

01:19:19.220 | and more and more time passes.

01:19:23.140 | I feel science is becoming more humble

01:19:26.700 | and things are being discussed in this way.

01:19:31.700 | And because really what the science do,

01:19:37.160 | report the sun came up a certain amount

01:19:41.800 | of billions of times and then tomorrow

01:19:45.140 | it will come up again, statistics.

01:19:47.560 | Yeah, it's good prediction.

01:19:48.500 | Yeah, yeah, but we can go beyond.

01:19:51.440 | There is something inside of us that can go beyond.

01:19:54.700 | Hard to communicate.

01:19:55.940 | I can't offer it right now here, but I have the experience

01:19:59.540 | and thankfully I have a practice and a way to sense it,

01:20:03.780 | to feel it and to re-examine it.

01:20:05.740 | And then we can talk about it

01:20:07.200 | and have something from that.

01:20:09.500 | - Edward Wilson, the great sociobiologist,

01:20:13.220 | he actually founded the field of sociobiology, E.O. Wilson,

01:20:15.940 | they call him Edward Wilson,

01:20:17.740 | had this beautiful word and indeed named a book.

01:20:20.340 | Actually, the word was better than the book.

01:20:21.780 | Sorry, Wilson, but the book was a little bit meandering

01:20:24.340 | for my taste, but then again,

01:20:26.500 | he's the Harvard professor, not me.

01:20:29.060 | Well, Stanford's pretty darn good.

01:20:30.980 | This word is consilience.

01:20:33.660 | This idea of a leaping together of divergent forms

01:20:36.420 | of knowledge to create a truly valuable concept,

01:20:39.580 | which I love.

01:20:40.980 | I love it because of course I'm formally trained

01:20:43.220 | as a scientist.

01:20:44.040 | I look at things mainly through the lens of neuroscience,

01:20:45.860 | but experience is real and observation is real.

01:20:50.860 | And even in the field of medicine,

01:20:52.920 | you have double blind placebo controlled clinical trials,

01:20:56.300 | and then you have case studies.

01:20:59.540 | N of one, right?

01:21:01.100 | Not often discussed, right?

01:21:02.360 | I mean, HM, the most famous example in neuroscience

01:21:06.280 | of a patient that had no hippocampus,

01:21:08.700 | informed us more about the process of memory

01:21:10.980 | and indeed the function of the hippocampus

01:21:13.320 | than thousands of independent experiments that followed.

01:21:17.420 | So you can't have one,

01:21:19.500 | you need all these different forms of exploration,

01:21:21.520 | which is, I think we share the belief, if I may,

01:21:26.060 | that convergent forms of knowledge,

01:21:28.540 | eventually this process of consilience

01:21:30.940 | can eject a new concept.

01:21:33.260 | And yet the challenge again is that

01:21:35.980 | if we don't have a language for it,

01:21:37.320 | it becomes hard to transmit.

01:21:38.860 | One of the things that I find incredibly,

01:21:44.340 | I'll use this word again, sticky,

01:21:46.040 | is this notion of movement culture.

01:21:48.620 | I don't know who coined that phrase,

01:21:50.260 | or I've seen it in the circles and accounts

01:21:53.560 | around your Instagram account and others.

01:21:56.180 | I don't know if that's a phrase that you coined,

01:21:58.860 | but this idea of engaging in movement practice with others,

01:22:01.960 | whether or not it's dance or other movement practices,

01:22:05.380 | because it's so dynamic, there's the unpredictability of it.

01:22:09.040 | Even to like today,

01:22:10.660 | two practitioners at vastly different levels of knowledge

01:22:13.720 | and experience in movement practice,

01:22:15.840 | there's information I like to think

01:22:17.360 | to be gained from both sides.

01:22:19.660 | So one thing that I've heard you say before,

01:22:24.660 | which really resonated with me,

01:22:27.300 | is this idea that people have,

01:22:29.780 | maybe in particular in the US have this concept of,

01:22:32.340 | oh, I have my yoga friends or the people I dance with

01:22:36.680 | are distinct from my family friends are distinct from,

01:22:39.740 | but as you pointed out, gathering around movement

01:22:43.860 | is an age-old tradition.

01:22:46.940 | And that perhaps we'd be better off

01:22:48.980 | not thinking about people we exercise with or train with,

01:22:52.180 | but that friendship and connection made through movement

01:22:56.860 | is perhaps the most valuable form of connection.

01:23:00.700 | - Yeah, I think it's a product of those practices

01:23:03.500 | that are maybe not so aware

01:23:07.220 | or not so movement-oriented in the open sense.

01:23:10.300 | And then you get this sensation with people,

01:23:13.880 | but alone we do nothing.

01:23:16.020 | So much so that we're never alone, also on the inside,

01:23:20.180 | and we will manufacture and produce entities inside.

01:23:25.180 | So we're constantly in a dynamic exchange,

01:23:30.300 | cultural exchange.

01:23:31.460 | And practically I learned this lesson in Capoeira.

01:23:35.600 | It's a cultural manifestation.

01:23:39.620 | Things happen within this context.

01:23:43.960 | We rub against reality.

01:23:45.940 | We rub against each other.

01:23:47.680 | And their movement occurs and their insight is to be gained

01:23:53.940 | and development happens.

01:23:57.380 | And then comes other thoughts,

01:24:03.020 | collective knowledge versus self-knowledge.

01:24:05.920 | We are transmitting knowledge.

01:24:08.820 | If we go on top of some mountain, 20 people,

01:24:12.700 | 20 normal individuals,

01:24:17.700 | and we spend 20 years just fighting,

01:24:22.580 | four hours in the morning, four hours in the afternoon.

01:24:25.540 | We do it for 20 years,

01:24:28.360 | but we're isolated from any other source of knowledge.

01:24:32.380 | We would still not reach anything

01:24:34.980 | that a very young fighter these days has.

01:24:41.060 | We will be unable to develop those techniques,

01:24:44.780 | those insights.

01:24:45.980 | That's where collective knowledge comes in

01:24:47.660 | and transmission jumps us forward.

01:24:51.220 | But what is the problem with that?

01:24:53.540 | Staying within just those technical constraints

01:24:56.700 | and never making it yours.

01:24:58.240 | That's the part of self-knowledge.

01:25:00.880 | The digestion of this collective information

01:25:05.580 | until it becomes digested and becomes part of yourselves,

01:25:09.540 | and then you are it versus you are doing it.

01:25:14.140 | And this is a clear separation that you can see in sports

01:25:17.420 | on a very high level and on a not so high level,

01:25:21.100 | even though I would be honest if I say

01:25:24.620 | that some people reach very far

01:25:27.420 | just with collective knowledge and a very technical approach

01:25:31.260 | and others reach extremely far with very little of it.

01:25:36.260 | And there is always outliers.

01:25:38.400 | There are always outliers in that case.

01:25:41.020 | And another thought I had when you mentioned evo-devo.

01:25:45.020 | Evolution, development is also the Greek concepts

01:25:49.580 | of poiesis and pisis.

01:25:53.860 | The growing of the seed into the tree

01:25:58.660 | and the other process of the manufacturing

01:26:03.580 | of the chair from the tree.

01:26:07.860 | Two processes of development, evolution, very different.

01:26:12.860 | One from everything to something,

01:26:15.820 | the other from nothing to something.

01:26:18.200 | One is accumulation-based, one is subtraction-based.

01:26:22.060 | Both of these processes relate to collective knowledge,

01:26:26.220 | self-knowledge, but they're not exactly just that.

01:26:29.600 | And what should we do?

01:26:31.500 | This is a question that my friend Rasmus,

01:26:34.220 | he asks in his thesis and thoughts,

01:26:38.300 | what is the ultimate for us?

01:26:40.660 | Should we manufacture our chair

01:26:43.540 | or should we grow like into the tree?

01:26:46.940 | Civilize the mind, live savage the body.

01:26:49.900 | Is it in this way or should the mind also be left wild?

01:26:54.540 | Wild and wise is a nice combination of words

01:27:01.980 | that I like to place together, wild-wise.

01:27:05.180 | So, this is something that I try to bring into the way

01:27:09.220 | that I live my life and my practice.

01:27:10.980 | And I try to bring the information and the wisdom

01:27:15.980 | and the collective knowledge.

01:27:20.560 | But I also try to let go of more and more

01:27:24.140 | until an essence is gleaned, until something is appearing

01:27:28.420 | and because everything was already there.

01:27:31.060 | For example, if I'm sitting here,

01:27:34.360 | all the movements are already occurring.

01:27:40.640 | All the possibilities are, so it's just about,

01:27:46.720 | I need to open, I open this window,

01:27:48.720 | the air would come from here.

01:27:49.860 | If I open this window, the air would come.

01:27:51.580 | I don't need to drive my motion.

01:27:53.580 | I need to discover what is stopping it from happening.

01:27:57.620 | Something is constantly holding and when we remove this,

01:28:01.660 | immediately movement appears.

01:28:03.180 | This is real deep movement versus the driven movement

01:28:08.180 | that is very wasteful at times.

01:28:10.680 | Like walking, you see people pushing through the walk

01:28:13.300 | instead of the controlled falling that it should be.

01:28:17.020 | Fighting, punching, to manufacture the strength

01:28:24.020 | and then to have someone who knows how to facilitate

01:28:28.860 | the conditions in which you are knocked out.

01:28:32.460 | It doesn't knock you out.

01:28:34.160 | It hits versus I hit, like Bruce Lee said.

01:28:38.220 | So this is a beautiful thing to examine

01:28:40.980 | and to work within that.

01:28:42.340 | So to see, am I skateboarding?

01:28:46.500 | Am I using this perspective or am I trying to control

01:28:51.620 | because of risk and danger, I'm trying to overly control

01:28:54.660 | something that actually can never be controlled.

01:28:57.220 | The way to control it is to let go of the control

01:29:00.260 | and then okay, but what about all this collection

01:29:03.820 | of information, knowledge that I can bring in?

01:29:07.100 | Where do I wanna play?

01:29:08.860 | I can play down here or I can play up here.

01:29:11.980 | The collective knowledge is maybe take you further in

01:29:15.060 | and then you're still gonna need to do your individual work.

01:29:18.060 | A lot of people like to romanticize on that

01:29:20.100 | and you don't need teachers, we don't need nothing,

01:29:24.300 | we don't need information.

01:29:25.860 | It's not fully honest, you don't need,

01:29:28.620 | but depends on where you wanna function

01:29:31.140 | and how you wanna function.

01:29:32.400 | They shouldn't be demonized,

01:29:33.860 | but they shouldn't be overly glorified as well.

01:29:37.040 | - You mentioned about the opportunity for movement,

01:29:39.580 | perhaps even all forms of movement coming from deep within.

01:29:42.580 | It raises to mind in the neuroscience of motor systems,

01:29:46.820 | we talk about motor neurons, as I described,

01:29:49.100 | ones that actually evoke contraction of muscles.

01:29:52.700 | And then there's this category of neurons

01:29:55.020 | that isn't often discussed, but certainly exist,

01:29:58.100 | aren't often discussed in kind of popular nomenclature

01:30:01.620 | of neuroscience, which is the premotor system.

01:30:04.500 | Most of our movements are the reflection

01:30:07.340 | of certain patterns of transmission breaking through

01:30:12.020 | from the premotor to the actual motor.

01:30:14.880 | In other words, we are always in a anticipatory mode

01:30:19.600 | of movement, and I think you, the way you describe it,

01:30:23.600 | you clearly intuitively understand that you feel it

01:30:26.040 | and you recognize it.

01:30:27.800 | Think of it as, it's like a layer of neurons

01:30:30.120 | that's constantly humming, ready to go.

01:30:33.400 | And it's the release of these gates

01:30:35.060 | that allows movement to occur in a particular way.

01:30:37.800 | Could be very smooth, could be very ballistic.

01:30:40.360 | - Which is DNA, the same, turning off and on,

01:30:44.020 | but all the information's already there.

01:30:46.580 | - Right.

01:30:47.420 | - And then the possibilities are just allowed.

01:30:49.500 | So I'm allowed, I don't do free will already,

01:30:54.500 | but I am allowed to do.

01:30:58.800 | I am, there are possibilities,

01:31:01.660 | and I am dancing within that dance,

01:31:06.660 | but I am not the only dancer.

01:31:09.480 | So that's my sensation, at least with,

01:31:14.640 | most states of being, let's say.

01:31:19.640 | Maybe there is other states that could be reached,

01:31:25.160 | a stability that will arrive from the waters,

01:31:28.960 | from the movement of the waters.

01:31:31.120 | This humming, these potential possibilities,

01:31:35.620 | to be in that state, to vibrate like this,

01:31:38.760 | is very powerful for our lives.

01:31:41.360 | To wake up in the morning and feel that living thing

01:31:45.180 | is the feeling of movement,

01:31:46.600 | and for me it's a result of the practice.

01:31:48.980 | And so then it's easy not to stagnate,

01:31:53.080 | and then the mind can stay focused for hours,

01:31:55.440 | like we've done today, and I can listen and tune in,

01:31:59.520 | and I won't lose you, which is very difficult.

01:32:02.020 | Like I haven't had a good conversation here in the US.

01:32:05.540 | It's very difficult, and I've had your attention

01:32:08.280 | and your listening, but it's rare.

01:32:10.320 | It's rare that somebody can do that,

01:32:11.880 | and it's a struggle, always a struggle,

01:32:14.600 | but it's definitely my trick, my dirty trick.

01:32:17.860 | - You said you're allowed,

01:32:21.040 | and again, I'm taking some of the language

01:32:23.000 | and what you report about your experience,

01:32:25.320 | and I'm trying to map it to some concepts

01:32:27.960 | that relate to neural circuits.

01:32:29.640 | In the principles of neuroscience,

01:32:32.520 | we talk about instructiveness versus permissiveness.

01:32:36.800 | There are instructive cues, like for instance,

01:32:38.940 | the ability to pick up this pen, right?

01:32:41.120 | There's an instruction, clearly, there's a motor command,

01:32:44.960 | but that's just one way of looking at it.

01:32:46.780 | The way it actually works is that there's a premotor system

01:32:49.720 | that's already generating that movement,

01:32:51.760 | and what we've done is we flung open the gate

01:32:53.680 | and allowed that movement to occur precisely.

01:32:56.040 | - Surfing it. - Right.

01:32:58.000 | - Surfing that current, or this current,

01:33:00.160 | or another current, or opening the window.

01:33:02.560 | - Exactly, and if you look at the formal study

01:33:07.180 | of movement and improvement of movement,

01:33:10.880 | the most basic example I can give is like a tennis serve,

01:33:13.880 | and if you just, they've done this many times over,

01:33:16.880 | you map the trajectories, and in a novice,

01:33:19.260 | the lines are all over the place.

01:33:21.000 | It ends up looking more like a tangle

01:33:23.880 | of rubber band ball, right?

01:33:25.880 | Whereas in the Federer or the expert,

01:33:28.880 | you almost wonder if it's just one line being drawn,

01:33:31.580 | but the trajectories are incredibly stereotyped.

01:33:35.000 | That's the reflection of one little narrow gate opening

01:33:37.480 | again, and again, and again.

01:33:39.260 | Of course--

01:33:40.280 | - Let me inject something here from an old neurologist,

01:33:45.040 | you can say, Berenstain, the Soviet,

01:33:48.920 | and he talked about the degrees of freedom,

01:33:51.540 | and they did, in order to increase productivity

01:33:54.580 | in Soviet Union, I don't know if you've heard this story,

01:33:59.180 | he was brought in to examine the movement habits

01:34:03.580 | of the workers, and he collected some information.

01:34:08.580 | He placed, he was one of the first kinetic,

01:34:12.500 | I don't know how it's called in English,

01:34:14.360 | the kinetic capturing of motion

01:34:17.580 | with moving pictures in that time,

01:34:20.320 | and so he placed these dots, and they took these photos

01:34:24.420 | which became kind of moving,

01:34:26.680 | and what he discovered was something very interesting.

01:34:30.180 | The accuracy of the hit of the sledgehammer

01:34:34.140 | increased while the variance in the various points

01:34:40.900 | became more, not less, so it wasn't a fixed pattern,

01:34:46.020 | it was a meta-pattern, and this pattern is adjusted

01:34:50.700 | in this way to achieve the perfect execution.

01:34:55.820 | Those were very early findings.

01:34:57.380 | I'm not sure how does that sit with everything,

01:35:00.740 | but I'm sure there is some truth to it from my experience.

01:35:04.340 | Basically, the self-adjusting dynamic nature of the system

01:35:09.340 | allows you to reach a very constant and stable end result

01:35:14.340 | by being so open and letting go of your control.

01:35:19.480 | - The example you give fits very well

01:35:22.980 | with the one that I described before

01:35:24.740 | because I'm recalling the experiment,

01:35:26.580 | if people want to look this up, it's a paper,

01:35:28.220 | we'll put it in the show note caption,

01:35:29.860 | the guy also happens to be at Harvard

01:35:32.140 | named Bence Olavski, a Hungarian,

01:35:34.360 | I'm clearly pronouncing his name wrong, but I know Bence,

01:35:36.940 | and I remember the slide in my mind's eye,

01:35:39.860 | and the trajectory that was mapped

01:35:41.180 | was the movement of the tennis racket,

01:35:42.620 | not of the limbs themselves in the Federer case,

01:35:45.620 | so that I think aligns well with what you're describing.

01:35:48.660 | Yeah, that exploration of degrees of freedom

01:35:51.240 | is where the opportunity for real advancement

01:35:56.620 | and expansion of skill shows up.

01:35:58.580 | I think the way it's been described to me

01:35:59.920 | is that we go from unskilled to skilled,

01:36:03.280 | and then there's mastery, and then there's this top tier,

01:36:05.720 | which is this beautiful thin layer

01:36:07.920 | that so few people occupy, which is virtuosity,

01:36:10.680 | in which the practitioner invites variability

01:36:13.860 | and chance back in as an opportunity to do truly new things.

01:36:17.620 | - It made me think many years ago,

01:36:23.960 | this kind of thinking about, so what is that entity?

01:36:28.360 | Because obviously it's not technique,

01:36:30.680 | and it wouldn't even be honest to say

01:36:32.360 | it's a movement pattern.

01:36:34.340 | There is too much diversity there.

01:36:37.120 | I started to talk about, I called it

01:36:39.160 | movement sleeves, or metatechnique,

01:36:42.080 | but the word technique is already misleading.

01:36:46.280 | So there is some kind of a dynamic sleeve

01:36:51.440 | in which you can move, as long as you're not

01:36:54.800 | out of this sleeve, you're still within the boundaries

01:36:58.200 | of achieving the result that you're after.

01:37:01.740 | And then there is all this adaptation

01:37:04.500 | of all these elements inside to keep you in the sleeve.

01:37:07.760 | The sleeve is not constricted as we once thought.

01:37:11.320 | Oh, beautiful technique.

01:37:13.320 | There are many ways to skin a cat.

01:37:17.040 | And that experience and that variety, that diversity

01:37:21.880 | goes into virtuosity.

01:37:23.420 | It's true freedom, because your focus is on the right thing.

01:37:27.620 | You don't point at the moon, look at your finger.

01:37:30.460 | And that's really in essence being a virtuoso for me,

01:37:35.120 | like mastery, let's say, if there is such a thing.

01:37:38.340 | - I do believe there is such a thing,

01:37:41.060 | and I'll flatter and attempt to embarrass you

01:37:44.080 | by saying I think that I'm not alone

01:37:45.560 | in viewing you as a virtuoso movement.

01:37:47.640 | I think that's what comes to mind,

01:37:50.240 | because there's this notion that not everything

01:37:52.840 | is pre-planned, that even you might not know

01:37:56.140 | what you're going to do next until the moment of execution.

01:37:59.020 | But that here I'm projecting my own assumptions.

01:38:02.560 | I'd like to talk about mindsets

01:38:07.920 | in approaching practice a little bit more,

01:38:10.920 | but I want to wade into that territory

01:38:13.680 | by talking about vision in the eyes,

01:38:16.780 | something that we both share a deep interest in.

01:38:19.300 | I, from the background of visual neuroscience,

01:38:21.520 | but also from the realization that we have

01:38:24.540 | this incredible ability to adjust the aperture

01:38:26.640 | of our visual window.

01:38:27.680 | We can focus very narrowly, and we can focus very broadly.

01:38:31.400 | So something I encountered, I think, first as a child,

01:38:33.560 | realizing that I could spend all day watching ants play

01:38:36.940 | in a very fine domain and then look up and go inside

01:38:39.900 | and realize there's a whole world.

01:38:41.320 | And realizing, wow, I'll never be able to consume

01:38:44.920 | the full range of experiences at any one moment.

01:38:48.580 | There are ants probably in the corner of this room

01:38:50.740 | doing their thing.

01:38:51.700 | And so too, our approach to movement can be,

01:38:56.240 | as you mentioned, very big and dynamic

01:38:58.100 | in terms of the broad movements of our limbs

01:39:00.400 | or fine articulation.

01:39:02.240 | When you begin a practice,

01:39:04.520 | and as you move through a practice,

01:39:06.580 | do you apply a regimented way of focusing your vision?

01:39:11.580 | Are you in panoramic vision?

01:39:14.340 | Are you in a very narrow field of view,

01:39:16.660 | or does it entirely depend?

01:39:18.480 | And for the person who's a true beginner,

01:39:20.520 | a true novice like myself,

01:39:22.480 | how should I show up to the practice with my eyes?

01:39:25.780 | - The eyes are a good starting point

01:39:29.860 | as you help a lot of people to understand.

01:39:33.580 | And when you encounter difficulties with other layers,

01:39:37.300 | it's very powerful to start with the eyes.

01:39:39.940 | Another thing important to understand and to experience,

01:39:44.120 | you can't believe me or you gotta examine it for yourself,

01:39:49.120 | we do not move the eyes as well as we think we do.

01:39:54.440 | 'Cause as long as you can see and move the eyes,

01:39:57.620 | people never think about it, that it can be trained,

01:40:01.200 | that it can be improved, et cetera.

01:40:03.320 | And the effects of it are far-reaching.

01:40:06.300 | The eyes lead to the inner eye.

01:40:09.960 | You can think of it in a beautiful metaphorical way.

01:40:12.980 | And it's a representation of the way

01:40:18.560 | that we use various cognitive and mind processes,

01:40:23.560 | and also of course affect the body.

01:40:25.900 | The eyes lead in many ways, and the head is also a very,

01:40:33.080 | because all of these inputs are coming in here,

01:40:36.480 | so it's very easy to lead the body in a,

01:40:38.960 | if you look at the centered way, from the head.

01:40:41.560 | It's a very powerful and easy thing.

01:40:43.520 | For example, when you teach boxers how to bob,

01:40:47.900 | usually it's not done in the way

01:40:50.580 | that I believe it should be done.

01:40:53.880 | You teach it with the periphery.

01:40:56.320 | They teach it from the feet.

01:40:58.540 | Because they have the idea, which is correct,

01:41:00.560 | that you need to do it in spatial conditions,

01:41:04.440 | in movement, in space.

01:41:07.280 | But in reality, the head will organize the feet for you.

01:41:10.120 | Instead, you are now putting two elements together,

01:41:14.040 | and then with years of practice,

01:41:15.600 | you hope of tying them together well.

01:41:18.100 | I prefer to do something else,

01:41:19.440 | because if I'll pull your head now to the side,

01:41:21.740 | you will immediately start to organize your feet under you.

01:41:25.960 | So I give you just one element to manipulate the system from.

01:41:28.840 | That's how I would teach someone something like this.

01:41:32.120 | Many animals hunt with the head.

01:41:34.280 | So you can see the body running forward

01:41:36.400 | while the head is turning to the side.

01:41:38.200 | The whole thing follows afterwards.

01:41:40.240 | So it's a very powerful way to address movement.

01:41:42.440 | Not the only one.

01:41:43.440 | There are many modes, thankfully,

01:41:45.980 | and we're very adaptable in that,

01:41:47.620 | but definitely a primary one.

01:41:50.240 | And then the use of the eyes is, of course,

01:41:52.540 | maybe the most important element with that, usually.

01:41:55.920 | Eh, yeah, what else can I say about the eyes?

01:42:00.920 | How do you come in?

01:42:03.040 | Well, it depends on the practice.

01:42:04.540 | You need to start to have some kind of a checklist

01:42:08.400 | of what you're looking to do.

01:42:11.240 | And then by this, you can start to tailor

01:42:13.600 | the way that you use your eyes.

01:42:15.880 | The same thing I do for posture.

01:42:18.280 | The same thing I do for stance.

01:42:20.160 | The same thing, eventually, I do for state.

01:42:22.560 | And there is different flavors.

01:42:25.040 | There is no correct way to use the eyes.

01:42:26.840 | Sometimes it's very peripheral,

01:42:28.520 | soft, open, awareness orientation.

01:42:31.840 | Sometimes it's very focused.

01:42:33.720 | Notice that I'm pulling these two opposites,

01:42:38.340 | awareness and focus, which is often put together

01:42:41.800 | and confused, but...

01:42:43.080 | And then the eyes are the immediate

01:42:47.880 | and the easiest entry point into that.

01:42:51.360 | Another thing is the placement of the head and the eyes.

01:42:55.420 | Like, for example, when we lower our chin,

01:42:59.120 | we seem to see better.

01:43:01.600 | When we raise the eyebrows, there is too much exposure

01:43:06.600 | of top light sources, and so people would usually,

01:43:09.920 | when looking into the distance,

01:43:11.180 | will tilt their chin in.

01:43:13.360 | And in many scenarios, tilting of the chin to the side

01:43:17.160 | or placing, just like listening with the ear,

01:43:20.840 | placing a certain eye or dominant eye,

01:43:23.720 | depending on various scenarios.

01:43:26.480 | And this is all like information that I can come in

01:43:30.080 | cerebrally and think about and jump my practice forward.

01:43:34.720 | Instead of just letting the experience teach me that,

01:43:38.520 | I'm using some kind of a thinking process to improve.

01:43:41.360 | And this is not cheating, this is great.

01:43:44.440 | Will it work?

01:43:45.480 | We gotta try.

01:43:46.640 | It's a process.

01:43:48.920 | Those are some thoughts to start to play with.

01:43:51.620 | - Yeah.

01:43:52.640 | I love that you mentioned chin down,

01:43:56.080 | because we all have a natural reflex when chin goes down,

01:43:58.560 | eyes goes up, and the opposite is true when head goes up,

01:44:01.400 | eyes go down.

01:44:03.280 | And there are two separate clusters of neurons

01:44:05.560 | in these cranial nerve nuclei that, as we call them,

01:44:09.280 | when eyes are up, it increases our level of alertness.

01:44:14.520 | Overall, this is not, you know, this is not woo science.

01:44:18.040 | This is the function of these cranial nerve nuclei.

01:44:22.080 | When our eyes are down,

01:44:24.520 | we go into states of more calm and quiescence.

01:44:27.280 | And this makes perfect sense, you know,

01:44:28.520 | and then the eyelids usually go down

01:44:29.960 | and then people fall asleep.

01:44:31.560 | Eyes up does not mean head up, 'cause as you said,

01:44:34.320 | there's a very dynamic control over the amount of luminance,

01:44:36.980 | depending on the environment.

01:44:38.400 | So that, and then as you mentioned,

01:44:41.320 | this difference between focus and awareness,

01:44:43.840 | I think is a really important one.

01:44:46.140 | When we are in this more panoramic soft gaze

01:44:48.820 | and broad awareness, big swaths of visual field, as we say,

01:44:53.820 | the neurons that control that come through a pathway

01:44:56.200 | called magnocellular pathway.

01:44:57.420 | In any event, those neurons are much thicker,

01:44:59.460 | thicker cables.

01:45:00.300 | They transmit much faster, just like thick pipes

01:45:03.100 | can carry more water more quickly.

01:45:05.540 | And your reaction time is at least four times

01:45:09.260 | what it is in this awareness mode

01:45:11.740 | than it is when you're narrowly focused on something.

01:45:14.080 | And this is counterintuitive, I think, to a lot of people,

01:45:16.440 | but the person who is running to catch the ball

01:45:18.240 | is not tracking the ball in a smooth movement.

01:45:21.620 | Most of their vision is in peripheral vision.

01:45:23.480 | When we drive, we're in this peripheral vision

01:45:25.680 | and our reaction times are much, much faster.

01:45:28.480 | So I don't know if I'm reluctant to encourage people

01:45:32.660 | to shift toward a particular type of practice,

01:45:34.940 | toward a particular type of vision.

01:45:36.120 | I think what you and I, I hope agree on,

01:45:40.280 | correct me if I'm wrong,

01:45:41.120 | is that exploring these different extremes

01:45:44.560 | and everything in between is where the real value is.

01:45:46.920 | Panoramic focused.

01:45:49.160 | Eyes, head up, eyes down, head down, eyes up.

01:45:52.200 | Playing with it and exploring it

01:45:54.120 | as opposed to, for the first 10 minutes of practice,

01:45:58.800 | being panoramic vision.

01:46:00.000 | You know, the sort of earlier today we were joking about

01:46:03.000 | and kind of lamenting the fact

01:46:05.360 | that this word biohacking exists

01:46:07.440 | or that the optimal performance.

01:46:09.800 | There are unfortunate terms

01:46:11.160 | because they suggest that if you just plug it in,

01:46:13.520 | it's going to be like two plus two equals four

01:46:15.120 | and you're going to get it right every time.

01:46:17.560 | - Another pragmatic bit here if I can offer

01:46:20.360 | is since our culture has been more geared

01:46:25.360 | than pushing us towards focus,

01:46:28.940 | the focus use of the eyes and primary language reading

01:46:32.040 | and other things, we have less opportunities

01:46:36.560 | to work with the more open panoramic one.

01:46:39.600 | So it would be smart to start

01:46:42.200 | to balance things out a bit more.

01:46:45.580 | When you're in nature, you don't look at each leaf.

01:46:48.800 | Everything is moving and you are kind of immersed in that

01:46:52.300 | and then something attracts your attention.

01:46:54.000 | Oh, it's a bird.

01:46:55.160 | And you focus and you go back into the general state,

01:46:59.160 | the basic state, which is open awareness.

01:47:02.800 | Here, we switch things around in our modern culture.

01:47:05.820 | We are mostly focused and then we sanitize daydream,

01:47:10.120 | which is maybe some kind of a,

01:47:12.540 | some kind of a balancing act that comes from deep within.

01:47:17.520 | I don't know.

01:47:18.680 | Maybe you can share some information about that.

01:47:21.280 | But I see that many times people need to,

01:47:24.440 | the focus is overly done by far in our lives.

01:47:29.440 | - I couldn't agree more.

01:47:30.820 | And I think a lot of, I'll even venture so far as to say

01:47:33.360 | that a lot of the visual deficits that we now see

01:47:37.140 | in young people, myopia, literally nearsightedness occurs,

01:47:41.360 | because if we look at things that are too close to us,

01:47:43.520 | as children or as adults, the eyeball actually gets longer.

01:47:46.800 | The lens focuses the visual image in front of nearer

01:47:51.640 | to the lens, nearsighted,

01:47:53.240 | then in front of where it should land.

01:47:56.720 | And basically it's a lack of panoramic vision that is,

01:48:01.900 | or open awareness that's driving these changes.

01:48:04.540 | And nowadays we are essentially,

01:48:06.840 | most people are 90% of the time in this narrow focus mode.

01:48:11.140 | Right before recording,

01:48:12.060 | we took a break and went up to look at a vista

01:48:14.360 | and to look off to the distance.

01:48:15.600 | Incredibly useful, easy practice at some level,

01:48:19.700 | but I think most people are not doing this sort of thing.

01:48:22.200 | And the way that it shapes the mind

01:48:23.940 | and the perception of time, of course,

01:48:25.520 | is a whole other kingdom of ideas.

01:48:28.320 | But one thing I'd like to relate this element of vision to

01:48:32.720 | and open awareness is earlier,

01:48:34.200 | you mentioned the cone of auditory attention,

01:48:36.500 | the other sense that we can play with as in our practice

01:48:40.880 | and throughout the day.

01:48:42.380 | Do you see any value to both paying attention to things

01:48:47.560 | in a very narrow cone of auditory attention,

01:48:49.580 | but also just walking and listening

01:48:51.840 | to all the sounds at once?

01:48:53.680 | I could imagine that could be useful.

01:48:55.320 | And in terms of physical movement practices,

01:48:58.620 | I was going to say, where are your ears?

01:49:00.240 | Your ears are always more or less in the same place,

01:49:02.040 | but where is your hearing when you approach your practice?

01:49:06.280 | - Another set of parameters to think about

01:49:09.600 | and to play with and to be aware of.

01:49:11.840 | Also, I have the experience that some people are

01:49:17.400 | better at using this system or that system.

01:49:22.480 | And you would be amazed how differently the same results,

01:49:27.480 | seemingly outside results,

01:49:28.960 | are done by different practitioners

01:49:30.880 | and in different scenarios.

01:49:32.240 | This goes into this mutation and change ideas.

01:49:38.380 | What really jumps us forward eventually

01:49:40.840 | is some kind of a mutation.

01:49:42.720 | So it's like all of our culture and practices and success

01:49:47.280 | puts us closer and closer to each other.

01:49:50.120 | So we have the same opinions everywhere around the world

01:49:54.380 | becoming more and more the same, less and less different.

01:49:58.620 | But the real hope comes from the different.

01:50:02.440 | So, and we have a difficulty in promoting that.

01:50:07.440 | So this is another thing that can be promoted

01:50:13.360 | with the right practices, the right...

01:50:16.420 | For example, I work with corporates

01:50:19.260 | or even worked with governments before

01:50:22.080 | to bring in some of that freshness

01:50:24.040 | with simple habits in the workday

01:50:26.560 | or in the education of children or in companies,

01:50:31.560 | increasing productivity.

01:50:34.680 | I don't really give a fuck,

01:50:36.660 | but I am there to give what I view is important.

01:50:41.280 | And what is important maybe increases productivity,

01:50:45.080 | but it's more important to me

01:50:47.200 | that it improves people's lives who are involved

01:50:50.420 | and improves being and becoming,

01:50:55.420 | being and becoming these two entities.

01:50:59.160 | I'm not there.

01:51:00.720 | I'm on my way.

01:51:01.760 | I'm a process.

01:51:02.880 | So thinking about hearing,

01:51:06.700 | the way that people use their ears,

01:51:09.040 | the way that people use listening.

01:51:10.920 | Again, we can talk about placement of the head and posture.

01:51:16.960 | Sometimes angling as well,

01:51:19.080 | sharper angle, chin down.

01:51:20.680 | Some people tend to use the shape of the ear.

01:51:24.760 | People with different ears closer or further out.

01:51:28.840 | This is...

01:51:30.460 | If you're very sensitive and you're looking around,

01:51:32.320 | you would see this is affecting people's motion.

01:51:37.240 | Even the shape of our face,

01:51:39.320 | like the development of the vocal cords and speaking

01:51:43.180 | will totally change how we look,

01:51:46.280 | but how we listen also will do the same.

01:51:51.200 | I don't have any proof of it,

01:51:52.520 | but it is something I believe in.

01:51:56.560 | - Well, people will even make their ears bigger, right?

01:51:59.160 | We try and become like little fennec foxes or something by...

01:52:03.160 | I mean, a lot of people don't realize

01:52:04.160 | that's actually why we do this

01:52:05.260 | is to capture more sound waves, right?

01:52:07.360 | And the leaning is that the localization of sound

01:52:10.040 | is based on a simple brainstem calculation

01:52:12.200 | of inter-oral time differences.

01:52:14.360 | The time in which something...

01:52:16.320 | The brain intuitively, it just knows,

01:52:19.040 | 'cause it's a pretty hardwired circuit,

01:52:20.860 | that if a sound arrives first to this ear, then that ear,

01:52:23.440 | that it's likely coming from over here.

01:52:26.500 | Whereas if it's dead center,

01:52:28.160 | arrives at the two at the same time.

01:52:30.640 | It's almost ridiculously simple when one hears it,

01:52:33.400 | no pun intended,

01:52:34.480 | but it is an incredibly valuable way of thinking

01:52:39.480 | about how the architecture of the body

01:52:42.520 | changes our experience.

01:52:44.760 | I went along those lines earlier,

01:52:46.560 | you mentioned something and it flagged

01:52:48.920 | an important question for me.

01:52:50.420 | When I see people walking,

01:52:54.520 | sometimes I think,

01:52:56.860 | "Wow, they really move in a strange way."

01:52:59.280 | Occasionally you see somebody, they walk really...

01:53:01.700 | It's impressive for whatever reason.

01:53:04.240 | And you just think, "Wow, they sort of glide along."

01:53:07.500 | People come in different shapes and sizes,

01:53:09.280 | short torsos, long arms, et cetera.

01:53:12.240 | Do you think that if people have a body type

01:53:16.200 | that facilitates certain kinds of movement and not others,

01:53:19.320 | that they should intentionally try and move in the way

01:53:22.840 | that is right at the edge of the kind of friction

01:53:26.220 | and challenge in order to shape new possibilities?

01:53:31.220 | Or do you think that they should lean

01:53:33.120 | into the smooth execution

01:53:34.860 | of what comes most naturally to them?

01:53:37.660 | Yeah, I think a good practice is to have many walks

01:53:41.700 | because they're required.

01:53:47.460 | Of course, there is a very efficient

01:53:49.820 | and endurance stamina-oriented thing

01:53:52.780 | that if you have the experience,

01:53:54.900 | it will naturally develop and unravel.

01:53:57.580 | And if not, you can get some collective knowledge

01:54:00.940 | and improve.

01:54:01.900 | And then there is a lot of emotional things related to walk,

01:54:07.460 | like how I'm walking into a business meeting

01:54:10.340 | or how I'm walking out of a bad situation.

01:54:18.080 | And there is a lot of beautiful things to research there,

01:54:24.260 | practically with yourself, trying to approach someone

01:54:27.220 | with the chin slightly down, very linear, very efficient,

01:54:30.580 | in the straightest line, or trying to approach someone

01:54:33.540 | a little bit more rounded from the side

01:54:36.060 | and tilting your head.

01:54:37.680 | And you will see totally different results,

01:54:40.500 | totally different communication

01:54:42.100 | that happens over people's heads.

01:54:45.060 | But if you're sensitive, you realize that,

01:54:47.260 | wow, this opened the door.

01:54:49.180 | Many people, you start on the minus.

01:54:52.140 | My sister, my big sister, Tali, she always says,

01:54:54.580 | I started on the minus.

01:54:56.500 | Why don't I start on the zero with them?

01:54:58.920 | But it's part of the approach.

01:55:02.580 | You can affect that.

01:55:03.540 | And you can start even on the plus if you are the sly man,

01:55:08.420 | as the practitioner needs to be.

01:55:10.580 | So this is something to play with and to work with.

01:55:14.260 | And then you have, of course, body proportions and ways.

01:55:17.060 | And we have all these like technical invasions,

01:55:20.480 | mathematics and trigonometry and architecture,

01:55:23.540 | they invaded our bodies, they invaded our nervous system.

01:55:27.220 | And now our walk and our physical practices,

01:55:30.040 | they look linear and efficient, the path between two points

01:55:34.040 | is a straight line, it's not.

01:55:35.420 | This is biomechanics, it's not mechanics.

01:55:37.920 | Nothing there is given, there's no gospel.

01:55:42.920 | So the walk is sometimes have to go around

01:55:47.360 | or sway from side to side and there is coiling, uncoiling,

01:55:50.600 | and there are moving bits.

01:55:51.640 | And what about the coordination of my breathing

01:55:54.520 | with my walk?

01:55:55.360 | Because if I walk too linearly,

01:55:57.360 | there is less pumping of the air naturally in and out.

01:56:00.300 | So now I have to forcefully bring it in and out,

01:56:03.260 | I'm wasteful.

01:56:04.880 | And that's why you see in last years,

01:56:07.720 | these incredible runners, especially in long distance,

01:56:12.000 | doing things we never thought were possible

01:56:16.360 | in the worst possible way that we used to think.

01:56:21.360 | Pronation and all kinds of things,

01:56:24.000 | like our technical thoughts were totally misguided and wrong.

01:56:29.000 | And then somebody comes in and does it in some way

01:56:35.940 | that is totally wrong and he gets results we could never get.

01:56:40.600 | That's the beauty of playfulness, experimentation,

01:56:44.240 | change, being different.

01:56:46.120 | - As you're describing this, I'm smiling

01:56:49.460 | because one of my favorite neuroscientists,

01:56:52.240 | he's out of the University of Chicago, was in a meeting.

01:56:55.960 | There was an argument about evolution of the nervous system

01:56:58.200 | and he said at the end, and people were arguing

01:57:01.820 | about whether or not this gene in one animal

01:57:03.920 | was homologous to this gene in humans, et cetera.

01:57:06.280 | It can get very dicey.

01:57:07.920 | And he said very appropriately that one of the major jobs

01:57:12.920 | of evolution is to take existing cell types and circuits

01:57:16.140 | and give them new functions.

01:57:17.720 | But that can only be done through the playful exploration

01:57:21.420 | of new possibilities, which I think maps very well

01:57:24.520 | to what you're saying, that at the extreme thresholds

01:57:27.880 | of technical execution, mastery, mastery, mastery,

01:57:32.240 | your obviously performance is very high,

01:57:34.900 | but the opportunity for evolution of the sport

01:57:37.680 | or the music or the dance or the intellectual endeavor

01:57:40.720 | is limited because you're not introducing variability.

01:57:44.020 | In the attempt to get proper execution,

01:57:46.760 | you're limiting oneself.

01:57:49.000 | Hence, I want to offer something that is relating to you.

01:57:53.140 | We should be wary of

01:57:56.800 | defining the mechanisms

01:58:01.500 | and putting certain meaning with certain processes and ways

01:58:08.540 | because just history and experience shows

01:58:11.540 | it doesn't work well for us most times.

01:58:15.160 | Or it becomes like this much more elaborate thing,

01:58:18.600 | even if we were somewhat in the right direction.

01:58:22.520 | Because even thinking this way can offer a lot.

01:58:26.120 | Like for example, your advice about heat, dopamine, light,

01:58:30.480 | offers a lot of benefit but also can create problems.

01:58:34.440 | And it can enclose something,

01:58:38.400 | which the improviser will find,

01:58:43.360 | the MacGyvers, right?

01:58:44.680 | Like take some paperclip and you make it

01:58:49.520 | into something great.

01:58:51.140 | And this is really our,

01:58:53.160 | we are the biggest improvisers around.

01:58:56.360 | Like that's what made us who we are.

01:58:58.360 | I think this is incredible what we can do with it.

01:59:01.360 | You know the Russian-American space exploration story

01:59:07.460 | with the space pen, famous story,

01:59:10.160 | about the development of the space pen.

01:59:12.800 | - No, it's a space pen?

01:59:14.040 | - Yeah.

01:59:14.880 | - No, I don't know about this.

01:59:15.700 | - I think it's an urban myth.

01:59:17.800 | I don't know if it's true, but I like it so I use it.

01:59:21.120 | So there was this, of course, a space competition

01:59:25.680 | and the Russians put the first animal in space.

01:59:29.540 | And the first-

01:59:30.380 | - It was a macaque monkey or something like that, yeah.

01:59:32.800 | - And then Leica and they put the first Sputnik,

01:59:37.640 | the satellite and man in space,

01:59:40.200 | but Americans took the man on the moon.

01:59:43.880 | And on the way, a lot of technologies got developed

01:59:46.520 | and the Americans, because of lack of gravity out there,

01:59:49.120 | developed the space pen with a huge investment.

01:59:51.880 | The Russians used the pencil.

01:59:53.320 | So I don't know if it's true, I don't think it is,

01:59:59.560 | but it represents something in the state of mind.

02:00:02.440 | Like you look at, for example, the military equipment

02:00:04.800 | in Soviet equipment, it's all can do multiple things.

02:00:09.520 | And it means that it's heavier, it's less efficient.

02:00:12.600 | It's not as light, but even the Navy SEALs

02:00:16.400 | will still carry an AK with certain conditions.

02:00:21.400 | Why?

02:00:22.240 | Because you can pour a whole bucket of sand

02:00:23.740 | into the mechanism and it will keep running.

02:00:26.100 | While the most advanced German heckler and kuchen,

02:00:29.280 | accurate and light weapons for every grain can get stuck

02:00:33.560 | and overly specialized.

02:00:35.160 | And there is something about this openness

02:00:36.840 | that we humans need to keep.

02:00:39.400 | And also maybe something for our leaders

02:00:42.340 | to be more of less specialist and more in this openness,

02:00:45.960 | less capable in this or that way,

02:00:48.740 | but more capable of doing the whole thing.

02:00:51.080 | - I love the story.

02:00:55.020 | Whether or not it's a legend or not,

02:00:57.260 | it's legendary because it's fantastic.

02:01:00.440 | As you say in the laboratory,

02:01:01.520 | whenever someone takes on a project in my lab,

02:01:03.360 | I always say, you have to ask yourself

02:01:05.560 | how much technical detail and challenge you want to take on

02:01:09.040 | because with more technology, advanced technology,

02:01:12.140 | yes, there's the opportunity for more discovery,

02:01:13.960 | but more downtime.

02:01:15.300 | Your PhD will literally take longer

02:01:17.560 | if you're going to use a microscope

02:01:18.820 | that's out of commission 30% of the time.

02:01:21.680 | And you just have to understand that.

02:01:23.440 | So there's a dynamic interplay there.

02:01:26.280 | - By the way, I think that scientists get it right.

02:01:28.960 | It's where you transmit the knowledge

02:01:30.840 | out of the scientific field

02:01:32.880 | because science have debate and everything.

02:01:35.400 | You're not so connected.

02:01:36.920 | Of course, this can happen as well,

02:01:38.240 | but then when it goes out and the simple person

02:01:43.240 | without the experience takes it more as a gospel,

02:01:46.880 | as a fixed thing, and then it was just a report.

02:01:50.100 | It was just reporting some functions here and play with it.

02:01:53.220 | See what it does for you

02:01:55.120 | because with all the greatest information that I can give,

02:01:58.980 | the person will examine it

02:02:00.420 | and it might be not useful at all for him.

02:02:03.980 | This is the practitioner.

02:02:05.460 | Make it your own.

02:02:06.700 | Go practice, try heat, cold, light,

02:02:10.700 | movement awareness to this, awareness to this.

02:02:14.120 | And this is up to you to make it yours,

02:02:16.400 | but we don't like to have this responsibility.

02:02:19.800 | - No, people prefer to have the,

02:02:22.120 | this will work the first time every time

02:02:24.040 | and will serve you best compared to everything else.

02:02:27.640 | And while there are more reliable tools than others,

02:02:31.440 | in my mind, the more reliable tools tend to be ones

02:02:34.220 | that are grounded in our innate physiology

02:02:38.060 | as opposed to some, I don't like the word hack.

02:02:41.780 | In fact, I loathe the word biohack

02:02:43.660 | as we were talking about again earlier

02:02:45.900 | because the hack in my mind is something

02:02:48.340 | that is designed for one purpose that's used for another.

02:02:51.460 | It's not the most efficient use of that tool

02:02:54.540 | nor is it naturally the best solution.

02:02:57.420 | Whereas biology has some very good solutions,

02:02:59.860 | but they don't always work, not every time.

02:03:03.540 | Earlier today, we did a practice in which,

02:03:05.820 | which involved invasion, shall we say,

02:03:09.380 | of peripersonal space.

02:03:11.320 | We weren't standing super close for any particular reason,

02:03:14.140 | but there was- - God forbid.

02:03:15.640 | - God forbid.

02:03:16.700 | But we, but there was, we were close enough together

02:03:20.060 | that we could touch one's torsos

02:03:21.740 | and we were doing that as part of this practice.

02:03:24.100 | And you encouraged me to pay attention to, you know,

02:03:26.820 | how does it feel to have someone

02:03:28.360 | in your peripersonal space?

02:03:30.260 | And then this notion of reactivity.

02:03:32.040 | I find this an immensely interesting

02:03:34.120 | and potentially powerful practice

02:03:36.660 | because I think a lot of people,

02:03:38.460 | I know a lot of people suffer from anxiety

02:03:41.780 | just being in a face-to-face conversation.

02:03:44.060 | Some people have a lot of anxiety

02:03:45.980 | about being physically close to people,

02:03:47.660 | whether or not they know them or not.

02:03:49.520 | And many people are reactive.

02:03:51.300 | They are in that anticipatory state

02:03:53.140 | of something is going to happen.

02:03:54.540 | And sometimes this relates to trauma and negative experience,

02:03:56.940 | but sometimes no.

02:03:57.920 | Sometimes they're just not used to being in dynamic, excuse me,

02:04:02.140 | exchange with other beings.

02:04:04.640 | And so one thing that I love about the movement practice

02:04:08.100 | and how dynamic is that one can explore that space.

02:04:10.320 | Maybe you could talk about that a little bit more.

02:04:13.540 | - Yeah.

02:04:14.380 | Touch, proximity, all these things also taking very,

02:04:25.240 | it takes a very, I think, limited place in our lives.

02:04:28.940 | People are not touched and they don't touch enough.

02:04:32.100 | There is certain bubbles of peripersonal space

02:04:35.500 | according to culture, according to environment,

02:04:37.860 | what is right, what is wrong.

02:04:39.180 | And then came all the, of course,

02:04:41.060 | politically correctness and harassment and all kinds.

02:04:45.300 | And this is a problem.

02:04:46.660 | It's a problem to navigate all this scenario.

02:04:50.140 | And I think there is definitely this side

02:04:53.620 | which is suffering.

02:04:55.380 | People go to BJJ classes to touch, not to learn BJJ.

02:04:59.740 | Most of it, they're not even aware of it.

02:05:03.100 | Before they would go to a prostitute maybe.

02:05:05.920 | It would not be honest to say that,

02:05:10.800 | yeah, this is not required or necessary more in our lives.

02:05:16.980 | Children who are not touched,

02:05:19.760 | there is a lot of information about that and the problems.

02:05:22.640 | But adults who are not touched,

02:05:24.520 | there is not a lot of information.

02:05:25.920 | And I think it's no less of a problem

02:05:27.980 | because it's something that has to be constantly present.

02:05:32.120 | And then proximity, being able to, as you said,

02:05:37.120 | remove certain reactivity and to learn to control

02:05:41.000 | that volume control over how reactive I am.

02:05:46.000 | And in other scenarios,

02:05:49.100 | how do I remove this reactivity altogether

02:05:51.260 | is very important for performance and also for our lives,

02:05:54.500 | for clear thinking, et cetera,

02:05:56.340 | because everything is moving through us

02:05:58.560 | and is being monitored by us.

02:06:00.240 | So everything has the potential to detract us

02:06:03.860 | from a certain direction of exploration.

02:06:07.320 | And if you're reactive, you're a slave.

02:06:10.240 | It becomes worse and worse and worse.

02:06:13.540 | Or for example, a fighter or a football player, et cetera,

02:06:18.540 | has to know what to take, what not to take.

02:06:21.060 | The fact that you can sense more

02:06:22.940 | doesn't mean you should react to it.

02:06:25.280 | And the practice helps that

02:06:26.820 | by bringing people into these scenarios,

02:06:29.140 | but oftentimes disarming them.

02:06:31.320 | Like when we were working closely today,

02:06:34.040 | and because you have a certain background

02:06:37.180 | with boxing or fighting,

02:06:39.300 | I can tell you you are missing some kind of a way

02:06:43.620 | to be in that space that is not martial.

02:06:46.380 | So you carry a certain tone,

02:06:50.300 | although you're a very kind person,

02:06:52.280 | but oftentimes you help me without realizing

02:06:56.060 | you're holding me with a lot of strength, for example.

02:06:59.420 | And it just, it was clear to me

02:07:03.420 | you're not fully aware of what is unfolding,

02:07:06.280 | and it's just, of course, a question of experience.

02:07:09.420 | So to be able to be in this scenario but do something else,

02:07:12.880 | which is not geared towards winning, losing, competition,

02:07:17.020 | or just being able to play with another person.

02:07:19.860 | Like, for example, contact improvisation took that

02:07:22.940 | and played with that, and the work of Steve Paxton

02:07:26.020 | for the ones who are not familiar.

02:07:28.620 | So this is where I call it the hybrids become very useful.

02:07:34.660 | Like we don't, when you are practicing in this open way,

02:07:40.060 | you are not bound by specific rule set

02:07:43.740 | or ways of doing things.

02:07:44.980 | It can be a fight, but it can be a dance.

02:07:50.120 | A moment after.

02:07:51.000 | Another thing that I learned from Capoeira,

02:07:53.200 | the situation is very tricky there,

02:07:55.880 | because I've seen kids doing cartwheels in Brazil

02:07:59.800 | and Caesars fall from their pockets.

02:08:02.980 | Why would you go with a Caesar in your pocket?

02:08:06.920 | Obviously there is certain intentions.

02:08:09.440 | And then at other times you see backflips

02:08:11.240 | and beautiful things, but people die in Capoeira every year.

02:08:15.800 | Neck breaks or something.

02:08:18.700 | Kicks to the face from various violence.

02:08:23.020 | I've explored other martial arts and boxing.

02:08:27.360 | I was involved with MMA and BJJ,

02:08:30.400 | but I tell you the most violent arena is that.

02:08:32.820 | Why? Because it's unknown.

02:08:34.920 | One moment it's smiles.

02:08:36.580 | Another moment it's something else, and it's uncontrolled.

02:08:38.900 | There is no categories, no weights,

02:08:40.500 | and it's a street phenomenon.

02:08:42.700 | So you have musical instruments.

02:08:44.560 | Sometimes they break it on your head.

02:08:46.340 | People don't see that, but you can look online on YouTube

02:08:49.480 | and see some of that side of Capoeira,

02:08:51.840 | which is actually the day-to-day in Brazil

02:08:56.320 | and the reality and how things unfolded.

02:08:59.540 | So it's very important to explore many ways of being

02:09:04.480 | within different distances and spaces from other people

02:09:08.040 | and touched in different ways

02:09:10.400 | and not contextualizing it always in the same way.

02:09:14.760 | I can touch your chest in one way.

02:09:17.640 | I can touch it with the exact same pressure and speed,

02:09:20.680 | but it will feel very different.

02:09:22.960 | The parameters, I'm not sure.

02:09:24.600 | Certain intentions, certain combination of postures or ways,

02:09:29.440 | and this is beautiful exploration.

02:09:32.160 | Again, I would encourage you and others

02:09:36.120 | to explore the discomfort.

02:09:38.160 | For example, certain discomfort to be with a man

02:09:42.520 | in a certain scenario or with a woman

02:09:44.320 | and trying to see what is that,

02:09:46.980 | because if we are truly strong,

02:09:48.960 | we are not afraid of anything.

02:09:51.680 | If we truly know who we are and we are in that exploration,

02:09:56.680 | we don't know the end result, but we are in a research

02:10:00.140 | and then we are not afraid of being in that or this

02:10:03.160 | and we don't come out of boundaries

02:10:05.240 | and this will improve our culture tremendously.

02:10:07.760 | Of course, there must be agreement.

02:10:09.880 | You never force yourself, but you meet someone

02:10:11.780 | who is also interested in that exploration

02:10:14.380 | and then you do it.

02:10:15.480 | And there are many scenarios to do that

02:10:19.080 | with traditional practices, like learning to grapple

02:10:22.600 | or going to contact improvisation and studying there

02:10:27.500 | or going to dance, to Latin dance class.

02:10:31.260 | And there is, of course, my favorite is to create

02:10:35.480 | and to come up with your own hybrids of that and scenarios,

02:10:39.720 | communicating with your loved one

02:10:41.540 | through movement, not sitting around food and talking,

02:10:45.200 | moving together in all kinds of ways.

02:10:48.080 | Sometimes it's walking together,

02:10:50.000 | but sometimes it's all kinds of, it can be game, playful,

02:10:54.280 | it can be romantic, and there are many shades.

02:10:58.200 | Sex doesn't start here and here, right?

02:11:01.680 | It's like, it's a continuum

02:11:03.080 | and we don't even need to define it in that way.

02:11:06.120 | So with time, I think it unlocks a lot of things.

02:11:11.000 | People become much stronger in a good sense,

02:11:13.820 | in sense of becoming, being, and we abuse less

02:11:18.820 | and we can approach, yeah, other aspects to us.

02:11:24.020 | - I love the idea that through the exploration

02:11:27.280 | of a range of physical contacts, provided one knows

02:11:32.280 | they can always return to their center, so to speak,

02:11:35.500 | then there's a lot of opportunity that opens up.

02:11:38.680 | I wish there was more of that encouraged in children's play,

02:11:43.200 | but also, as you mentioned, in adult environments,

02:11:47.040 | because yeah, nowadays, for all sorts of reasons

02:11:51.040 | that you've touched on, the idea of keeping

02:11:53.560 | at least an arm's length distance has become critical.

02:11:56.280 | There are a lot of environments actually

02:11:57.440 | where hugging is not allowed.

02:11:58.960 | I don't know what it's like in Israel,

02:12:01.480 | but in the States, many institutions here,

02:12:03.840 | you're not allowed to touch anyone else's body.

02:12:06.880 | There's actually a wonderful study

02:12:08.000 | that comes to mind from an Israeli laboratory,

02:12:10.000 | a guy named Noam Sobol is over there,

02:12:12.500 | who has shown that by recording people's first interactions,

02:12:18.480 | that when people meet, if they shake hands,

02:12:22.480 | they almost always, I think it's greater

02:12:24.980 | than 85% of the time, they will then wipe the chemicals

02:12:28.000 | from the other person onto their own eyes,

02:12:30.200 | typically their eyes or their face.

02:12:32.240 | This changed a little bit during the whole pandemic thing,

02:12:35.760 | but this is thought to be a carryover

02:12:39.760 | from what other animals do in terms

02:12:41.300 | of exchanging microbiome elements, exchanging chemicals,

02:12:44.480 | that we're constantly feeding our subconscious

02:12:47.960 | with the chemical, knowledge of the chemical constituents

02:12:52.900 | of other people, right?

02:12:54.200 | So it goes way beyond how people smell,

02:12:57.240 | how they look, et cetera.

02:12:58.800 | More touch seems to me just, as you said,

02:13:01.780 | provided it's consensual, it seems like

02:13:03.160 | it's just a really good thing overall.

02:13:05.720 | And I think maybe also important for discharging,

02:13:09.840 | discharging certain experiences, remodeling, reframing,

02:13:13.920 | so it's like touch is very powerful in that.

02:13:16.600 | If you're touched and you're touching a lot,

02:13:19.840 | you're unpacking and you experience that touch

02:13:22.520 | that maybe has been traumatic and you're reframing it,

02:13:26.040 | you have the opportunity, which is something interesting.

02:13:31.040 | I've heard some story about some traditional culture

02:13:36.040 | in which when you were burned by mistake,

02:13:39.700 | they would immediately burn you again.

02:13:41.600 | And it made me think, and then there would not be

02:13:45.360 | any burn marks and there would not be the same side effects.

02:13:50.360 | That's the claim.

02:13:52.000 | It made me think, it's like, what's the source of this?

02:13:55.360 | And I realized that maybe it allows

02:13:58.260 | a certain completion to happen,

02:14:01.020 | that in the traumatic moment is not there.

02:14:04.060 | So the re-exposure, while you're still open,

02:14:07.020 | the pores are still open,

02:14:08.860 | allows you to reframe the experience.

02:14:11.380 | And then the unfolding of the rest of the event

02:14:15.060 | is very different.

02:14:16.580 | This is, if you're touching and you're practicing

02:14:19.060 | the day-to-day and you're working with people

02:14:20.940 | and you're being touched and people come closer

02:14:23.020 | or further away, it happens naturally.

02:14:27.400 | - Yeah, and if you pass a certain limit

02:14:30.160 | and it becomes too much, there is always, of course,

02:14:33.640 | communication that has to be present.

02:14:36.540 | Certain cultures make this communication pre.

02:14:40.700 | Certain cultures post.

02:14:43.360 | The Israeli, for example, post here, pre.

02:14:47.160 | - So in Israel, they'll say, "That didn't feel good to me,"

02:14:49.820 | or, "That felt good," or, "That was fine."

02:14:51.940 | - Yeah, it would be more common.

02:14:55.200 | Here in the airport, the guy's telling me,

02:14:57.300 | "I'm gonna slide my hands up towards your crotch

02:15:00.680 | "until I meet a hard stop."

02:15:02.980 | And then he does this in a way

02:15:06.820 | that is supposed to show me I have no enjoyment in that.

02:15:10.940 | And for me, it just feels aggressive.

02:15:13.140 | But his intention is good, showing me.

02:15:17.140 | But if it was a loving touch,

02:15:19.100 | it would be nicer for me, actually.

02:15:21.500 | Personally, it would be gentle.

02:15:24.580 | But he goes up there and he shows me,

02:15:26.920 | "I have no enjoyment in this."

02:15:29.000 | But, oh, that's my testicle right there.

02:15:33.440 | So it's different choices.

02:15:37.300 | I don't think it's worse.

02:15:38.760 | But this description can be a bit dissociated.

02:15:42.380 | And what does it make me think?

02:15:44.020 | Is it truly what he feels or not?

02:15:46.660 | 'Cause it feels robotic, so it's not,

02:15:49.500 | so sometimes I'd rather not say it.

02:15:51.600 | And I'm going to touch your chest.

02:15:54.340 | I'm just place my hand on the chest.

02:15:56.980 | And of course, we can't avoid a problem.

02:16:00.960 | I'm not suggesting that there is.

02:16:02.460 | But there is an examination.

02:16:04.140 | And because I moved around the world,

02:16:06.820 | I've seen many things.

02:16:07.720 | And I've seen benefits here, benefits there.

02:16:10.540 | And in the practice,

02:16:13.380 | I think it's important to discuss this, to examine this.

02:16:15.820 | I don't have a solution, but it's something to talk about.

02:16:19.620 | - It is something to talk about.

02:16:20.940 | And I'm glad you raised it

02:16:21.860 | because I think that it's so clear to me

02:16:24.500 | that much of the value of a movement practice

02:16:27.400 | involves this dynamic interaction with somebody else.

02:16:29.780 | As you pointed out, it can be performed on one's own

02:16:32.340 | and practiced throughout one's day.

02:16:34.420 | But the unpredictability is a key element to all of it.

02:16:39.420 | And in bringing out all the potential that you've described.

02:16:43.420 | In reference to this notion of trauma and burn and re-burn,

02:16:48.620 | my colleague at Stanford, David Spiegel,

02:16:50.460 | he works on trauma.

02:16:52.540 | And he's a, actually on this podcast,

02:16:55.180 | he voiced that he's against things like trigger warnings

02:16:58.080 | because of the way that it puts the nervous system

02:16:59.860 | into this state of readiness and reactivity

02:17:02.540 | that can exacerbate problems.

02:17:05.280 | Whereas it's very clear from the literature on trauma

02:17:09.540 | and trauma relief that the way to deal with that

02:17:12.100 | is through a controlled,

02:17:14.040 | but clearly a controlled re-exposure to the trauma

02:17:17.660 | in order to diminish the emotional response over time.

02:17:20.580 | I mean, it's very clear.

02:17:21.900 | If we avoid the thing,

02:17:23.240 | obviously we don't want to re-injure ourselves

02:17:25.100 | or re-traumatize,

02:17:26.140 | but if one avoids the thing that makes them upset

02:17:28.100 | over and over, all it does is serve to create

02:17:30.020 | a heightened state of readiness.

02:17:31.460 | It primes more trauma.

02:17:33.420 | So I think it makes good sense.

02:17:35.020 | - I think impressions are very useful here also

02:17:38.260 | when stepping into an area in which trauma can occur.

02:17:42.220 | And then by going through the impression

02:17:46.160 | that it already occurred,

02:17:47.720 | you create some kind of a thermal layer of protection.

02:17:50.720 | So I've already been hit when I'm entering that space.

02:17:56.660 | It's so beneficial.

02:17:58.420 | Or I've already been touched in a way that I didn't like

02:18:01.900 | if I go to a contact improvisation class.

02:18:03.960 | And just running this scenario in your head

02:18:06.500 | protects so well.

02:18:10.220 | Yeah.

02:18:11.140 | - I'm glad you mentioned running scenarios in your head.

02:18:13.100 | I've been curious all day as to whether or not

02:18:15.780 | you do visualization or mental rehearsal

02:18:18.880 | of physical movement.

02:18:20.140 | This seems to be a popular idea in the States.

02:18:24.560 | People are always asking me, you know,

02:18:26.260 | can you just imagine a movement and learn it better

02:18:29.840 | than were you to actually perform it?

02:18:32.160 | My hunch based on,

02:18:33.660 | and my understanding of the scientific literature

02:18:35.780 | is that visualization can be useful to some extent

02:18:39.300 | for people that are very good at visualization,

02:18:41.740 | but for many people, it doesn't help.

02:18:43.900 | And that there's nothing like real physical practice

02:18:47.400 | to improve physical practice.

02:18:50.640 | - Yeah, the word visualization is not good, obviously.

02:18:53.580 | It has to be experientialization

02:18:58.020 | in a very complete way, not just visually, of course.

02:19:02.240 | And unless you already developed certain experience,

02:19:10.540 | tangible experience that has benefited from feedback,

02:19:14.820 | from outside feedback, it is not a very useful thing to do.

02:19:19.820 | And it ends up being fabrications.

02:19:24.380 | But if you're very experienced

02:19:25.860 | and you already gained the benefit of being burnt here

02:19:29.160 | or overextended here, then you have a certain experience

02:19:32.500 | and then you can strengthen certain aspects of it,

02:19:35.400 | but you gotta be careful because you do not have feedback.

02:19:39.260 | And because of the missing feedback,

02:19:41.020 | you might develop delusions.

02:19:43.100 | It might be that you develop a stronger patterning,

02:19:46.560 | but ultimately, this would lead you away

02:19:49.620 | from the aliveness of the movement itself.

02:19:54.360 | Drilling, for example.

02:19:56.600 | Very useful to learn a general infrastructure

02:20:01.600 | of the movement sleeve or the technique.

02:20:04.360 | But then to dress it up, you need feedback.

02:20:07.340 | You need it to be alive.

02:20:09.440 | You need to receive something corrective.

02:20:14.140 | - I love it.

02:20:15.760 | For many people, they approach movement

02:20:18.260 | in the form of weight training or yoga or running.

02:20:21.540 | Yoga's a bit more dynamic,

02:20:24.020 | but fairly linear types of exercise and movement.

02:20:29.020 | Peloton, rowing, those kinds of things.

02:20:33.020 | I think most people will probably not depart

02:20:37.020 | from those practices entirely because they like them.

02:20:39.700 | I'm speaking about myself.

02:20:41.140 | I like some of those very much.

02:20:42.340 | I enjoy them.

02:20:43.180 | But in terms of thinking about adding a movement practice

02:20:47.700 | to one's already existing exercise regime,

02:20:51.040 | I can imagine threading it throughout the day.

02:20:54.340 | I can imagine having a dedicated movement practice.

02:20:56.780 | One thing that I have started doing on the basis

02:21:00.300 | of some of your teachings, and I just sort of created

02:21:02.840 | this idea, is rather than statically standing there

02:21:05.260 | and lifting weights, actually walking from,

02:21:07.280 | as I alternate repetitions, it occurred to me

02:21:09.420 | that I'd never done a curl, a bicep curl,

02:21:13.760 | with one foot in front of the other.

02:21:15.920 | And then I'd never actually switched that up.

02:21:18.780 | And it's kind of an odd stance to be standing in parallel

02:21:21.380 | and curling one's arm.

02:21:22.220 | It's kind of a ridiculous movement when one thinks about it.

02:21:24.820 | So I started incorporating some of that.

02:21:26.080 | You get some strange looks in the gym,

02:21:27.540 | but I just give them strange looks back.

02:21:29.720 | So what are your thoughts about these very linear forms

02:21:33.660 | of exercise, and do you encourage people

02:21:37.740 | to expand the play space, as it were,

02:21:41.180 | for these kinds of exercise?

02:21:43.020 | Or do you think that movement practice is just best explored

02:21:47.100 | through three-dimensionality, gravity,

02:21:50.940 | and maybe a stick or a ball?

02:21:52.940 | - It's definitely a problem, and it's approachable.

02:21:58.100 | People want a quick, people want a hack.

02:22:00.900 | People want the icing, there is no cake.

02:22:03.920 | There is no cake.

02:22:05.740 | And it's just like industries of icing, icing.

02:22:08.620 | Icing on what?

02:22:09.760 | What are you putting it on?

02:22:11.260 | So for me, that's why I'm going towards this side.

02:22:16.100 | It's like, I have my life.

02:22:18.080 | Now tell me what movement practices I should pursue.

02:22:21.160 | You are movement.

02:22:23.520 | In essence, you are not thinking of yourself

02:22:28.140 | in any serious way through my eyes.

02:22:32.060 | There is a dynamic entity to you.

02:22:35.960 | The body is a huge part of it, communicating.

02:22:39.820 | You have genetic layers.

02:22:42.540 | There is personalities that got developed

02:22:45.180 | and built around various influences,

02:22:47.420 | but then there is also some kind of an essence,

02:22:49.900 | something that reeks from within the cells.

02:22:53.660 | And if you grew up in my family

02:22:56.420 | and I grew up in your family, it would still be the same.

02:22:59.700 | And it's something that I always try to think about.

02:23:02.540 | What is that inside of me?

02:23:04.080 | So I think these practices, they're very good,

02:23:09.380 | but they're not designed for the goal

02:23:12.060 | that we think they were designed to.

02:23:14.580 | It orients towards something else.

02:23:17.420 | For example, yoga.

02:23:19.340 | There is a good book called The Yoga Body,

02:23:21.980 | which will destroy a lot of people's yoga practice.

02:23:26.340 | And it goes into, how did we get to this yoga?

02:23:29.620 | The influence of Swedish gymnastics

02:23:32.140 | and Mongolian contortionists

02:23:35.920 | and the Western, the West, affecting it.

02:23:40.580 | And then the ancient practice,

02:23:42.100 | which was merely asana-related posture, position.

02:23:47.100 | So actually, you said yoga is less linear.

02:23:49.500 | Yoga is very linear, very linear these days, these lines.

02:23:53.540 | Look at all the traditional dances.

02:23:55.420 | They look like nothing like yoga.

02:23:58.060 | Look at Thai dance.

02:23:59.580 | Look at Chinese dances, martial arts.

02:24:02.260 | It's all rounded, it's all curly.

02:24:03.660 | It's like out nature, what you see in nature

02:24:06.780 | and the movement of the animals.

02:24:09.340 | So where does it come from?

02:24:11.820 | These are things to understand because it designs you now.

02:24:14.780 | It shapes you.

02:24:16.060 | You're placing yourself in these forces of change

02:24:19.620 | and these streams of change.

02:24:21.500 | And you have a good intention.

02:24:22.820 | You just want this or that.

02:24:24.280 | But the joke is on us.

02:24:27.100 | And the movement practice for me is first, education.

02:24:32.020 | Let's start to think about this.

02:24:33.620 | I have nothing that I can just sprinkle now,

02:24:37.820 | some magic powder that will help resolve this

02:24:41.060 | because it's a start of a deep investigation.

02:24:43.820 | And then some of the things, let's talk pragmatically

02:24:48.500 | because what you described is not about you placing

02:24:51.980 | the foot in front when you're curling.

02:24:53.780 | It's about the examination.

02:24:56.420 | This is why it is a very good direction.

02:25:00.220 | And then you will need another one, another one.

02:25:02.440 | Don't get stuck on that foot in front of it

02:25:04.800 | and try to do with the eyes closed

02:25:06.920 | or with a different head posture

02:25:08.200 | and you will see things arrive, unrelated things

02:25:11.820 | because the associative mind, the thinking,

02:25:14.600 | this relates to this doesn't get to the heart of it, never.

02:25:17.500 | So just infusing these elements

02:25:24.060 | like in a cup will create endless combinations,

02:25:29.060 | possibilities and a lot of discovery.

02:25:31.940 | And this for me is humility of the practitioner.

02:25:34.500 | I don't know, I try.

02:25:36.140 | Like today with you, I tried various combinations

02:25:39.700 | and oh, I discover something.

02:25:41.140 | Oh, this is a playful approach

02:25:43.340 | and this is a researcher approach.

02:25:45.520 | I don't try to fit my truth into something.

02:25:49.540 | I'm there to examine.

02:25:51.840 | I don't have a motive yet.

02:25:53.620 | Why?

02:25:55.020 | Because I'm fine.

02:25:56.680 | I don't depend on that to define myself.

02:25:59.360 | I'm a human being, but if I don't have that sense of worth,

02:26:03.420 | I'm already like geared towards, I need to do this.

02:26:06.140 | I need to prove this.

02:26:07.120 | I have this agenda.

02:26:08.380 | And this is how we get all the lies in the world

02:26:10.900 | and all the problems and difficulties.

02:26:13.740 | So these practices, they are related to it

02:26:17.580 | to prove this, that, this way, why we need muscles for X, Y, Z

02:26:22.580 | and a lot of the reported outcomes

02:26:28.920 | are often from my places like funny.

02:26:32.420 | I hear about something like,

02:26:33.940 | I heard you say about gratitude practice.

02:26:36.680 | That actually experiencing from outside

02:26:41.760 | is if somebody else or you are receiving gratitude

02:26:44.280 | is actually more powerful.

02:26:46.520 | It's true, but I see why it's true.

02:26:48.900 | I'm not sure everybody sees it.

02:26:50.640 | If somebody tries to feel gratitude,

02:26:53.340 | just sit with the eyes closed or watch a movie

02:26:57.760 | and sense the gratitude there, it would be clear to you.

02:27:00.480 | One is very difficult to do and the other is very easy.

02:27:03.840 | Hence, if gratitude is achieved easier this way,

02:27:06.480 | that's why it works like that.

02:27:08.420 | Although all the traditional practices are about you

02:27:11.320 | and by challenging yourself to sense that gratitude yourself,

02:27:16.440 | they achieve much more powerful thing,

02:27:17.840 | but this is not the research people,

02:27:20.280 | the people in the research.

02:27:21.520 | We don't have a lot of those people.

02:27:23.480 | So a lot of the things that can arrive to us,

02:27:27.320 | weight training, the benefits,

02:27:29.560 | or the way that the hormonal effects,

02:27:34.080 | the effect over cognition, et cetera.

02:27:37.280 | When you open a bit and you go far out,

02:27:39.720 | you see certain things, not the truth,

02:27:42.440 | but maybe less delusion.

02:27:45.760 | There is nothing definite,

02:27:48.000 | but there is something maybe more wholesome that appears.

02:27:53.000 | Yeah, I think this is,

02:28:01.160 | so this is a state of exploration.

02:28:04.460 | I don't want to have the same thought if I already had it.

02:28:09.880 | Why would I want to have the same thought?

02:28:14.320 | I already had it.

02:28:16.020 | I don't want to have the same practice.

02:28:18.600 | I don't want it.

02:28:20.120 | I curled already in this way.

02:28:22.280 | I want to experience something else.

02:28:23.880 | I want to, there is a benefit to gain.

02:28:26.680 | No, but that was better.

02:28:27.980 | The better is better is not more, is not faster.

02:28:34.600 | Better is better and better isn't,

02:28:40.160 | we don't know what better is, right?

02:28:41.920 | So it's like, it's open.

02:28:43.440 | Oh, this is better, I don't know.

02:28:45.680 | It's just more weight.

02:28:47.020 | It's one more kilo.

02:28:48.180 | But maybe if I remove one kilo,

02:28:50.080 | I discover something like, for example,

02:28:54.800 | power development that has been shown

02:28:58.880 | to gain certain benefits when you lighten the load

02:29:01.400 | and you accelerate it more in certain conditions.

02:29:03.920 | But who discovered it?

02:29:04.960 | A practitioner, a met person.

02:29:07.340 | Not Verkhoshensky, Zatsyorsky.

02:29:11.400 | They reported something, but it was already

02:29:16.320 | within the grasp of the practitioners.

02:29:19.080 | And I think, and as a researcher, this is very powerful.

02:29:24.080 | To remind yourself this and to work with that,

02:29:27.480 | and as a practitioner, as a living human being,

02:29:29.600 | for everyone, I think something very useful.

02:29:32.600 | And then those plays that you're doing,

02:29:35.360 | people give you the weird looks and it's like,

02:29:40.620 | yeah, I tell people, you don't wanna be normal.

02:29:43.000 | If you don't get the weird looks,

02:29:46.420 | you're not moving in the right direction.

02:29:49.180 | You're moving in a very fixed and,

02:29:53.560 | you already know the result of that direction,

02:29:55.600 | let's say at least that.

02:29:57.440 | So continue to play with that, continue to play,

02:30:00.960 | look elsewhere, look at places you didn't look at,

02:30:03.540 | because this is still like within the same layer,

02:30:05.480 | one foot in front, one foot behind.

02:30:07.840 | What happens when you do it with a smile?

02:30:10.920 | The same workout, and when you do it with a frown.

02:30:14.360 | Or what happens, breath-holding or blood restrictions?

02:30:20.340 | All this is great play and I think very beneficial

02:30:25.340 | to do, to go through.

02:30:26.580 | - Love it.

02:30:28.860 | I think it's a wonderful message.

02:30:31.560 | What I keep hearing from you over and over again is to,

02:30:34.760 | that people should explore, explore, explore.

02:30:39.100 | And listen, I wanna thank you for your time today,

02:30:44.100 | first of all, for the incredible teachings here

02:30:47.640 | at this table, but also the introduction

02:30:50.120 | to a movement practice.

02:30:52.120 | Although now I'm tempted to say

02:30:53.200 | that I've been moving my whole life.

02:30:54.520 | I just didn't know I was, that it was such a vast landscape.

02:30:57.940 | Also that your willingness to tread out in this journey

02:31:03.860 | that is truly unique.

02:31:06.220 | The greatest compliment that one can give in science

02:31:08.540 | is the one that I'm gonna tell you now,

02:31:10.460 | because it's entirely appropriate,

02:31:11.760 | which is we say you're an N of one, right?

02:31:14.420 | That, and you truly are.

02:31:16.040 | I don't think there's anyone that has been as willing

02:31:19.820 | to embrace existing practices, evolve them,

02:31:23.040 | create new practices, and to share so broadly

02:31:28.020 | to really be willing to give and teach so much knowledge.

02:31:31.140 | You know, earlier you made the mention of your goals

02:31:33.620 | of in part of being wild and wise,

02:31:37.440 | and I'm here to tell you that you are both wild and wise.

02:31:41.200 | And so thank you so much.

02:31:43.060 | - Thank you very much, thank you.

02:31:44.900 | - Thank you for joining me today for my discussion

02:31:46.860 | about the science and practice of movement

02:31:48.800 | and movement culture with Ido Portal.

02:31:51.500 | If you'd like to learn more about Ido and his workshops

02:31:54.340 | and other aspects of what he does,

02:31:56.480 | please go to his social media.

02:31:58.020 | His Instagram handle is Portal, P-O-R-T-A-L dot Ido, I-D-O.

02:32:03.940 | You can also go to IdoPortal.com,

02:32:06.500 | and there are a tremendous number of resources

02:32:08.820 | that will lead you to more information about what he does.

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02:34:32.480 | [upbeat music]

02:34:35.060 | (upbeat music)

Ido Portal: The Science & Practice of Movement | Huberman Lab Podcast #77

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