54__transcript.txt

- Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,
where we discuss science
and science-based tools for everyday life.
[upbeat music]
I'm Andrew Huberman,
and I'm a Professor of
Neurobiology and Ophthalmology
at Stanford School of Medicine.
Today, my guest is Ido Portal.
Ido Portal is somebody who
truly defies formal definition.
He is, however, accredited by many
to be the world expert
in all things movement.
Movement is one of the more fascinating
and important aspects
of our nervous system.
In fact, it was the great
Nobel Prize winner Sherrington
that said, "Movement is
the final common path."
And what he was referring to is the fact
that so much of our nervous
system is dedicated to movement
and, in particular, that
the human nervous system
can generate the greatest
variety of forms of movement.
We can run, we can jump, we can crawl,
we can move at different speeds.
Far more variation in movement
and different types and speeds of movement
than any other animal in the
animal kingdom can perform.
My interest in bringing Ido
Portal onto this podcast
stemmed from a discussion about just that,
about Sherrington and the
enormous range of movements
that humans can engage in.
Ido is both a practitioner
and an intellectual.
We all know what a practitioner is,
it's somebody who walks the walk,
who actually performs the thing
that they are knowledgeable about.
And indeed, Ido has studied capoeira,
a number of other martial arts,
dance, gymnastics, various forms of sport,
he's trained top athletes
like Conor McGregor,
and he has many, many
other credits to his name
as a practitioner and teacher.
However, he is also a true
intellectual of movement.
I define an intellectual as somebody
who can both think about
and talk about a subject
at multiple levels of granularity
that is with exquisite detail
and with exquisite simplicity
depending on their audience
and depending on the topic at hand.
And as you'll soon hear
from my discussion with Ido,
he is both a practitioner
and a true intellectual
of all things movement.
Today, through our discussion,
you will learn how the nervous
system generates movement,
and the different forms of movement,
the different speeds of movement.
You're also going to get
an incredible insight
through Ido's mind and eyes
of how movement can serve us
in the various context of life.
Not just in sport, not just in exercise,
but in every aspect of our lives
from the time we get up in the morning
until the time we go to sleep at night,
how we engage with others,
how we engage with ourselves,
indeed, how movement even informs
relationships of different kinds.
I found our discussion to be
one of the most enlightening
and interesting discussions
that I've ever had,
not just about movement, but
about the nervous system.
I can assure you that by
the end of this episode,
you will not only learn a
tremendous amount about movement
through the eyes and mind of
the one and only Ido Portal,
but you also will learn a
tremendous amount of neuroscience
about how the cells, and
circuits, and hormones,
and neurotransmitters of your body
assist in creating the
various forms of movement
that you can generate,
that you're trying to learn and generate,
and that perhaps you should think about
trying to learn and generate.
And indeed, you'll learn
some protocols and tools
for how to do that.
In science, we have a phrase,
actually it's a title,
that's reserved for only
the rarest of individuals,
we say that somebody is an n-of-1,
meaning a sample size of one.
And as you'll soon learn,
Ido Portal is truly an n-of-1.
Before we begin, I'd like to
emphasize that this podcast
is separate from my teaching
and research roles at Stanford.
It is, however, part
of my desire and effort
to bring zero-cost to consumer information
about science and science-related tools
to the general public.
In keeping with that theme,
I'd like to thank the
sponsors of today's podcast.
Our first sponsor is Athletic Greens.
Athletic Greens is an all-in-one
vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink
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I started taking Athletic
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In fact, when people ask me,
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they should take?"
I always say, "Athletic Greens
because it covers all of those
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and the probiotics, adaptogens,
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Your gut microbiome is trillions
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I mix mine with water
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As I mentioned, I drink it twice a day,
usually once in the morning,
during the phase of the day
in which typically I'm fasting
or around breakfast time,
and then again in the afternoon
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Today's episode is also
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ROKA makes eyeglasses and sunglasses,
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I've spent a lifetime
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Today's episode is also
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I've talked a lot on this podcast,
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And now, for my discussion
with Ido Portal.
Ido, thank you for coming here today.
I've been looking forward
to sitting down with you
to talk for a very long time.
I was first exposed to your work
from my post or a podcast I believe
of you had a group of people
walking down handrails,
literally the handrails along stairwells.
And as a, I don't want to
say former skateboarder,
once a skateboarder,
always a skateboarder.
As a skateboarder, handrails
have a particular meaning,
but I was really struck by, first of all,
the incredible range of
skill that people had
and yet their willingness to do this.
Right, I think of handrails
and walking on handrails
or skateboarding on handrails
as a potential hazard,
and yet some of the incredible proficiency
that some of the people
there including yourself had.
So, like many people, I
was drawn to your practice
and your work initially
through a wide-eyed, "Wow."
You know, they're doing
some incredible stuff
on natural objects,
much as skateboarders or parkour folks do.
But over the years, we've
been in communication
and I've come to realize that
you're a true intellectual
of the topic of movement.
And I define it intellectual
as somebody who can understand a topic
at multiple levels of granularity,
detail, general, specific,
connections, et cetera.
So, to start off,
could you share with us your conception
of this idea of movement?
You know, obviously movement
involves translation through space,
but when you talk about
a movement practice,
what are you really thinking about?
What are we talking about
when we talk about a movement practice?
- It's a big question.
I somehow left the definition,
the very tight definition
of it out for myself
because I felt it was
starting to constrict me
and be around me
and I let the practice
itself really define it.
But I think part of
our sense of everything
is actually a sense of movement
and then the stillness in
the background of that.
So, for me, this is the entity
that I refer to as movement,
and using that perspective for
self-evolution development,
of course, the physical side,
but also movement of emotions,
movement of thoughts, and
any other movement streams.
And by switching these layers
and examining it from different places,
you get a better and better sense of it.
I think the visuals nowadays and media
are what defines for people
in the beginning things.
And then little by little with experience,
they can dive deeper, which is good.
There is some aspect, sexy
aspect or not so sexy aspect,
and then you pull on it
and you start to examine
and dive deeper, and then
you receive the gift of it,
finding out more.
- I heard you say once
that we are not just a brain with a body,
but we are a body with a brain,
which I absolutely love
because as a student
and a researcher of the nervous system,
I never think about the brain
as its own isolated thing,
I think about the nervous system
and the fact that the
brain and the spinal cord
are connected to the body,
and the body is connected
to this, to the brain.
And in every direction,
it's everything truly is connected
at the physical level,
physiological level.
Could you just share for a moment
how you think about this
body-brain relationship
in terms of you mentioned
movement of emotions,
movement of the body,
that you can't really separate the two.
And for the typical person
who's listening to this,
they might not immediately
understand what that means.
Maybe it's something that
has to be experienced,
but when we think about
the body and the brain
and the whole thing working
as one cohesive whole,
what does that mean to you?
Or put simply,
when you do a movement practice
what are you focusing on?
Are you focusing on the
movement of your limbs?
I have to imagine that's true,
but are you also focusing
on how that makes you feel
or how your feelings make you move?
- Okay, okay, so some thoughts,
I will try not to answer
any of your questions
during this interview,
but I will definitely give some thoughts
and then we can play with it.
I think these definitions
and, in general, the limitation of words
ends up creating
some kind of a corruptive process.
You know, words corrupt us
and corrupt our understanding.
So, I think the brain-body,
this Cartesian state of mind and thinking
brought a lot of good, but
also brought a lot of problems.
And movement, for me,
is the entity that ties
everything together.
It's the magic, it's the thoughts anima,
it's when the coin spins
and you see both sides
appear at the same time.
It's a beautiful analogy
from a friend of mine, Dr. Rasmus Olme.
So, the mind and body
are one of those pairs,
and I call it the
movement/body/mind system,
so it's when it's
integrated, it's in motion.
There is also a stillness
that appears there, of course,
and without it there can be no motion,
but maybe that is a very good way
to start to think of things.
There is no really pure mental processes,
cognitive processes.
There is no pure physical processes,
everything touches everything,
there is a wholeness, and
that wholeness is in motion.
Yeah, the movement
practice takes these beats
and examined them.
And here is a pragmatic thing,
the scientist, the cerebral
thinking about movement,
this is important.
The emotional side coloring,
feeling the colors and
the textures of motion.
A lot of people who are involved
with a movement practice
never end up feeling motions,
really focusing on how it makes you feel
or how it feels itself.
And then the actual movement, the action,
so, it's action, emotion, and thought.
And those are three streams of movement
and they interlay together
into this kind of a braided experience
and whole experience.
And I try to bring all these
aspects into my practice
and the way that I live my life.
- I think most people who
embark on a movement practice
will first want to know
which movements to do, right?
Squats, planks, push-ups,
pirouettes, right?
Pick your movement, it
could be any movement.
Are there any sort of
just basic entry points
that you believe everybody
should walk through
as they embrace a movement
practice the first time
and maybe even every time
they do a movement practice?
I mean, earlier today I
had the great privilege
of being guided through a long
series of movement practices,
and yet, the first
practice we did involve,
at first anyway, stillness not movement.
So, if you would, could
you inform us how people
should think about approaching
a movement practice?
What is the first layer of
any good movement practice?
- So, you touched the word movement,
and it's important for me to separate it
from the word Movement with a capital M.
Movements are the containers
and movement is the content,
and the content cannot be carried
in any way without containers.
So, the first entry point
is to choose containers,
and then the second thing to make sure
is to put specific content
into those containers
and then enjoy them.
I tell people that it's
like a cup of water
and you're being handed that cup of water.
And nowadays very often people
will start to chew on the cup
instead of drinking the water,
making it yours and discard the cup.
And then, maybe later you want
to have bone broth or soup
so you use a different container, a bowl.
So, a movement practice to
start can start from anywhere,
it's a rhizome, it's an open system,
it has no center, it's decentralized,
and it can be approached from anywhere,
and that's its magic and
that's the benefit of it.
Some people find the
body a good entry point,
some people don't even
enter from the body.
Sometimes you can enter
from other perspectives
and then inside the body,
for example, where should we enter?
If we decided to take the body approach,
the spine can be a nice decision,
but some will choose just the pelvis.
Any one of those points are valid.
And then, playfulness
can be an entry point,
an attribute, and this is so open.
So, I don't want to limit
people and limit their minds
in the way that they
engage with the practice,
but I also want to
encourage the self-inquiry.
Am I doing movements practice,
or am I doing a movement practice?
- So, could you help
me distinguish the two
a little bit further?
I think I understand the difference
between a sort of the
noun versus the verbs.
And in some ways here we are
dealing with the challenge
of the barriers that language present
to something that's physical, right?
I mean, indeed, there may not be a...
I have to assume
there is no perfect verbal
language for movement.
There are certain movements
that defy language.
I could say somebody jumped
at a particular trajectory
at a particular speed and
moved this limb and that limb,
but by fractionating it something
is most definitely lost.
So, if someone wanted to,
let's say, get in better touch
with their body, in quotes,
in order to explore the
infinite space that is movement,
how might they begin to approach that?
Is it does it begin with an awareness,
with practice, or both?
- It begins with education.
You know, that's probably the
most stable point of entry,
awareness to some something as a concept
that it is a concept,
that there is validity,
or because sometimes people look for that
to looking at this
entity, this open entity.
And that's part of the reason
why answering questions
is not something I can do
or even attempt to do.
I believe in the power of
the non-complete process,
like making this table,
but living something undone,
not perfecting the product, why?
Because it offers some kind of
a dynamic nature of evolution
that naturally unravels from it.
Almost like sometimes I do it,
I count reps and I'll only count to nine
'cause it tends to leave
people in the count
and it keeps going instead
of giving them the 10.
- Everyone wants to end on 10. [laughs]
- Yeah, which is because of
the decimal system, et cetera.
So, all kinds of things
like that is also important
with the movement idea is to discuss,
to examine, to look, to taste, to try,
but then also not to try to capture
because if you like the
invisible loop of Hoffstadt.
If you look at it too closely, it's gone,
but if you look away,
it functions and exists
just like us very powerfully
and obviously gives us the
experiences that we have.
So, when people enter movement practice,
it is about education,
bringing some awareness to
the fact that they are living
in a body, that they are living in motion,
that their mind is a type of movement,
that their life is a type of movement.
Bringing attention to the
movement of the emotions as well.
Bringing just attention to the fact
that things are in motion.
The Heraclitus panta rhei, all in flux,
nothing stops besides something
that is the background of it
and allows it to express,
and this is the beauty of things.
And this for me is the movement practice
is this examination and bringing
this awareness into things.
As we sit now here, I'm
also aware of my body,
I'm also aware of the way
that things make me feel,
the way that your face
is communicating to me.
And I'm not just in some limited
and very verbal, overly verbal state
because it misses a lot
of the beautiful flux.
- I'm going to inject some
or project some ideas,
and perhaps you would tell
me if they're ridiculous,
potentially useful, or useful.
As I understand what
we're talking about now
and what we've discussed
earlier is that movement
can and should be incorporated
into one's entire life.
I've even heard you say
that even before getting
out of bed in the morning,
one can experience movement,
and it doesn't necessarily
have to be of the intimate kind
with somebody else, it's
it can be paying attention
to the rhythm of one's breath,
or how you get out of the bed.
Or actually, in anticipation
of you arriving here today,
I noticed that as I was
going up and down the stairs
in this house, that I was injecting
a little bit of playfulness
in the way that I might
have many, many decades ago,
but haven't for a very long time.
And I asked myself whether or not
that's what Ido is referring to
when he talks about
threading this body awareness
throughout the day.
As opposed to, but of course not exclusive
from just saying I have 45 minutes,
I'm going to do movement practice
before I shower and have some dinner.
Right, I have to imagine both are helpful,
but in terms of moving through the day
and having bodily awareness,
clearly there are an
infinite number of ways
one could do that,
maybe you could just share a few.
You mentioned, I mean,
one could pay attention
to their breath, could
pay attention to posture.
And this notion of play
is a very attractive
or as we say in science,
it's a sticky concept,
a concept that kind of draws one in.
Maybe if you would, could you
share with us just some ideas
to get people thinking about
or maybe even incorporating
movement practice into their day,
and maybe even touch on the potential role
of play or playfulness?
- Okay.
Yeah, those are some good directions.
I think one thing is this
what you call wordlessness.
I have been recommending to
people non-verbal experiences
and the awareness of the body,
which is not really the awareness
of the body, as you know,
not purely or not fully.
The awareness of motion is
a very good way to start
to bring awareness to that layer.
And that layer will start to get clarified
more and more and more,
the more you practice.
And then, it will enable for most people,
a safe haven away from many
states and difficulties,
and will unlock a lot
of potential attributes,
and strength, and freshness,
and a lot of beautiful things.
Really one of the really perspectives
about who we are comes from a person
who influenced my thinking a lot,
Moshe Feldenkrais, the
late Moshe Feldenkrais.
And he talks about the body
as the core three elements,
the core nervous system,
two is the mechanical system
of muscle, skeleton, et cetera,
and the third is the environment,
which is a unique way to look at it.
And he talks about how the nervous system
is both receiving
information from the outside
and from the inside.
And in the first years of life,
you work a lot on differentiating those,
what is me and what is not me?
And I think movement,
when you feel movement,
you feel the movement of the outside
that is, of course, arriving
to you and receiving this,
and also your own internal movement.
And the same can be said for stillness.
So, bringing the attention
into those layers,
it's a tricky thing.
It's one of those elusive
things to look at,
but it's definitely of huge
benefit to start to train it,
start to practice it, to
feel not our thoughts,
not necessarily our body,
but to start to recognize
the dynamic nature, the flux, the motion,
and it occurs in all these layers.
So, you will need to find
it in multiple locations
before you start to more
and more make it your own,
make it really yours.
How, for example,
simple, pragmatic things
I used to do this,
I spent some time in Hong Kong,
I would need to get my practice in,
but I'm really turned
off from commercial gyms
and there is not a lot of
nature accessible there
so I would just strap on my bag
and I would walk the streets of Hong Kong,
which are very crowded
and then I would try to
avoid touching anyone.
And it would be like two hours
of just like moving, involved,
fully involved, fully in my body,
and experiencing beautiful things,
and enjoying and developing myself as well
in all kinds of scenarios,
up and down in the escalators and off.
So, this is an example
of a way to practice.
And then, the way that we are sitting
like these chairs, for example,
our chairs are not very dynamic,
but there is rocking chairs, right?
And this is something I
recommend for a lot of kids
like in schools, I used
to rock on the chair,
which is very common.
I'm sure-
- I used to put my skateboard
underneath my chair and
roll it back and forth,
and the teacher would tell me to stop.
And I would just slowly little by little
trying to get the most
subtle movement I could
without them telling me
they were going to take it away, or try.
- Which is probably
horrible, horrible advice
and instruction just like sit up straight
and chew with your mouth closed
because they remove a
lot of the self-education
and a lot of the self-development
and the practical discoveries
that are necessary
and even will damage focus
and thinking processes in some ways.
So, for example, I would make
the chairs even more mobile
and I would support more motion,
and then I would be able
to bring attention there,
but I would also be able to
bring attention away from it
into other things.
And it keeps refreshing me
so I don't become stale,
the water doesn't stand,
this is the beauty of movement.
So, you can focus for long periods of time
and do incredible things with the mind,
with focus, with awareness, attention.
And it's like we're skin in the game,
so I'm not talking as some meditator
and he's describing the
act of being very focused,
but then I put a stick on
the edge of his fingers
and I tell him, "Balance it."
And everyone can do it for 10 seconds
and I tell him, "Okay,
now hold it 10 minutes."
And you see that the skill has,
he has no skin in the game.
It wasn't developed in various scenarios,
but so there is a delusion
that start to develop
and that's how movement
keeps me very honest
and humble in the way that I view humility
and in a way that protects me
and keeps me, yeah, it keeps me fresh.
- I loved the example of moving
through the crowded street
with a backpack because of the way
in which it's completely adaptive
to the situation you happened to be in
and highlights the fact
that one doesn't need a gym
or any specific scenario,
although we will certainly touch
on ideal learning
circumstances for movement
and some of the work that
you're doing, of course.
- The less of your own personal practice,
and understanding, and
knowledge you've done,
the more toys you need.
The more you've really worked on yourself,
the more high-tech you are.
The more low-tech are your tools,
the more high-tech you are.
And this is the most advanced technology
by far on this planet.
With all the advancement, it
doesn't even start to scratch,
and you know it,
from the way that we understand the eyes
all the way to with all the
respect to the Boston Robotics,
a 5-year-old motion-
- Yeah, yeah.
- Movements.
Or animal motion with very underdeveloped,
still relatively to us as systems.
So, important to remind ourselves.
- A lot can be done with
the body and gravity
as I-
- Floor, a piece of floor,
a piece of wall, a corner of a
room is a beautiful scenario,
which you can become
discover in and play in.
And, but we are not so developed
so we don't see those options.
And this is something
that I try to stimulate,
and that's why I made it a point to avoid
any of the big sponsorship
and high-tech tools.
And I on point brought a stick
into big conventions
and/or sometimes I use
a shirt with holes in it
that just like a used
shirt as a point to make
when I'm addressing a crowd to keep things
where it's important and it's important,
we are important, and our
experience is important.
And we have to be very careful,
these habits and these directions,
they come from many times good intention,
but they are the devil many times,
they turn into the devil,
just like our technology nowadays
and what is happening with
people and with depression,
with meaning, meaninglessness,
also with the body in
various perspectives,
or even I will also flip it
into high performance sports
and their price.
Because for me, this is
not a movement practice,
it erases the person in the center of it.
And then came places like
skateboarding or break dancing
where somebody with a disability
becomes the best in the world,
turns it into the biggest advantage,
but you would never be
accepted into gymnastics class,
and I love that.
And that change
to place change in the
center, it's important.
- You touched on mention of a few sports,
maybe it was Charles Poliquin,
or maybe it was another
trainer that I heard once say
that, "For kids, one of the
worst things they can do
is overspecialize in a particular sport."
The idea being that it leads
to improvements in performance
in a very narrow domain,
but they raised the idea
that it could perhaps also constrains
the development of the nervous system,
such that certain emotional states,
certain intellectual abilities
will forever be shut off
because of the intense plasticity
that occurs early in life.
The more I learn from you,
the more I'm thinking that that statement
really should be extended to all of life.
And I love to remind people
because I started off as a
developmental neurobiologist,
that development doesn't start and end,
you don't have childhood and adulthood.
Our life is one long developmental arc
from birth until death,
however long that might be.
So, if one is going to be anti-specialist,
maybe even we call that a generalist,
what does that look like?
What are the different
domains of movement practice?
And as I asked this, I
realized I am in serious danger
of fractionating movement
into a list of words
like strength, and speed, and
explosiveness, and suppleness,
a word that I've heard you use before.
And yet, I think for most people
because we think in words, often,
some of those categories can be useful.
So, let's say I was going to
embark on a movement practice
or a child was going to
embark on a movement practice
and either throughout the day
or for a dedicated period of time,
what are the sorts of
categories of movement
that I might want to think about,
ballistic movement, smooth movement?
Maybe you could just enrich us
with some of the landscape around that.
- Okay, first I'll address the first part
that you mentioned.
And I've learned from
you about certain changes
in the way that things
develop later in life
versus earlier in life.
And you're right, it is something
that Charles Poliquin also mentioned
and I learned from back in
the day as well from him,
which can seem dark a
bit and kind of hopeless,
but then you should go beyond that.
One thing that does seem to appear
for me when I look around
is these the concepts of unique postures.
And I think this is true
for postures of thought,
emotional postures, and movement postures.
Truly, earlier in life,
we are creating these unique postures
and they get into these drawers
or like language letters.
Later in life, the process moves more
towards integration of
these unique postures
into all different organizations.
The beauty of it is that you
can use very few postures
to create many possibilities,
just like a lib needs
a search for a language
that contain one symbol only versus two,
which he discovered.
And this is something that is often seen,
like you take someone who
moves in a certain way
and you teach them all these
new sports or techniques,
but essentially if you look
deeply and you're sensitive,
you see it's the same postures
that he will have to work
with till the end of his life,
the same thinking postures.
And this is really problematic,
where we are not freeing
the mind beyond this,
how would I say, a scaffolding of thinking
and we are actually
letting go of the content.
We get more and more focused
on the way of thinking
versus the thinking itself,
or habitual ways and forms of thinking,
associated thinking, et cetera.
And emotionally the same,
we are constructing
these emotional postures
and then we have to go
through the rest of our lives
working with that.
So, this is the dark side, right?
But of course, there are
always possibilities,
both I think invading this early system,
to some extent, even if it's
5%, or 7%, or whatever percent,
and also on the freeing yourself
of going beyond all postures period.
Working with the postures you have,
but towards a postureless
way of doing things.
So, this is something interesting to work
when people work with movements,
but finally are able to go into movement
and this magic starts to happen,
and then the techniques fall
apart and something appears,
and it's a face change,
it's a transformation,
it's a binary moment.
There is a jump there for sure,
and it's very rare to see both
in thinking, and emotionally,
and other ways, we have many names for it.
And some talk about enlightenment
and some talk about all kinds
of processes related to it.
And I think most of them
are shadows of the sun,
but it's not the sun itself really.
And then, talking about ways
of thinking about movement,
this is where I use something
I called my slice and dice
because of the problem of using words,
and definitions, and categories,
I try to create a lot of them
and I write them on the paper
and then I crumble them,
throw them into the bin, and
I keep doing it all my life.
The writing them down
and the geeking on it
is very important, also
very important to let it go.
I tell people what you
forgot is not the same,
forgetting is not the
same as never knowing it.
The crumbling and throwing
away is a form of forgetting,
but it leaves some kind of a homeopathic
trace behind.
So, let's take some slice and dice,
and try to look at it.
Here is a physical one,
contraction, relaxation.
That's a spectrum,
and pretty much everything
falls on this spectrum.
Also, in terms of analyzing
a person or yourself,
you can tell me if you
feel closer to this side
or closer to that side,
and then it allows you to
examine your practices.
How many of the practices are
moving you towards balance
and how many are it's your addiction
of just doing what you're
good at versus what you need?
Here is another example, physical culture.
So, we have the dense realm
working with internal concepts
and expressing them, abstract
concepts, expression.
Second perspective, the Marshall concept,
but not in the sense of just fighting,
but also partnering,
working with another person,
a dynamic entity that is
communicating with you.
The third one is I call the elements,
working with the environment.
The next one is a somatic
one, is the internal practice.
And of course, there are all gray zones,
and another one is object manipulatory,
which you can think of it
also as the environment,
but it's more small objects,
heavy objects, many objects, few objects.
And then you can look
at this way of thinking,
and you can say, "Oh, I
have many of my practices
in this direction, but not,"
and you can draw it for yourself.
So, that's another perspective,
and this way I use dozens of perspectives.
And with the years,
it gives people a sense
of where they want to go,
how they want to do it,
and what they need to address
versus what they like
to address, et cetera.
Is it helpful?
- Very helpful, those different
bins are very helpful.
I really appreciate that you mentioned
that people will often
practice what they're good at
as opposed to what they need.
In gym culture, we refer to this
as the guy that always skips
leg day type of person, right?
You know, big upper body, skinny legs,
or you you'll see people
that have these enormous thick torsos
and they're bench pressing all day,
but they clearly need to pull on an object
every once in a while
to create some balance,
but they don't do it because
they, for whatever reason,
they have an obsession with moving
greater and greater poundage
or something like that,
which in certain sports like power lifting
or aesthetics aren't the goal,
and it's simply to push
more weight off one's chest
that you could imagine
that there's something beneficial there.
However, I think that
it's really important
in intellectual endeavors
and in movement endeavors,
if I understand correctly,
to bring oneself to a
place of real challenge
on a regular basis.
In fact, earlier today,
I was in a state of constant challenge
'cause it was all new to me.
And as much as I told
myself, "Beginners' mind,
beginners' mind, beginners' mind,"
it's hard, I confess,
to not want to do well,
to perform well, right?
And I think that's a
natural and healthy thing.
Yet-
- Not only natural,
it is necessary,
but I want you to keep it on that side
and to bring something to balance it.
If there is not this challenge,
the process will not work.
It has to be this scale.
And you're talking about
scales of pain, pleasure,
and this is another scale.
And this discomfort again is necessary
and should be recognized as,
"I'm in the right place."
When it becomes too high
and I'm unable to resolve,
to make any progress,
I went overboard, but
when it's not present,
I don't do nothing here.
Nothing that I'm truly interested in,
I'm just gratifying myself, wankery.
It's in essence,
it's not about searching
for the discomfort,
but it's a marker.
And I think the question
should be who am I serving?
'Cause people do not serve
themselves, in essence,
they serve part, parts of it,
some kind of a fraction of themselves.
And this separation of
oneself from oneself,
and this is also a result of
the practice, a good practice.
I think maybe the biggest gift I received
from the practice is I can say
although it will take
maybe a certain context,
I am not my friend.
At times I am,
but many times I am not my friend.
And by creating this separation,
I can assume a certain stability
in the face of everything
all the way up to our
own mortality and death,
which is, and maybe beyond, who knows?
- Yeah, it was a striking
moment for me earlier today
when I was really challenged
with one of the practices we were doing,
and you said, "This is
exactly what I experienced
this morning, Andrew,"
that's what you said.
And I couldn't imagine that
you were having challenges
doing what I was attempting to do.
And of course, you were,
and I believe what you were referring to
is that you had put yourself at that edge
earlier in the day in which
you were making failures,
you were failing to execute
the way that you were
attempting to execute movement.
I should just to inject some neuroscience
and neuroplasticity there,
I can't help myself,
it is what I do after all.
There are beautiful data
in animals and humans
showing that in the seconds and minutes
after a failed attempt at a
motor execution of something,
the forebrain is in a
heightened state of focus.
And when you hear it,
suddenly makes perfect sense,
of course, why would the
nervous system change
unless it got a cue to change?
And the cue almost always comes
in the form of frustration,
the [imitates buzzer] or
as we said earlier, nah,
the nah signal
[Ido laughing]
is the one that preps you
to extract more learning
from the subsequent trials.
And yet, for a lot of people,
they feel that ugh,
that failure to execute,
or even to approximate execution
and they feel and experience
that ah negative signal,
and they lean out of the practice,
they start to depart either
mentally or physically or both.
And if there's anything I
think that perhaps we can offer
is this understanding that that edge
as some people call it
or that failures aren't just necessary,
they are part of the learning process,
they are the entry gate
to neuroplasticity.
- Yes, contextualizing
or recontextualizing
that sensation is
something I work a lot with
and I just remind people
and I also reminded to myself,
and if it wasn't difficult
and we didn't need to
redo it again and again,
we wouldn't be again
on this correct scale,
which is dynamic and moving
just like rolling downhill.
So, there is definitely a
necessity to succeed, to orient,
there is certain aspects
that you want to achieve,
but then there is also
the letting go of it
and the deambitioning of it.
And within that tension,
the plus and the minus comes movement,
and that that's how I did it.
And again, if I stretch it too far away,
or if I increase one of them too much,
then I would have some issues,
but you will with practice
learn to recognize the
optimal point of progression.
Of course, it takes many years
and a lot of play and
exposure to get a sense of it,
regardless of the layer
in which it is applied.
So, I'm sure in your field
and in your pursuits,
you are already aware of it
and applying it in your life,
talking about focus, talking
about ways of thinking,
creativity, et cetera.
But then it's enough that I
pull into another perspective
and you will see that
people are specialists,
and then they don't have
really the real essence
of the concept.
It's not theirs, it's
applied specifically.
The one who changes all the time
gets the general component
because what appears
when everything changes?
That is that new entity.
Everything changes, something stays.
That's what we want to get,
this concept and this understanding.
- I've heard the statement before,
we are just a meat vehicle, right?
We're just a sack of cells
and it's I truly despise that statement
because, first of all,
it deprives us of all
meaning in of our lives.
And we can go down the route of philosophy
as to whether or not
there's meaning or not,
but more importantly, it
divorces us from the idea
that the body and brain are interconnected
and have at least equal
value at any one moment
that they're informing each other.
Emotions inform movement,
movement informs emotions.
One thing that I've heard you say before,
and I'd really love to
hear you embellish on
is this important principle
that human beings are truly unique
in terms of the enormous
range of movements
that we can perform.
And yet, we are excellent,
maybe superior to all other species
at certain types of movement.
The one that comes to mind is
walking, strides, striding.
So, maybe we could just explore that idea
because obviously a cheetah is very fast,
the gibbon seems to have
a lot of proficiency
at grabbing and swinging from branches,
but human beings perform an enormous
or can potentially perform an
enormous array of movements.
Do you think all human beings
are potentially able to explore
all the different types of movement?
And if so, how does one approach that?
So, basically what I'm doing
is I'm tabling a concept,
which is not range of motion,
right, for the gym rats,
discard with range of motion,
I'm talking about the
variety of movements.
- First, it's not important what I think,
if it's possible or not possible,
or if it's even possible for
you or not possible for you,
what is important is what
you truly want to do,
what you truly are after.
And it's important for
me because many times,
this way of thinking about
things is already limited.
I like to say
a man doesn't go to the ocean
to empty it with a spoon.
A lot of the types of dressing
up of the concepts nowadays
is trying to fit an elephant
into the hole in the needle, yeah?
Like for example, the concept of practice,
and then our lives, as if we have a life.
We have some kind of
a stream of behaviors,
we have there is an argument
of free will, et cetera.
There is a multiplicity,
definitely a man is a legion,
that's the real meaning of that phrase.
One day you wake up like this,
I say, "Andrew, let's
meet tomorrow at 7:00 am,"
but I don't know who's
going to wake up tomorrow.
And then you send me a text message,
"Oh, I'm feeling off,"
right at 6:55 and go back to sleep.
So, examining that and seeing that
I think frees you up eventually
and start to orient you
in a better direction.
So, what do you want to do and what,
but in the orientation of
also what you need to do,
what you sense, and
what you are developing
as an evolutionary direction for you,
this is the important bit.
Is it possible for everyone to engage
in certain specific physical movement?
For example, in Scandinavian countries,
the squat is not very approachable,
it's very difficult.
They're more built for
dragging heavy things
and also in this climate, I guess it,
it makes less sense to squat
and 'cause you're going to freeze there.
So, this is and then you see
the squat in warm climates
and it's like so open and accessible.
They're very good deadlifters usually,
not good squatters and the-
- They want to get away from the ground.
- Yeah, the shallow hip socket,
which allows one activity,
but then the stability
of the deep hip socket
architecture of the hip,
the femur heads, the Q
angles, the shapes, et cetera.
So, we are all unique and
there are certain elements,
which like, for example,
my squat challenge
is like for most people
there is something there, but-
- Could you remind people
what the squat challenge is?
- The squat was my attempt to bring
a new, fresh state of
mind into the word squat,
not as a strength element,
but it's a fundamental
resting position really.
Actually, should be one
of the most abundant ones,
we replaced it with sitting,
which is not really doesn't work well
if you're in a natural environment,
it's not very comfortable
actually to sit for long periods of time,
rocks and different terrains
so you end up lying down,
standing, and squatting a lot.
Also, when you're moving low and dynamic,
like even collecting berries,
the squat is much more dynamic and open.
And then elimination is happening there,
so it's like it's such a fundamental thing
and we totally eliminated it.
We eliminated many other things,
overhead movements, behind the back,
all kinds of back realm
what I call the back
realm is totally absent
in people's awareness.
So, that was my attempt to
bring it back into people,
and I recommended to in order
to really get the transformation,
going to accumulate 30 minutes
a day in the squat position,
unloaded, just resting down,
not correct, not erect, many
people make this mistake,
they didn't read through the whole thing.
It's just resting down there.
And of course, you have
to be mindful of dosages.
Some people will get hurt if
they try to do it too quickly
so they might need a
buildup process towards it.
And also, I'm not talking
about 30 minutes straight,
but accumulation throughout the day.
And this does a lot of good
for digestive problems,
for lower back pain, for
hip pains, for knees,
and generally for aging
because it's basically folding your body
in the most basic way.
Are you folding your body?
If you're not folding your body,
you will lose the
foldability of your body.
And this is probably the easiest
and the most abundant
way to fold the body.
So, but this is an example of something
that can be very useful
with many, many people,
but there will always
be unique individuals
which needs something else.
And there are benefits
in examining things
and also there are
benefits in getting hurt,
which is not often discussed,
especially not in these parts.
So, I'm one of the only ones as a teacher
that says, "I injured
many of my students."
And if I did not do that,
I would be totally
useless for them as well.
That totally safe system
has nothing to offer,
practically nothing is totally safe.
And we can, of course,
we don't approach it
with a ballsy or machoistic thing,
but we are aware that sometimes
we have to go beyond the boundaries
and hopefully those would
be the small injuries
that will help us avoid the big injuries.
But if you try to avoid
the small injuries,
maybe you'll get those
big injuries in there.
So, examining which types
and forms of movement,
the location of the
body, speed of execution,
the type of organization of the body,
which is a whole thing
that we can discuss.
All of this is up for the grabs
and something that we have to create
individual relationship with,
hopefully with good guidance,
where we can get the right scenarios,
a facilitator of good
scenarios for our learning,
which is what I try to do.
And less of a technical state of mind,
do this ABC or, yeah, like chunking
what I really dislike from a long time
is like many people they tell me,
"Have you met this guy?
He's an amazing teacher
because he chunked the
process into these bits
and not even in the
correct places to chunk,"
it was like and it doesn't offer,
it locks us, this state of mind.
I talk about the chemistry model,
I call it my chemistry
model where an atom,
a molecule, and then a
compound is conceptualized
versus just chunking.
So, there is an actual evolution
like I call it also sketch learning.
I'm not going to try to draw you,
if I know anything about art and drawing,
I'm going to start by
capturing something very rough.
And I need to practice that
first, that dynamic entity,
before I go into the rendering
and the shading, et cetera.
So, the same way to learn things,
so big picture, the small details.
And unlike many of my
teachers in that I ran into,
and I say, with the greatest respect
because I don't know who taught me more,
my good teachers or my worst teachers,
but some of them just teach
from the small details
into a big picture that never arrives.
- Given that humans can
generate such a broad array
of types of movement,
run, jump, duck, squat, leap,
and all these types of movements.
Do you think there's value
in observing the movements
of other animal species?
I know I certainly enjoy
watching other animals move.
I think the most,
one of the more spectacular animal facts
that was shared with me is
when I was a graduate student,
someone down the hall was
working on the little pedals
of the chameleon, which can walk up walls.
And it was a great mystery
as to whether or not they were suction,
but turns out they can do it in a vacuum,
so it's not suction.
Whether or not there was
some sticky substance
and it turned out, I don't know,
I feel compelled to share this with you
so I'm going to do it
because I have a feeling
it will lead us to an
insight of some sort,
that those little tiny pedals are so thin
and so close together that the chameleon
actually sticks to the wall
by what are called van der Waals forces,
meaning it's a very weak molecular force,
but strong enough to stick to the wall
because they are actually
exchanging molecules
with the surface they're on.
- Wow.
- So, obviously
we can't do that, and yet I spent hours,
because they were in the lab next door,
watching videos of these
little chameleon walk
and the articulation of
these feet is incredible
because they're literally
rolling those little pedals along
in a way that it kind of defies
anything else I've ever seen.
I told myself this was useful,
A, because I thought it was interesting,
but, B, because I never
really thought about
how I articulate my foot.
I've thought about being a heel striker
or a toe striker when I run
and no one can tell me which
one I'm supposed to be.
And maybe you can tell me,
[Ido laughing]
but the point is, or I
suppose the question is,
do you think there's value in observing
the extremes of animal kingdom movement
as a way to inform the play space
and the exploration space
of our own human movement practice?
- I think so.
I think, first, it's inspiring,
it opens up, but I will take it away
from the romantic point of view.
And I would offer another way
to examine all these movements exist in us
in ways, in certain ways.
Like the work of Gracovetsky on the spine,
"The Spinal Engine",
and to see how these old ways
of moving even all the
way up to exoskeletons
and like primary, very ancient
or even single cell
things are still within us
to a certain extent.
And then, of course, this gets developed
like the Darwinian state of mind
got stuck for many years on
the survival of the fetus.
But actually, I believe,
I always believed and
I saw some information
about it lately that mutation
is the heart of the model,
not survival of the fittest.
- Yeah, people often
hear the word mutation
and they think, "Oh, mutations are bad."
There are maladaptive mutations
and then there are adaptive
mutations, for sure.
- And then, this places the
word change in the heart of it,
what it wants to do, change.
So, it does not want to become better,
there is an inherent change in it.
And then, of course, they
become better at X, Y, Z,
fittest is the secondary perspective
that arrives in relation
to certain things,
but there is still a stronger,
more ancient driving
force into the process.
So, for me, this is cool
to see these animals
take it all the way to this extreme,
but it's also still reflecting within us.
So, I love to do, like for example,
I introduce with people spinal waves,
and by bringing these waves into the body,
sometimes you get weird
experiences like emotional releases
and sometimes, and other times
it can become an incredible
tool to help an athlete
which specialized and
reach the top of the top.
And then, you defrag
his system a little bit
and offer him some freshness
and some segmental movement.
And first you fuck him up,
that's usually the case.
Technically he's off,
his coordination is off,
but later the growth will arrive.
It's a form of playfulness,
it's a form of examining things
regardless of their success or failure.
More understanding that
change is important
and then after that,
we can also look at the more
competitive state of mind
and the more success
and failure orientation,
but there is no game without change.
So, this is the primary one,
and that's why I say, "Okay,
you want to succeed in the
tasks like we did earlier,
but you stayed within the
game, to sustain the game,
the infinite versus
finite game perspective."
To sustain the game means
to continue to change,
continue to transform,
and then to win the game
sometimes mean game over.
So, it's like, yeah, within that tension
I think it's beautiful to
play, and to exist, and to be.
- You mentioned something that for me
is an incredibly important concept
for a couple of reasons,
and you mentioned these spinal waves.
Right, I have to assume that's
taking the torso for us,
you know, movement morons
that I'll just refer to in
coarse terms of thoracic spine.
So, I mean, I will stay away
from the technical anatomy
and the torso and creating movement
either side to side undulation
or arching and extension of the spine.
- Yeah, dorsal, ventral, side to side,
or rotational as well as spiraling.
- Have you ever had the
experience that of yourself
or other people engaging
in those types of movements
and experiencing particular
categories of emotions?
And I have a particular
reason for asking this,
there's no right or
wrong answer, of course,
but I'm just curious
whether or not movement
of let's call it the core of the body,
things close to the midline
as opposed to far away from the
midline like the digits far.
Is there any,
do you have any evidence
that that can evoke
a certain category of emotional states?
- Evidence, I have none,
but I have experience and I
have some thoughts about it.
Ida Rolf is known to have created Rolfing
or structural integration
said, "The issues are in the tissues."
And around the spine, the spine is us,
as you know, it's like can
take an arm off, a limb,
but there's been attempts,
but there is no brainy alone,
this cerebral thing alone,
the spine and the maybe
more parts of n-systems
inside the torso are important.
So, that's why I like to
start from that core entity.
And then these little
fluctuations they create,
they unblock things, they
start to move things.
And you can avoid, funny enough,
mobilizing those areas by
doing big frame motions,
and competitive motions, and
techniques all your life.
So, even most yogis, for example,
they look extremely mobile,
but then when you're actually
going into the small,
what I call the small frame,
I borrowed this from Chinese martial arts,
small frame, big frame.
The big frame is this big changes
of our total body in space posture.
And then the small frame is barely moving,
but mobilizing the
little bits that comprise
the same pretty much posture.
So, these are very beneficial
and it has totally disappeared
from our physical culture.
When you introduce it back,
the small frame offers the big frame,
but the big frame doesn't
offer the small frame
because, of course, the
small detail come together
into the big picture.
So, if I want to place my
body in a specific position
and I have all these bits moving well,
I can construct it in whatever way I want.
But if I just work on the big one,
most chances are I just
mobilize certain areas
while other areas are
totally held or blocked
and then I'm specialized one more time.
Take me out of this realm
and I'll have difficulties.
What will sit there in this stagnation?
Emotion, material, thoughts, traumas.
That's why people get discharges.
The body memory is not
what we think it is,
that's how I believe,
it is stored in a lot everywhere,
and I've had those experiences.
A lot of people have the opposite.
When a certain emotion is evoked,
they start to undulate the spine.
So, this can be worked from this direction
or from this direction.
And I believe by applying such a practice,
it is wise, you basically
turn over the lens
and you are allowing things
to shift, and to move, and to adapt.
So, I highly recommend it
and we teach it in a very
elaborate and gradual way.
And this is needed really
because people, when they just go
into like some general recommendation,
they usually just get
stuck into a new pattern,
"Ah, that spinal wave,
okay, that's it."
So, I've been using,
again, this slice and dice-like teaching
dozens of systems of moving the torso
until a person is freed
to really move the torso
like the language is created,
the small enough units are
created in your understanding
from all these systems
and then you improvise,
you reach the highest
level of the practice.
- I love the answer.
Let me tell you a bit of why I asked.
So, there's a principle in neuroscience,
but especially in neuroevolution,
they call it evo-devo sometimes,
evolution and development,
how those link.
If you look at, so we have motor neurons,
as you know, but for the audience,
that live in our spinal cord
that cause transmission and
contraction of the muscles,
allows us to move our limbs.
And then, we have motor neurons up here
called upper motor neurons
that control the motor lower ones.
So, once something is
reflexive or learned,
we're not thinking about it, so to speak,
we mainly use the lower motor neurons.
We know this because you
can do an experiment,
it's a rather barbaric experiment,
but it's been done many times
called creating a decerebrate cat.
You actually remove the neocortex
and these cats will walk on a treadmill,
it's called fictive
motion, no problem at all.
There are human beings
who don't have a neocortex
or much of their neocortex is missing,
they generate perfectly fine movement.
- The pattern has been download.
- That's right, and it's truly
downloaded into the spine
and the connection between
the spine and muscles.
Now, the motor neurons
that control the spinal
waves, as you called them,
are of a particular category.
They have a molecular signature,
a physiological signature,
they were identified by, he's dead now,
but a biologist at Columbia
University named Tom Jessell,
and many of his scientific offspring.
Here's what's interesting,
in fish or in animals that
really only have the opportunity
to undulate and flap their little fins.
Though, motor neurons
that control undulation in those animals
are identical molecularly to
the motor neurons that control
the spinal undulation in humans.
What's been added in human
evolution are extra rows,
literally categories, of
molecularly distinct neurons
so that as you move from the
center of the body outward,
unlike a fish, which can move its fins,
but can't actually, it
doesn't have digits.
We have special motor neurons
to move these little bits,
these bits, these bits,
and I can't do a spinal wave,
but I can do the mudras thing,
like the belly thing.
- Ah-ha.
- That comes from seeing
the movie "E.T." when I was a kid
and puffing out my stomach
[Ido laughing]
and then realizing that I could wave it,
but only in one direction and-
Okay.
- apparently not up.
Anyway, the yogis out there
can chuckle at that, but.
- The yogis actually do it to the side.
- Oh, do they?
- Yeah.
- I don't know if I can do that.
Anyway, my spinal wave is
weak, but I'll work on it.
But what I find so
interesting about these layers
of, I don't want to say sophistication,
but these with evolution
came the addition of more
pools of opportunity.
These motor neuron
pools, as they're called,
are opportunity to engage in new,
more elaborate types of movement.
But with each new pool
became the opportunity
to create combinations of new movement.
And so, the reason I
asked you why spinal waves
create one category of movement
is that if you touch a fish
on one side of its body,
it moves to the opposite side,
it never moves toward it.
But earlier we were doing a practice,
somewhat similar of testing
this similar reflex.
And sometimes I or someone
will move toward a touch,
we don't deviate to the opposite side.
So, I have this untested,
at least formally tested hypothesis
that movements of small digits
and portions of our
distal, as they're called,
far from the midline body parts
evoke different sensations,
maybe even far more subtle sensations
than movements of the core of our body
and the stuff closer to the spine.
Again, it's just a theory,
but I'm grateful for your answer
because it lands at least in
the general vector direction
of my idea here.
- The central orientation is
mostly gone from our culture,
we don't even walk basically these days.
If you look at traditional culture,
the amount of walking you
do on a rest day, it's huge.
And so, we started to create technologies
to bring everything into the periphery,
controlling it with the
fingertips, et cetera.
So, we have incredible
neurological development
relating to this, but
our central patterns,
swimming, running, jumping, throwing,
throwing is not pushing away,
that's an example, right?
- Like some people when you
give them a ball to throw,
that you can tell if they've never
thrown a ball before.
- Yeah,
they throw like a girl.
- Yeah, they don't just-
- That is often said
[Andrew laughing]
here in the US.
And it's, of course, unfair,
but it relates to experience, right?
That is less maybe promoted
or offered for females,
so you get this peripheral pattern
instead of a central-generated pattern
that progresses towards the extremities.
One thing I wanted to ask you
is I know an area that
is not often mentioned
is that some of these
ancient patterns and systems
are primary in many ways,
hence those newer
developments inside of us
are constrained by using the connections
running through these ancient systems.
Hence, we are much more limited
by the gene pool.
We are hitchhikers on a
piece of DNA, I like to say,
and that gene pool is like is
driving something so primary
that even when you are in
kind of the driver's seat
in your eyes, you're actually not
or you're being totally
constrained by that.
And I wanted to hear about this.
- Yeah, recently we had
a guest on the podcast
named Erich Jarvis, he's a
professor at Rockefeller,
who was offered a position to dance
with the Alvin Ailey dance company.
So, an accomplished dancer
and comes from a musical family
chose to become a
neuroscientist instead and study
speech and language.
- Wow.
But he said something incredible,
several incredible things,
and really looking forward to
getting your reflections on.
First of all, he said that
when you look at the species
in the kingdom of animals, including us,
that have elaborate
language and true song,
they all also have the capacity to dance.
All the...
It turns out hummingbirds
actually have a dance and a song capacity.
That perhaps, and this is the going idea
now in neuroscience and
evolution of the brain,
that singing actually came before
finally articulated speech and language,
that voice involved first
to sing, to communicate.
I mean, to enunciate ugh, or uh, or mm.
You know, but then song
may have come first.
Where you have song, you have dance
and the capacity to dance,
which of course is movement of the body.
And where you have song and dance,
you always find that those species
can generate elaborate language.
Now, the simple version of this is okay,
sophisticated brains
tend to create clusters
of sophisticated capabilities,
but the other possibility,
and it's the one that Jarvis proposes
and I think it's in line
with what you're perhaps raising here
is the idea that movement of the body
and range and sophistication
of movement of the body
through all these different systems
may have actually promoted
or even driven the evolution
of the things that we think
of as speech and language
and the ability to have multiple
words for the same concept,
or to have elaborate
articulation of speech.
I find this incredibly
attractive as an idea
because certainly from
as a hierarchy of needs,
we needed to move first to survive,
and to mate, and to flee, and to attack.
It makes perfect sense
to me that the layers
would be built up fundamentally
from the body to the mind
and not the other way around.
So, that's one piece,
and then the other piece,
which I'll just share for any
reflections you might have
that just blew me away
was Jarvis told me that when we read,
if, and this has been done experimentally,
if one records the EMG,
the low level muscular activity
in the larynx and pharynx,
we are actually repeating
the words that we read,
but so subtly so that we
don't actually speak them out,
unless there's some sort
of neurologic deficit,
which some people have, some
people mumble while they read.
But what that tells me is
that language is movement
and movement is language.
So, again, we have this convergence,
but at a very basic level
I'd love your reflections
on those are all his ideas,
I want to say, I'm just
repeating what he said
and not nearly as precisely as he did,
but how do you think of movement
as either the foundation of
language or as its own language
that perhaps even defies words?
- Mm, [gasps].
Wow, those are beautiful perspectives,
and I definitely feel the same.
There's a lot to say
about singing and dancing
as well as also as a form
of ancient programs of transmission.
Sometimes that there is this
in some ancient practices, the mantras.
And people don't realize
that they are tantric practices,
they contain a form of
vibrating and breathing
all tied together into very elaborate way
to promote a certain effect.
And how would you do something
like this in ancient times?
This is ingenious.
We, even until today,
we need a full book to describe something
and it wouldn't work as well,
so it's like a very ancient
form of transmission.
The more accurate we
became with the language,
the more dead it became,
because it is less of a movement entity,
it is less of a dynamic
entity from its nature.
And that's why Yukio Mishima
says, "It's corrupting,
it corrupts us."
So, definitely, definitely
the conducing force
or the primary force for me is
movement that is experienced.
Every time we talk about movement,
basically, even now we are
spilling it into a container
to call it what it is,
but it is beyond that.
So, then it is applied into dancing,
into singing, into language.
There is no other language
that I see as a primary mode,
and this is a nature of
space, time, things moving.
So, I think everything moves
into the direction of
understanding that more and more,
and maybe it's not so
popular to call it movement
or people have some connotations,
and it's okay, you can
throw away this word
and put another word, and
we probably need to do that
also like regularly,
like I start to see the
end of this word for me.
Things get corrupted
again, overused, abused,
and then we need a new word.
And that's even that word is
only needed for communication
and for specific processes
of education exchange,
it's important to stay
within the experiences.
It's important to continue
to promote scenarios
in which the experience is primary,
more open experience, let's say,
and not try to hold down
and define overly accurately
or if it's done throwing
it away and starting again.
So, there is no winning concept,
you got to the winning
concept, you got nothing.
You were able to grab
it, you were able to,
this is very science, right?
It's like, "We got it, we got it,"
and then it turns out to be nothing.
And like more and more time passes
I feel science is becoming more humble
and things are being
discussed in this way.
And because really what does science do?
Report the sun came up
a certain amount of billions of times
and then tomorrow it will come up again.
It's statistics.
- Yeah, it's good prediction.
- Yeah, yeah, but we can go beyond,
there is something inside
of us that can go beyond.
Hard to communicate, I can't
offer it right now here,
but I have the experience and
thankfully I have a practice
and a way to sense it, to
feel it, and to reexamine it,
and then we can talk about it,
and have something from that.
- Edward Wilson, the great sociobiologist,
he actually founded the
field of sociobiology,
E. O. Wilson, they call
him, Edward Wilson,
had this beautiful word
and indeed named a book.
Actually, the word was better
than the book, sorry Wilson,
but the book was a little
bit meandering for my taste,
but then, again, he's the
Harvard professor, not me.
Well, Stanford's pretty darn good.
This word is consilience,
this idea of a leaping together
of divergent forms of knowledge
to create a truly valuable
concept, which I love.
I love it because, of
course, I'm formally trained
as a scientist, I look at things
mainly through the lens of neuroscience,
but experience is real
and observation is real.
And even in the field of medicine,
you have double-blind
placebo-controlled clinical trials
and then you have case
studies, n-of-1, right?
Not often discussed,
right, I mean, H.M.,
the most famous example in neuroscience
of a patient that had no hippocampus
informed us more about
the process of memory
and indeed the function of the hippocampus
than thousands of independent
experiments that followed.
So, you can't have one,
you need all these different
forms of exploration,
which is I think we share the belief,
if I may, that convergent
forms of knowledge,
eventually this process of consilience
can eject a new concept.
And yet, the challenge,
again, is that if we don't
have a language for it,
it becomes hard to transmit.
One of the things that I find incredibly,
I'll use this word again, sticky
is this notion of movement culture.
I don't know who coined that phrase,
or I've seen it in the circles
and accounts around your
Instagram account and others.
I don't know if that's a
phrase that you coined,
but this idea of engaging in
movement practice with others,
whether or not it's dance
or other movement practices
because it's so dynamic, there's
the unpredictability of it.
Even to like today,
two practitioners at vastly
different levels of knowledge
and experience in movement practice,
there's information, I
like to think, to be gained
from both sides. [laughs]
So-
- 100%.
So, one thing that I've
heard you say before,
which really resonated with me
is this idea that people have
maybe particularly in the US
have this concept of, "Oh,
I have my yoga friends
or the people I dance with are distinct
from my family friends,
are distinct from."
But as you pointed out,
gathering around movement
is an age-old tradition.
And that perhaps we
better off not thinking
about people we exercise
with or train with,
but that friendship and
connection made through movement
is perhaps the most
valuable form of connection.
- Yeah, I think it's a
product of those practices
that are maybe not so aware
or not so movement-oriented
in the open sense
and then you get this
sensation with people,
but alone, we do nothing,
so much so that we're never alone
also on the inside and we will manufacture
and produce entities inside,
so we're constantly
in a dynamic exchange, cultural exchange.
And practically, I learned
this lesson in capoeira,
it's a cultural manifestation.
Things happen within this context,
we rub against reality,
we rub against each other
and their movement occurs
and their insight is to be
gained and development happens
and then comes other thoughts,
collective knowledge
versus self-knowledge.
We are transmitting knowledge.
If we go on top of some mountain,
20 people, 20 normal individuals,
and we spent 20 years
just fighting four hours in the morning,
four hours in the afternoon,
and we do it for 20 years,
but we're isolated from any
other source of knowledge,
we would still not reach anything
that a very young fighter these days has.
We will be unable to develop
those techniques, those insights,
that's where collective knowledge comes in
and transmission jumps us forward,
but what is the problem with that?
Staying within just those
technical constraints
and never making it yours,
that's the part of self-knowledge.
The digestion of this
collective information
until it becomes digested and
becomes part of yourselves,
and then you are it
versus you are doing it.
And this is a clear separation
that you can see in sports
on a very high level and
on a not so high level,
even though I would be honest
if I say that some people reach very far
just with collective knowledge
and a very technical approach,
and others reach extremely
far with very little of it.
And there is always outliers,
there are always the
outliers in that case.
Another thought I had when
you mentioned evo-devo,
evolution development is
also the Greek concepts
of poiesis and physis.
The growing of the seed into the tree,
and the other process
of the manufacturing of
the chair from the tree.
Two processes of development
evolution, very different.
One from everything to something,
the other from nothing to something.
One is accumulation based,
one is subtraction based.
Both of these processes relate
to collective knowledge,
self-knowledge, but they're
not exactly just that.
And what should we do?
This is a question that my friend Rasmus,
he asks in his thesis and thoughts,
what is the ultimate for us?
Should we manufacture our chair
or should we grow like into the tree?
Civilize the mind, leave savage the body.
Is it in this way or should
the mind also be left wild?
Wild and wise is a nice
combination of words
that I like to place together, wild, wise.
So, this is something that I try to bring
into the way that I live
my life and my practice.
And I try to bring the information,
and the wisdom, and the
collective knowledge,
but I also try to let go of more and more
until an essence is gleaned,
until something is appearing
and because everything was already there.
For example, if I'm sitting here,
all the movements are already occurring,
all the possibilities are.
So, it's just about, I need to open,
I open this window, the
air would come from here.
If I open this window, the air would come.
I don't need to drive my motion,
I need to discover what is
stopping it from happening.
Something is constantly holding,
and when we remove this
immediately movement appears,
this is real deep movement
versus the driven movement
that is a very wasteful
of times like walking,
you see people pushing through the walk
instead of the controlled
falling that it should be.
Fighting, punching to
manufacture the strength
and then to have someone who knows
how to facilitate the conditions
in which you are knocked out.
It doesn't knock you out,
"It hits versus I hit,"
like Bruce Lee said.
So, this is a beautiful thing to examine
and to work within that,
so it's to see am I skateboarding?
Am I using this perspective?
Or am I trying to, to control
because of risk and danger,
I'm trying to overly control something
that actually can never be controlled.
The way to control it is
to let go of the control
and then, okay, but what
about all this collection
of information, knowledge
that I can bring in?
Where do I want to play?
I can play down here
or I can play up here.
The collective knowledge is
maybe take you further in,
and then you're still going
need to do your individual work.
A lot of people like
to romanticize on that
and it's you don't need
teachers, we don't need nothing,
we don't need information.
It's not fully honest, you don't need,
but depends on where you want to function
and how you want to function.
They shouldn't be demonized,
but they shouldn't be
overly glorified as well.
- You mentioned about the
opportunity for movement,
perhaps even all forms of
movement coming from deep within,
it raises to mind in the
neuroscience of motor systems
we talk about motor
neurons, as I described,
the ones that actually evoke
contraction of muscles.
And then, there's this category of neurons
that isn't often discussed,
but certainly exist.
Aren't often discussed
in kind of popular
nomenclature of neuroscience,
which is the pre-motor system.
Most of our movements are the reflection
of certain patterns of transmission
breaking through from the
pre-motor to the actual motor.
In other words, we are always
in a anticipatory mode of movement.
And as and I think you,
the way you describe it,
you clearly intuitively understand this,
you feel it, and you recognize it.
And think of it as it's
like a layer of neurons
that's constantly humming
[hums] ready to go.
And it's the release of these gates
that allows movement to
occur in a particular way,
could be very smooth,
could be very ballistic.
- Which is DNA, the same,
turning off and on, all the
information is already there.
- Right.
- And then the possibilities
are just allowed.
So, I'm allowed,
I don't do free will already,
but I am allowed to do, I am.
There are possibilities
and I am dancing within that dance,
but I am not the only dancer.
So, that's, that's my sensation
at least with most
states of being, let's say.
Maybe there is other states
that could be reached,
a stability that will
arrive from the waters,
from the movement of the waters,
this humming, these
potential possibilities
to be in that state,
to vibrate like this is
very powerful for our lives.
To wake up in the morning
and feel that living thing
is the feeling of movement,
and, for me, it's a
result of the practice.
And so, then it's easy not to stagnate
and then the mind can
stay focused for hours
like we've done today,
and I can listen and tune
in and I won't lose you.
Which is very difficult,
like I haven't had a good conversation
here in the US it's very difficult,
and I've had your attention
and you're listening,
but it's rare.
It's rare that somebody can do that,
and it's a struggle, always a struggle,
but it's definitely my
trick, my dirty trick.
- In that you said you're allowed
and, again, I'm taking
some of the language
and what you report about your experience
and I'm trying to map it to some concepts
that relate to neural circuits.
In the principles of neuroscience,
we talk about instructiveness
versus permissiveness.
There are instructive cues,
like for instance, the ability
to pick up this pen, right?
There's an instruction, clearly
there's a motor command,
but that's just one way of looking at it.
The way it actually works
is that there's a pre-motor system
that's already generating that movement,
and what we've done is
we've flung open the gate
and allowed that movement
to occur precisely.
- Surfing it.
- Right.
- Surfing that current,
or this current, or another current,
or opening the window.
- Exactly, and if you
look at the formal study
of movement and improvement of movement,
the most basic example I can
give is like a tennis serve.
And they, if you just,
and they've done this many times over.
You map the trajectories,
and in a novice the lines
are all over the place,
it ends up looking more like a tangle
of rubber band ball, right?
Whereas in the Federer or the expert,
you almost wonder if it's
just one line being drawn,
but it's the trajectories
are incredibly stereotyped.
That's the reflection of
one little narrow gate
opening again, and again, and again.
Of course-
- Let me inject
something here from an old
neurologist, you can say,
Bernstein, the Soviet.
And he talked about degrees of freedom,
and they did in order
to increase productivity
in Soviet Union.
I don't know if you
you've heard this story.
- [Andrew] No.
- He was brought in to
examine the movement habits
of the workers and he
collected some information.
He placed, he was one
of the first kinetic,
I don't know how it's called in English,
the kinetic capturing of motion
with moving pictures in that time.
And so, he placed these dots
and they took these photos,
which became kind of moving.
And what he discovered was
something very interesting,
the accuracy of the
heat of the sledgehammer
increased while the variants
in the various points
became more, not less.
So, it wasn't a fixed pattern,
it was a meta pattern.
And this pattern is adjusted
in this way to achieve
the perfect execution.
Those were very early findings,
and I'm not sure how does
that sit with everything,
but I'm sure there is some
truth to it from my experience.
Basically, the self-adjusting
dynamic nature of the system
allows you to reach a very constant
and stable end result by being so open
and letting go of your control.
- Mm-hmm, the example
you give fits very well
with the one that I described before
because and I'm recalling the experiment.
If people want to look
this up, it's a paper,
we'll put it in the show note caption,
a guy also happens to be at Harvard
named Bence Ölveczky, a Hungarian,
I'm clearly pronouncing his name wrong,
but I know Bence.
And I remember the slide in my mind's eye,
and the trajectory that was mapped
was the movement of the tennis racket,
not of the limbs themselves
in the Federer case.
So, that I think aligns well
with what you're describing.
Yeah, that exploration
of degrees of freedom
is where the opportunity
for real advancement
and expansion of skill shows up.
As that I think the way
it's been described to me
is that we go from unskilled to skilled
and then there's mastery,
and then there's this top tier,
which is this beautiful, thin layer
that so few people occupy,
which is virtuosity,
in which the practitioner
invites variability
and chance back in as an
opportunity to do truly new things.
- It made me think many years ago,
this kind of thinking about
so what is that entity?
Because obviously, it's not technique,
and it wouldn't even be honest
to say it's a movement pattern,
there is too much diversity there.
I started to talk about,
I called it movement
sleeves or meta technique,
but the word technique
is already misleading.
So, there is some kind of a dynamic sleeve
in which you can move in
as long as you are not out of this sleeve,
you are still within the boundaries
of achieving the result that you're after.
And then, the result is adaptation
of all these elements inside
to keep you in the sleeve.
The sleeve is not constricted
as we once thought,
"Oh, beautiful technique."
There are many ways to skin a cat,
and that experience, and
that variety, that diversity
goes into virtuosity.
It's true freedom because your
focus is on the right thing.
You don't point at the
moon, look at your finger,
and that's really in
essence being a virtuoso,
for me, like mastery, let's
say if there is such a thing.
- Oh, there's I do believe
there is such a thing
and I'll flatter and
attempt to embarrass you
by saying I think that I'm not alone
in viewing you as a virtuoso of movement.
I think that's what comes to mind
because there's this notion
that not everything is pre-planned,
that even you might not know
what you're going to do next
until the moment of execution,
but that here I'm projecting
my own assumptions.
I'd like to talk about mindsets
in approaching practice a little bit more,
but I want to wade into that territory
by talking about vision in the eyes,
something that we both
share a deep interest in.
I from the background
of visual neuroscience,
but also from the realization
that we have this incredible ability
to adjust the aperture
of our visual window,
we can focus very narrowly
and we can focus very broadly.
So, something I encountered,
I think first as a child,
realizing that I could spend all day
watching ants play in a very fine domain
and then look up and go inside
and realize there's a whole
world and realizing, "Wow,
I'll never be able to consume
the full range of experiences
at any one moment."
There are ants probably
in the corner of this room
doing their thing.
And so too our approach to movement
can be, as you mentioned,
very big and dynamic
in terms of the broad movements
of our limbs or fine articulation.
When you begin a practice
and as you move through a practice,
do you apply a regimented
way of focusing your vision?
Are you in panoramic vision?
Are you in a very narrow field of view?
Or does it entirely depend?
And for the person who's a true beginner,
a true novice, like myself,
how should I show up to
the practice with my eyes?
- The eyes are a good starting point
as you help a lot of people to understand.
And when you encounter
difficulties with other layers,
it's very powerful to start with the eyes.
Another thing important to understand
and to experience, you can't believe me,
or you've got to examine it for yourself,
we do not move the eyes
as well as we think we do.
'Cause as long as you can
see and move the eyes,
people never think about
it, that it can be trained,
that it can be improved, et cetera,
and the effects of it are far reaching.
The eyes lead to the inner eye,
you can think of it in a
beautiful metaphorical way.
And it's a representation of the way
that we use various
cognitive and mind processes
and also, of course, affect the body.
The eyes lead in many ways
and the head is also a very
because all of these inputs
are coming in here.
So, it's very easy to lead the body
and if you look at it
centrally from the head,
it's a very powerful and easy thing.
For example, when you
teach boxers how to bob,
usually it's not done
in the way that I believe
it should be done,
you teach it with the periphery.
They teach it from the feet
because they have the
idea, which is correct,
that you need to do it
in spatial conditions,
in movement, in space.
But in reality, the head will
organize the feet for you.
Instead, you are now putting
two elements together
and then with years of practice,
you hope of tying them together well.
I prefer to do something else
because if I'll pull
your head now to side,
you will immediately start to
organize your feet under you.
So, I give you just one element
to manipulate the system from,
that's how I would teach
someone something like this.
Many animals hunt with the head,
so you can see the body running forward
while the head is turning to the side,
the whole thing follows afterwards.
So, it's a very powerful
way to address movement,
not the only one,
there are many modes, thankfully,
and we're very adaptable in that,
but definitely a primary one.
And then, the use of
the eyes is, of course,
maybe the most important
element with that usually.
Yeah, what else can I say about the eyes?
So, how do you come in?
Well, it depends on the practice,
you need to start to have
some kind of a checklist
of what you're looking to do.
And then by this,
you can start to tailor the
way that you use your eyes.
The same thing I do for posture,
the same thing I do for stance,
the same thing eventually I do for state.
And there is different flavors,
there is no correct way to use the eyes.
Sometimes it's very peripheral,
soft, open awareness orientation,
sometimes it's very focused.
Notice that I'm pulling
these two opposites,
awareness and focus,
which is often put together and fused,
but and then the eyes
are like the immediate
and the easiest entry point into that.
Another thing is the placement
of the head and the eyes,
like for example, when we lower our chin,
we seem to see better.
When we raise the eyebrows,
there is too much exposure
of top light sources
and so people would usually
when looking into the distance
will tilt their chin in.
And in many scenarios, tilting
of the chin to the side,
or placing just like
listening with the ear,
placing a certain eye or dominant eye,
depending on various scenarios.
And this is all like information
that I can come in cerebrally,
and think about, and
jump my practice forward.
Instead, of just letting the
experience teach me that,
I'm using some kind of a
thinking process to improve.
And this is not cheating, this is great.
Will it work?
We got to try, it's a process.
And those are some thoughts
and to start to play with.
- Yeah, I love that
you mentioned chin down
because we all have a natural reflex
when chin goes down, eyes goes up,
and the opposite is true when
head goes up, eyes go down.
And there are two separate
clusters of neurons
in these cranial nerve
nuclei that, as we call them,
when eyes are up,
it increases our level
of alertness overall.
This is not woo science,
this is the function of
these cranial nerve nuclei.
When our eyes are down,
we go into states of
more calm and quiescence.
And this makes perfect sense,
you know, and then the
eyelids usually go down
and then people fall asleep.
Eyes up does not mean head up
'cause, as you said, there's
a very dynamic control
over the amount of luminance
depending on the environment.
So, that and then, as you mentioned,
this difference between
focus and awareness,
I think is a really important one.
When we are in this more
panoramic, soft gaze
and broad awareness, big swaths
of visual field, as we say,
the neurons that control that
come through a pathway
called magnocellular pathway.
In any event, those
neurons are much thicker,
thicker cables, they transmit much faster,
just like thick pipes can
carry more water more quickly.
And your reaction time
is at least four times
what it is in this awareness mode
than it is when you're
narrowly focused on something.
And this is counterintuitive,
I think, to a lot of people,
but the person who is
running to catch the ball
is not tracking the ball
in a smooth movement,
most of their vision is
in peripheral vision.
When we drive we're in
this peripheral vision
and our reaction times
are much, much faster.
So, I don't know if I'm
reluctant to encourage people
to shift toward a
particular type of practice
toward a particular type of vision.
I think what you and I,
I hope agree on, correct me if I'm wrong,
is that exploring these different extremes
and everything in between
is where the real value is.
Panoramic focused,
eyes, head up, eyes down,
head down, eyes up,
playing with it and exploring it
and as opposed to for the
first 10 minutes of practice
being panoramic vision.
You know, the sort of-
- Yeah.
- earlier today we were joking
about and kind of lamenting the fact
that this word biohacking exists
or that the optimal performance,
it's that they're unfortunate terms
because they suggest that
if you just plug it in,
it's going to be like
two plus two equals four
and you're going to get
it right every time.
- Another pragmatic bit
here, if I can offer,
is since our culture
has been more geared and
pushing us towards focus,
the focus use of the eyes,
and primary language,
reading, and other things,
we have less opportunities
to work with the more open panoramic one.
So, it would be smart
to start to balance things out a bit more.
When you're in nature, you
don't look at each leaf,
everything is moving, and you
are kind of immersed in that.
And then, something
attracts your attention,
"Oh, it's a bird," and you focus,
and you go back into the general state,
the base state, which is open awareness.
Here, we switch things
around in our modern culture,
we are mostly focused and
then we sometimes daydream,
which is maybe some kind
of a balancing act
that comes from deep within,
I don't know, maybe you can share
some information about that,
but I see that many time people need to,
the focus is overly done
by far in our lives.
- I couldn't agree more,
and I think a lot of I'll
even venture so far as to say
that a lot of the visual deficits
that we now see in young people,
myopia, literally nearsightedness, occurs
because if we look at things
that are too close to us
as children or as adults,
the eyeball actually gets longer.
The lens focuses the visual image in front
of nearer to the lens, nearsighted,
than in front of where it should land.
And basically, it's a
lack of panoramic vision
that is or open awareness
that's driving these changes.
And nowadays, we are essentially,
most people are 90% of the
time in this narrow focus mode.
You know, right before recording,
we took a break and went
up to look at a vista
and to look off to the
distance, incredibly useful,
easy practice at some level,
but I think most people are
not doing this sort of thing.
And the way that it shapes the mind
and the perception of time,
of course, is a whole
other kingdom of ideas.
But one thing I'd like to relate
this element of vision
to and open awareness
is earlier you mentioned the
cone of auditory attention,
the other sense that we can play with
in as in our practice
and throughout the day.
Do you see any value to both
paying attention to things
in a very narrow cone
of auditory attention,
but also just walking and listening
to all the sounds at once?
I could imagine that could be useful.
And in terms of physical
movement practices,
I was going to say where are your ears?
Your ears are always more
or less in the same place,
but where is your hearing when
you approach your practice?
- Another set of
parameters to think about,
and to play with, and to be aware of.
Also, I have the
experience that some people
are better at using this
system or that system.
And you would be amazed how
differently the same results
seemingly outside results are done
by different practitioners
and different scenarios.
This goes into this
mutation and change idea
is what really jumps us forward eventually
some kind of a mutation.
So, it's like all of our culture,
and practices, and success
puts us closer and closer to each other,
so we have the same opinions
everywhere around the world
becoming more and more the same,
less and less different,
but the real hope comes
from the different,
so and we have a difficulty
in promoting that.
And so, this is another
thing that can be promoted
with the right practices,
the right, for example,
I work with corporates
or even worked with governments before
to bring in some of that freshness
with simple habits in the workday,
or in the education of children,
or in companies increasing productivity.
I don't really give a fuck,
but I am there to give
what I view is important
and what is important maybe
increases productivity,
but it's more important to me
that it improves people's
lives who are involved
and improves, yeah, being and becoming,
being and becoming, these two entities.
I'm not there, I'm on
my way, I'm a process.
So, thinking about hearing,
the way that people use their ears,
the way that people use listening.
Again, we can talk about
placement of the head and posture,
sometimes angling as well,
sharper angle, chin down,
some people tend to use
the shape of the ear,
people with different ears
closer or further out.
This is it's if you're very sensitive
and you're looking around,
you would see this is
affecting people's motion.
Even the shape of our face,
like the development of the vocal chords
and speaking will totally
change how we are, how we look,
but how we listen also will do the same.
I don't have any proof of it,
but it is something I believe in.
- Well, people will even make
their ears bigger, right?
We, we try and become like
little fennec foxes or something
by, I mean, a lot of people don't realize
that's actually why we do this
is to capture more sound waves, right?
And the leaning is that
the localization of sound
is based on a simple brainstem calculation
of interaural time differences,
the time in which something,
the brain intuitively, it just knows
'cause it's a pretty hardwired circuit
that if a sound arrives first
to this ear then that ear,
that it's likely coming from over here.
Whereas, if it's dead center,
arrives at the two at the same time,
that it's almost ridiculously
simple when one hears it,
no pun intended,
but it is an incredibly
valuable way of thinking
about how the architecture of the body
changes our experience.
Along those lines earlier,
you mentioned something
and it flagged an
important question for me.
When I see people walking
sometimes I think, "Wow, they
really move in a strange way."
Occasionally you see somebody,
they walk really, it's
impressive for whatever reason,
you know, and you just think, "Wow,
they sort of glide along."
People come in different shapes and sizes,
short torsos, long arms, et cetera.
Do you think that if
people have a body type
that facilitates certain kinds
of movement and not others
that they should intentionally
try and move in the way
that is right at the edge
of the kind of friction and challenge
in order to shape new possibilities,
or do you think that they should lean
into the smooth execution
of what comes most naturally to them?
- Yeah, I think a good
practice is to have many walks
because they're required.
And, of course, there is a very efficient
and endurance, stamina-oriented thing
that if you have the experience,
it will naturally develops and unravel.
And if not,
you can get some collective
knowledge and improve.
And then there is a lot of emotion,
emotional things related to walk
like how I'm walking
into a business meeting
and/or how I'm walking
out of a bad situation.
And there is a lot of beautiful
things to research there
practically with yourself,
trying to approach someone
with the chin slightly down,
very linear, very efficient
in the straightest line,
or trying to approach someone
a little bit more rounded
from the side and tilting your head,
and you will see totally
different results,
totally different
communication that happens
over people's heads.
But if you're sensitive,
you realize that, "Wow,
this opened the door."
Instead, many people
you start on the minus.
My sister, my big sister, Atali,
she always says, "I started on the minus,
why don't I start on zero with them?"
You know, so, but it's
part of the approach.
You can affect that, and you
can start even on the plus
if you are the sly man as
the practitioner needs to be.
So, this is something to
play with and to work with
and then you have, of
course, body proportions,
and ways, and we have all
these like technical invasions,
mathematics, and trigonometry,
and architecture,
they invaded our bodies, they
invaded our nervous system.
And now, our walk and
our physical practices,
they look linear and efficient,
the path between two
points is a straight line,
it's not, this is biomechanics,
it's not mechanics,
nothing there is a given,
there's no gospel.
So, the walkers is
sometimes have to go around
or sway from side to side,
and there is coiling and coiling
and there are moving bits.
And what about the coordination
of my breathing with my walk?
Because if I walk too linearly,
there is less pumping of
the air naturally in and out
so now I have to forcefully
bring it in and out, I'm wasteful.
And that's why you see in last years,
these incredible runners,
especially in long distance,
doing things we never
thought were possible
in the worst possible way
that we used to think,
pronation and all kinds of things
like our technical thoughts
were totally misguided and wrong.
And then, somebody comes
in and does it in some way
that is totally wrong
and he gets results we could never get.
And that's the beauty of playfulness,
experimentation, change, being different.
- As you're describing this I'm smiling
because one of my
favorite neuroscientists,
he's out of the university of Chicago,
was in a meeting and there was an argument
about evolution of the nervous system
and he said, "At the end,"
and people were arguing about
whether or not this gene
in one animal was homologous
to this gene in humans, et cetera,
it can get very dicey.
And he said very, very appropriately that,
"One of the major jobs of evolution
is to take existing
cell types and circuits
and give them new functions.
But that can only be done
through the playful exploration
of new possibilities,"
which I think maps very
well to what you're saying,
that at the extreme thresholds
of technical execution,
you know, mastery, mastery, mastery, you,
your obviously performance is very high,
but the opportunity for
evolution of the sport,
or the music, or the dance,
or the intellectual endeavor
is limited because you're
not introducing variability.
In the attempt to get proper execution,
you're limiting oneself.
- Hence, I want to offer
something that is relating to you.
We should be wary
of defining the mechanisms
and putting certain meaning
with certain processes and ways
because just history and experience shows
it doesn't work well for us most times,
or it becomes like this
much more elaborate thing
even if we were somewhat
in the right direction
because even thinking
this way can offer a lot.
Like for example, your advice
about heat, dopamine, light,
offers a lot of benefit,
but also can create problems
and it can enclose something
which the improviser
will find, the MacGyvers, right?
Like take a pink, some paper clip,
and you make it into something great.
And this is really our,
we are the biggest improvisers around
like that's what made
us who we are, I think,
and this is incredible
what we can do with it.
You know, the Russian-American
space exploration story
with the space pen,
famous story about the
development of the space pen.
- I don't know.
- It's a-
- A space pen?
- Yeah.
- No, I don't know about this.
- I think it's an urban myth.
I don't know if it's true,
but I like it so I use it.
Well, there was this, of
course, a space competition
and the Russians put the
first animal in space
and the first.
- He was a macaque monkey
or something like that, yeah.
- Yeah.
And then Laika, and they
put the first Sputnik,
the satellite, and men in space,
but Americans took the man on the moon.
And on the way a lot of
technologies got developed
and the Americans because
of lack of gravity out there
developed the space pen
with a huge investment,
the Russians used a pencil.
[Andrew laughing]
So, I don't know if it's true,
I don't think it is,
but it represents something
in the state of mind.
Like you look at, for example,
the military equipment
in Soviet equipment,
it all can do multiple things
and it means that it's heavier,
it's less efficient, it's not as light,
but even the Navy SEALs
will still carry an AK
with certain conditions, why?
Because you can pour
a whole bucket of sand
into the mechanism and
it will keep running
while the most advanced
German Heckler & Koch
and accurate and light weapons,
for every grain can get
stuck and overly specialized.
And there is something about this openness
that we humans need to keep,
and also maybe something for our leaders
to be more of less specialists
and more in this openness,
less capable in this or that way,
but more capable of doing the whole thing.
- I love the story, whether
or not it's a legend or not,
it's legendary because it's fantastic.
As you say, in the laboratory,
whenever someone takes
on a project in my lab,
I always say, "You know,
you have to ask yourself
how much technical detail and
challenge you want to take on
because with more technology,
advanced technology,
yes, there's the opportunity
for more discovery,
but more downtime.
Your PhD will literally take longer
if you're going to use a microscope
that's out of commission 30% of the time,
and you just have to understand that."
So, there's a dynamic interplay there.
- By the way, I think that
scientists get it right,
it's where you transmit the knowledge
out of the scientific field
because science have
debate and everything,
you're not so connected,
of course this can happen as well,
but then when it goes out
and the simple person
without the experience
takes it more as a
gospel, as a fixed thing,
and then it was just a report.
- Right.
- It was just reporting
some functions here and play with it,
see what it does for you.
Because with all the greatest
information that I can give,
the person will examine it
and it might be not useful at all for him.
This is the practitioner,
make it your own,
go practice, try heat, cold, light,
movement, awareness to
this, awareness to this.
And this is up to you to make it yours,
but we don't like to
have this responsibility.
- No, people prefer to have
that this will work the
first time every time
and will serve you best
compared to everything else.
And while there are more
reliable tools than others,
in my mind, the more reliable tools
tend to be ones that are
grounded in our innate physiology
as opposed to some, I
don't like the word hack,
in fact, I loathe the word biohack,
as we were talking about again earlier,
because a hack in my mind is something
that is designed for one purpose
that's used for another,
it's not the most
efficient use of that tool,
nor is it naturally the best solution.
Whereas, biology has
some very good solutions,
but they don't always
work, not every time.
Earlier today, we did a practice
in which involved a invasion,
shall we say, of peripersonal space.
We weren't standing super close
for any particular reason,
but there was God forbid-
- God forbid.
- But there was we were
close enough together
we could touch one torsos
and we were doing that
as part of this practice.
And you encouraged me to pay attention
to how does it feel
to have someone in your
peripersonal space?
And then, this notion of reactivity.
I find this an immensely interesting
and potentially powerful practice
because I think a lot of people,
I know a lot of people suffer from anxiety
just being in a face-to-face conversation.
Some people have a lot of anxiety
about being physically close to people,
whether or not they know them or not.
And many people are reactive,
they are in that anticipatory state
of something that is going to happen.
And sometimes this relates to trauma
and negative experience, but sometimes no,
sometimes they're just not
used to being in dynamic,
excuse me, exchange with other beings.
And so, one thing that I love
about the movement practice
and how dynamic is that
one can explore that space.
Maybe you could talk about
that a little bit more.
- Yeah.
Touch, proximity, all these things,
also taking very,
it takes a very, I think,
limited place in our lives.
People are not touched and
they don't touch enough.
There is certain bubbles
of peripersonal space
according to culture,
according to environment,
what is right, what is wrong?
And then came all the, of
course, political correctness,
and harassments, and all kinds.
And this is a problem,
it's a problem to navigate
all this scenario.
And I think we are,
there is definitely this
side which is suffering.
People go to BJJ classes to touch,
not to learn BJJ.
Most of it, they're not even aware of it,
before they would go
to a prostitute, maybe.
It would not be honest to say that,
yeah, this is not required or
necessary more in our lives.
Children who are not touched,
there is a lot of information
about that and the problems,
but adults who are not touched,
there is not a lot of information.
And I think it's no less of a problem
because it's something that
has to be constantly present.
And then, proximity being
able to, as you said,
remove certain reactivity
and to learn to control
that volume control
over how reactive I am,
and in other scenarios,
how do I remove this reactivity altogether
is very important for performance
and also for our lives for
clear thinking, et cetera,
because everything is moving through us
and is being monitored by us
so everything has the
potential to detract us
from a certain direction of exploration
or and if you're reactive, you're a slave,
and it becomes worse and worse and worse.
Or as, for example, a fighter,
or a football player, et cetera,
has to know what to
take, what not to take.
The fact that you can sense more
doesn't mean you should react to it.
And the practice helps that
by bringing people into these scenarios,
but oftentimes disarming them.
Like when we were working closely today,
and because you have a certain background
with boxing or fighting,
I can tell you, you are
missing some kind of a way
to be in that space that is not marshaled.
So, you carry a certain tone,
although you're a very kind person,
but oftentimes you held me
without realizing you're holding
me with a lot of strength,
for example, and it just,
it was clear to me you're not fully aware
of what is unfolding
and it's just, of course,
a question of experience.
So, to be able to be in this scenario,
but do something else,
which is not geared towards
winning, losing competition,
or just being able to
play with another person.
Like for example, contact
improvisation took that
and played with that,
and the work of Steve Paxton
for the ones who are not familiar.
So, this is where I call it the hybrids
become very useful,
like we don't when you are
practicing in this open way,
you are not bound by specific rule set
or ways of doing things.
It can be a fight, but it can be a dance
a moment after.
Another thing that I learned from capoeira
the situation's very tricky there
'cause I've seen kids
doing cartwheels in Brazil
and scissors fall from their pocket.
Why, why would you go to with
a scissor in your pocket?
Obviously, there is certain intentions
and then at other times you see back flips
and beautiful things, but people
die in capoeira every year.
- Neck breaks or something?
- Kicks through the face
from various violence.
It's I've explored other
martial arts and boxing,
I was involved with MMA and BJJ,
but I tell you the most violent arenas
is that vibe 'cause it's unknown.
One moment, it smiles,
another moment, it's something
else and it's uncontrolled.
There is no categories, no weights,
and it's a street phenomenon.
So, you have musical instruments,
sometimes they break it on your head.
People don't see that,
but you can look online on YouTube
and see some of that side of capoeira,
which is actually the day-to-day in Brazil
and the reality and how things unfolded.
So, it's very important to explore
many ways of being within
different distances and spaces
from other people and
touched in different ways
and not contextualizing
it always in the same way.
I can touch your chest in one way,
I can touch it with the exact
same pressure and speed,
but it will feel very different.
The parameters, I'm not
sure, certain intentions,
certain combination of postures or ways,
and this is beautiful exploration.
And again, I would
encourage you and others
to explore the discomfort.
For example, certain
discomfort to be with a man
in a certain scenario or with a woman
and trying to see what is that?
Because if we're truly strong,
we are not afraid of anything.
If we truly know who we are
and we are in that exploration,
we don't know the end result,
but we are in a research
and then we are not afraid
of being in debt or this,
and we don't come out of boundaries,
and this will improve
our culture tremendously.
Of course, there must be agreement,
you never force yourself,
but you meet someone
who is also interested
in that exploration and then you do it.
And there are many scenarios
to do that with traditional practices,
like learning to grapple
or going to contact improvisation
and studying there, or going to dance,
to Latin dance class
or and there is, of course, my favorite
is to create and to come
up with your own hybrids
of that and scenarios.
Communicating with your
loved one through movement,
not sitting around food and talking,
moving together in all kinds of ways.
Sometimes it's walking together,
but sometimes it's all
kinds of, it can be game,
playful, it can be romantic.
And there are many shades,
sex doesn't start here
and end here, right?
It's like a continuum,
and we don't even need
to define it in that way.
So, with time, I think it unlocks
a lot of things.
People become much
stronger in a good sense,
in sense of becoming, being,
and we abuse less, and we can approach,
yeah, other aspects to us.
- I love the idea that
through the exploration
of a range of physical contacts
provided one knows they can always return
to their center, so to speak,
then there's a lot of
opportunity that opens up.
I wish there was more of that
encouraged in children's play,
but also, as you mentioned,
in adult environments.
Because yeah, nowadays
for all sorts of reasons
that you've touched on,
the idea of keeping at least
in arms length distance
has become critical.
There are a lot of environments
actually where hugging is not allowed.
I don't know what it's like in Israel,
but in the states many
institutions you're not allowed
to touch anyone else's body.
There's actually a wonderful study
that comes to mind from
an Israeli laboratory,
a guy named Noam Sobel, who's over there,
who has shown that by recording
people's first interactions
that when people meet,
if they shake hands,
they almost always,
I think it's greater than 85% of the time
they will then wipe the chemicals
from the other person onto their own eyes,
typically their eyes or their face.
This changed a little bit
during the whole pandemic thing,
but this is thought to be a carryover
from what other animals do
in terms of exchanging
microbiome elements,
exchanging chemicals that
we're constantly feeding
our subconscious with
the chemical knowledge
of the chemical constituents
of other people, right?
So, it goes way beyond how people smell,
how they look, et cetera.
More touch seems to me just, as you said,
provided it's consensual,
it seems like it's just a
really good thing overall.
- And I think maybe also
important for discharging,
discharging certain experiences,
remodeling, reframing.
So, it's like touches,
it's very powerful in that.
If you're touched and
you're touching a lot,
you're unpacking and you
experience that touch
that maybe has been traumatic
and you're reframing it,
you have the opportunity,
which is something interesting.
I've heard some story
about some traditional culture
in which when you were burned by mistake,
they would immediately burn you again.
And it made me think,
and then there would not be any burn marks
and there would not be
the same side effects,
that's the claim.
It made me think it's like,
"What's the source of this?"
And I realized that maybe it allows
a certain completion to happen
that in the traumatic moment is not there.
So, the re-exposure,
while you're still open,
the pores are still open,
allows you to reframe the experience
and then the unfolding
of the rest of the event
is very different.
This is if you're touching
in your practice in the day-to-day,
and you're working with people,
and you're being touched,
and people come closer, further
away, it happens naturally.
Yeah, and if you pass a certain limit
and it becomes too much,
there is always, of course, communication
that has to be present.
Certain cultures make
this communication pre,
certain cultures post.
The Israeli, for example, post,
here pre.
- Ah, so in Israel,
they'll say, "That
didn't feel good to me,"
or, "That felt good," or, "That was fine."
- Yeah, it would be more common.
Here in the airport,
the guys telling me, "I'm
going to slide my hands
up towards your crotch
until I meet the hard stop,"
and then he does this in a way
that is supposed to show me,
I have no enjoyment in that
and for me it just feels aggressive.
But his intention is good, showing me.
But if it was a loving touch,
it would be nicer for me actually,
personally that's it would be gentle,
but he goes up there and he shows me,
"I have no enjoyment in this."
[groans] That's my testicle right there,
so it's different choices.
[Andrew laughing]
I don't think it's like worse,
but this description can
be a bit dissociated.
And what does it make me think?
Is it truly what he feels or not?
'Cause it feels robotic, so it's not.
So, sometimes I'd rather not say it
and I'm going to touch your chest
and just place my hand on the chest.
And, of course I, we
can't avoid a problem,
I'm not suggesting that there is,
but there is an examination.
And because I moved around
and around the world,
I've seen many things
and I've seen benefits
here and benefits there.
And in the practice, I think
it's important to discuss this,
to examine this, I don't have a solution,
but it's something to talk about.
- It is something to talk about,
and I'm glad you raised it
because I think that it's so clear to me
that much of the value
of a movement practice
involves this dynamic
interaction with somebody else.
As you pointed out, it can
be performed on one's own
and practiced throughout one's day.
But the unpredictability is
a key element to all of it,
and in bringing out all the potential
that you've described.
In reference to this notion of trauma
and burn and re-burn.
My colleague at Stanford, David Spiegel,
he works on trauma
and has actually on this podcast,
he voiced that he's against
things like trigger warnings
because of the way that
it puts the nervous system
into this state of
readiness and reactivity
that can exacerbate problems.
Whereas, it's very clear
from the literature on trauma
and trauma relief that
the way to deal with that
is through a controlled,
but clearly a controlled
re-exposure to the trauma
in order to diminish the
emotional response over time.
I mean, it's very clear
if we avoid the thing,
obviously we don't want
to re-injure ourselves
or re-traumatize,
but if one avoids the
thing that makes them upset
over and over, all it
does is serve to create
a heightened state of readiness,
it primes more trauma.
- Yeah.
- So, I think
it makes good sense.
- I think impressions are very useful here
also when stepping into an
area in which trauma can occur.
And then, by going through the impression
that it already occurred,
you create some kind of a
thermal layer of protection,
so I've already been hit
when I'm entering that space,
it's so beneficial.
Or I've already been touched
in a way that I didn't like
if I go to a contact improvisation class,
and just running this
scenario in your head
protects so well, yeah.
- I'm glad you mentioned
running scenarios in your head.
I've been curious all
day as to whether or not
you do visualization
or mental rehearsal of physical movement.
This is it seems to be a
popular idea in the states,
people are always asking me, "You know,
can you just imagine a movement
and learn it better than where
you to actually perform it?"
My hunch based on and my understanding
of the scientific literature
is that visualization
can be useful to some extent
for people that are very
good at visualization,
but for many people, it doesn't help.
And that there's nothing
like real physical practice
to improve physical practice.
- Yeah, the word visualization's
not good, obviously,
it has to be experientialization
in a very complete way, not
just visually, of course.
And unless you already developed
certain experience, tangible experience
that has benefited from
feedback, from outside feedback.
It is not a very useful thing to do,
and it ends up being fabrications.
But if you are very experienced
and you already gained the
benefit of being burnt here
or overextended here,
then you have a certain experience
and then you can strengthen
certain aspects of it,
but you got to be careful
because you do not have feedback.
And because of the missing feedback,
you might develop delusions.
It might be that you
develop stronger patterning,
but ultimately this would lead you away
from the aliveness of the movement itself.
Drilling, for example,
very useful to learn
a general infrastructure
of the movement sleeve
or the technique, but then to dress it up,
you need feedback, you
need it to be alive,
you need to receive something corrective.
- I love it.
For many people, they approach movement
in the form of weight
training, or yoga, or running.
Yoga's a bit more dynamic,
but it fairly linear types
of exercise and movement,
Peloton, rowing, those kinds of things.
I think most people
will probably not depart
from those practices entirely
because they like them.
I'm speaking about myself,
I like some of those
very much, I enjoy them.
But in terms of thinking about
adding a movement practice
to one's already existing exercise regime,
I can imagine threading
it throughout the day,
I can imagine having a
dedicated movement practice.
One thing that I have started doing
on the basis of some of your teachings,
and I just sort of created this idea
is rather than statically
standing there and lifting weights,
actually walking from, as
I alternate repetitions,
it occurred to me that
I'd never done a curl,
a bicep curl with one foot
in front of the other,
and then I'd never
actually switched that up.
And it's kind of an odd stance
to be standing in parallel
and curling one's arm,
it's kind of a ridiculous
movement when one thinks about it.
So, I started incorporating some of that,
you get some strange looks in the gym,
but I just give them strange looks back.
So, what are your thoughts
[Ido laughing]
about these very linear forms of exercise?
And, do you encourage people
to expand the play space, as it were,
for these kinds of exercise?
Or do you think that movement
practice is just best explored
through three dimensionality,
gravity, and maybe a stick or a ball?
- Hmm, it's definitely a problem,
and it's approachable.
People want a quick, people want a hack,
people want the icing, there is no cake.
There is no cake, and it's
just like industries of icing,
icing, icing on what?
What are you putting it on?
So, for me that, that's why
I'm going towards this side,
it's like I have my life,
now tell me what movement
practices I should pursue.
You are movement,
in essence, you are not
thinking of yourself
in any serious way through my eyes.
There is a dynamic entity to you,
the body is a huge part
of it communicating,
you have genetic layers,
there is a personalities
that got developed
and built around various influences,
but then there is also
some kind of an essence,
something that reeks
from within the cells.
And if you grew up in my family
and I grew up in your family
and it would still be the same,
and that it's something that
I always try to think about,
what is that inside of me?
So, I think these practices,
they're very good,
but they're not designed for the goal
that we think they were designed to do it,
it orients towards something else.
For example, yoga,
there is a good book
called the "Yoga Body",
which will destroy a lot
of people's yoga practice.
And it goes into how
did we get to this yoga,
the influence of Swedish gymnastics
and Mongolian contortionists,
and the Western, the West affecting it,
and then the ancient practice,
which was barely asana-related,
posture, position.
So, actually you said yoga is less linear,
yoga is very linear, very
linear these days, these lines.
Look at all the traditional dances,
they look like nothing like yoga.
Look at tai dance, look at
Chinese dances, martial arts,
it's all rounded, it's all curved,
it's like the like out nature,
what you see in nature and
the movement of the animals.
So, where does it come from?
These are things to understand
because it designs you now, it shapes you.
You're placing yourself
in these forces of change
and these streams of change,
and you have a good intention,
you just want this or that,
but the joke is on us.
And this is the movement practice
for me is first education,
let's start to think about this.
I have nothing that I
can just sprinkle now,
some magic powder that
will help resolve this
because it's a start of
a deep investigation.
And then, some of the things,
let's talk pragmatically,
because what you described
is not about you placing the foot in front
when you're curling, it's
about the examination,
this is why it is a very good direction.
And then, you will need
another one, another one,
don't get stuck on that
foot in front of it
and try to do with the eyes closed
or with a different head posture,
and you will see things arrive,
unrelated things because
the associative mind,
the thinking, this relates,
this doesn't get to
the heart of it, never.
So, just infusing
these elements like in a cup
will create endless combinations,
possibilities, and a lot of discovery.
And this for me is humility
of the practitioner.
I don't know, I try like today with you.,
I tried various combinations
and oh, I discover something,
oh, there is, this is a playful approach,
and this is a researcher approach.
I don't try to fit my
truth into something,
I'm there to examine.
I don't have a motive yet, why?
Because I'm fine, I don't
depend on that to define myself.
I'm a human being,
but if I don't have that sense of worth,
I'm already like geared
towards I need to do this,
I need to prove this, I have this agenda.
And this is how we get
all the lies in the world
and all the problems and difficulties.
So, these practices,
they are related to it
to prove this, that, this way,
why we need muscles for X, Y, Z.
And a lot of the reported outcomes
are often from my place is like funny.
I hear about something
like I heard you say
about gratitude practice
that actually experiencing from outside
as somebody else,
or you are receiving gratitude
is actually more powerful.
It's true, but I see why it's true,
I'm not sure everybody sees.
If somebody tries to feel gratitude,
just sit with the eyes clothes
or watch a movie and
sense the gratitude there,
it will be clear to you,
one is very difficult to do
and the other is very easy.
Hence, if gratitude is
achieved easier this way,
that's why it works like that.
Although all the traditional
practices are about you
and by challenging yourself
to sense that gratitude yourself,
they achieve much more powerful thing,
but this is not the research people
and the people in the research,
we don't have a lot of those people.
So, a lot of the things
that can arrive to us,
weight training, the benefits,
or the way that the hormonal effect,
the effect of cognition, et cetera.
When you open a bit and you go far out,
you see certain things, not the truth,
but maybe less delusion.
There is nothing definite,
but there is something
maybe more wholesome that appears.
Yeah, I think this is so this is a state,
a state of exploration.
I don't want to have the same
thought if I already had it,
why would I want to have the same thought?
I already had it.
I don't want to have the same practice,
I don't want to.
I curled already in this way,
I want to experience
something else, I want to.
There is a benefit to gain,
No, but that was better.
The better is better,
is not more, is not faster.
It's like better is better,
and better isn't, we don't
know what better is, right?
So, it's like it's open.
Oh, this is better, I don't know.
It's just more weight, it's one more kilo,
but maybe if I remove one kilo,
I discover something like,
for example, power development
that has been shown to
gain certain benefits
when you lighten the load
and you accelerated more
in certain conditions,
but who discovered it?
A practitioner, a math person,
not Verkhoshansky, Zatsiorsky,
they reported something,
but it was already within the
grasp of the practitioners.
And I think, and as a
researcher, this is very powerful
to remind yourself this
and to work with that.
And as a practitioner,
as a living human being, for everyone,
I think something very useful.
And then, those plays that you're doing,
people give you the weird looks,
and it's like yeah, I tell people,
"You don't want to be normal.
If you don't get the weird looks,
you're not moving in the right direction."
You're moving in a very fixed
and you already know the
result of that direction,
let's say at least that.
So, continue to play with
that, continue to play.
Look elsewhere, look at
places you didn't look at
because this is still like
within the same layer,
one foot in front, one foot behind,
what happens when you do it with a smile,
the same workout, and when
you do it with a frown?
Or what happens, breath
holding or blood restrictions,
all this is great play,
and I think very beneficial
to do, to go through.
- Love it, I think that's
a wonderful message.
And what I keep hearing
from you over and over again
is that people should
explore, explore, explore.
And listen, I want to thank
you for your time today,
first of all, for the incredible teachings
here at this table,
but also the introduction
to a movement practice.
Although, now I'm tempted to say
that I've been moving my whole life,
I just didn't know I was-
- It's true.
- that it was such a vast landscape.
Also, that your willingness to tread out
in this journey that is truly unique.
You know, that the greatest compliment
that one can give in science
is the one that I'm going to tell you now
because it's entirely appropriate,
which is we say you're an n-of-1, right?
That and you truly are,
I don't think there's anyone
that has been as willing to
embrace existing practices,
evolve them, create new practices,
and to share so broadly
to really be willing to give
and teach so much knowledge.
You know, earlier you made
the mention of your goals
of in part of being wild and wise,
and I'm here to tell you that
you are both wild and wise.
And so, thank you so much.
- Thank you very much, thank you.
- Thank you for joining
me today for my discussion
about the science and practice of movement
and movement culture with Ido Portal.
If you'd like to learn more about Ido,
and his workshops, and other
aspects of what he does,
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and there, there are a
tremendous number of resources
that will lead you to more
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